From the Vault: Send an Owl/Raven/Pigeon!

Harry Potter sends messages by owl. The characters of ‘Game of Thrones’ employ ravens. Meanwhile, real-life messenger pigeons have carried messages for thousands of years. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe consider just why the homing pigeon is perfect for this job -- and why owls and ravens are not. (originally published 5/9/2019)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And it's Saturday.
Time for a vault episode. Deep in the Vault, I
hear the fluttering of wings. Yeah, that's right, this is
our episode Send an owl slash raven slash pigeon. Uh.
This episode basically explores the actual use of pigeons to

(00:25):
to relay messages from one point to another, but then
also exploring the use of ravens and owls in our
various fictions, namely, um, The Song of Ice and Fire
by George R. Martin and J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. Uh.
To what extent do these make sense? Could an owl
actually deliver a message? How smart is it? Now? How

(00:46):
capable of being trained is a now? And likewise, what's
the situation with the raven? Uh? This is what These
are the questions that this episode attempts to answer. We
hope you enjoy Welcome Stuff to Blow your Mind, a
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you

(01:10):
welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is
Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. You know Joe and
my household. We're slap dab in the middle of Harry
Potter manio. Yeah, you've been telling me all about it, dude. Yeah. Yeah.
We're reading our seven year old the books, we're making
our way through the movies, and my son applies just
an amazing level of focus and determination to all these
Harry Potter Lego kits. Oh now, you gotta tell me

(01:32):
about those, because I love Legos and I am hoping
someday in my life to be able to play with
Legos again. Oh well, yeah, the Lego kits are pretty great.
They're not a sponsor, but I'm just saying there there
are a lot of fun The Hogwarts especially is quite
quite a kit. Uh. But you know, he also has

(01:52):
a stuffed owl, which he has, of course named Hedwig
after Harry potter Is owl. And at the same time
when he goes to bed, my wife and I are
currently enjoying the final season of Game of Thrones, as
am I and my wife. Yeah, I see your current
Oh yeah, we're cooked. Yeah, there won't be any spoilers
in this episode, but but I'm glad that we're on
the same wavelength. And uh, you know, and one day

(02:15):
I think I'm I'm looking forward to actually finishing reading
the books as well once they are all written. Oh yeah,
so are you actually caught up to where the books
are in the Song of Ice and Fire series? Am?
I'm caught up and eagerly awaiting the subsequent volume. Me too,
I've read them all and now it's been so long
I'm gonna have to go back and read them again
before the next one. Kind of I'm gonna have to
hit the Wikipedia entries. So in the Wizarding World of

(02:39):
the J. K. Rowland created the Magical Community, they use
owls to send messages back and forth, and its sides beautiful,
and it's a subtly magical part of the book, right,
playing on their traditional ideas of witches and wizards having familiars,
as well as the very properties of owls that make
them seem mystical right there, silence, they're nocturnal habits, their

(03:01):
wise appearance. Uh. But in reality, as we'll discuss, no
one actually uses an owl to send messages in the
real world. But the more general idea of using birds
to send messages is not so magical and not so
far fetched. I guess that's what we're gonna be talking
about today. Yeah, and likewise George R. Martin's Song of
Ice and Fire books, uh, and the HBO TV v

(03:24):
TV adaptation Game of Thrones. Now, folks, if we call
the books Game of Thrones today, don't get on our case. Right,
It's just it's the same thing. It's just what we've
been programmed to do at this point. But in both properties,
ravens are the bird of choice for members of the
Citadel to relay messages to and from various castles, cities,
and important locations. Yeah, they're the email of wester Ros. Yeah,

(03:47):
and uh, you know it's it's described in the books
that these clever messengers usually only function like real world
messager pigeons. Right. They that that the summer smarter and
capable of traveling to multiple locations. But for the most part,
you're sending a message from one place to another, right, Yeah,
that's right actually to without any spoilers to extremely comic
effects sometimes in the TV show, especially where like it

(04:09):
seems like somebody will write a message, put it on
a raven, send it off and they get results within
like a day when it was supposed to travel a
thousand miles. I'm not quite sure exactly how that happens. Yeah,
things have to move a lot a lot faster in
the TV series, right. I think this has led to
a lot of memes where like ravens have jet packs
on this well, and then they also have I believe

(04:29):
there's an additional separate species, a white raven, that that
used by the Citadel for particularly important messages. I don't
recall that, but there's a lot of detail in the
books that didn't even stick. I think I've had a
lot of a lot of time with Game of Thrones
to to forget many different details myself. But you know,
I think all this works nicely in the books in

(04:49):
the TV series because it puts an alternative of universe
kind of spin on everything, right, Like in your world
it's a pigeon, but in in uh in wester Roast
it is it is a raven. And then uh, you know,
it's kind of like some of the other spins that
they do, like like having this predominantly polytheistic version of

(05:10):
medieval Western culture. Uh So this alternate of you know,
vision of how bloodlines and genetics work. Though I do
think they're interesting. Not to turn this into it just
a game of Thrones episode. There's some interesting parallels between
the religions in the Game of Thrones world and uh,
and the religions of Western Europe. Like, so you originally
have these pagan, polytheistic religions. But I know, George R.

(05:32):
Martin has commented that the Faith of the Seven in
the books and the TV show is really an analogy
for the Catholic Church even because it has you know,
even it is considers itself a monotheistic religion, It has
a trinity, it has many saints and other figures. And
and he just said, well, I just went ahead and
made them all gods. Yeah, he he had. He did

(05:53):
a great job of taking things that were familiar and
tweaking them just a little bit to where they still
felt familiar. Like you did have to, you know, take
a running start at understanding the religious world of Game
of Thrones, but it was a little bit different, just
just just a little bit skewed in a way that
made it to uh, you know, resonate a little more. Yeah,
and uh. And likewise, the Ravens fit perfectly in this,

(06:16):
you know, this grim dark setting because the raven, of course,
is a bird that's associated with with darkness. And carnage,
and so it makes sense that the characters would be
using this bird to send their messages, as opposed to
the peaceful dove or pigeons pecking bits of flesh from
dead bodies on the battlefield. That's how the raven is
often imagined. But the way the ravens are used in

(06:38):
the book, as we've already alluded to, is actually very
analogous to real life uses of messenger pigeons. That's right,
messenger pigeons, carrier pigeons. Uh. This is an actual method
that that we use and have used for thousands of
years to deliver messages across long distances, um and and

(06:59):
it's it's not really it's not like a magically trained pet.
It's more of an animal that will dependently dependently return
home after you transport it somewhere else and then let
it free, which is a much less impressive trick, though
still impressive. Yes, I mean, it would be pretty amazing
if you could just like send one to another city
on command and then it would come back, right. It's

(07:20):
like imagine doing it with say a guerrilla from the
local zoo, where like I want to send a message
to the zoo where this guerrilla lives. Okay, well, I'm
gonna take one of its guerrillas with me when I
visit another city. You know, that will give the guerrilla
the message let the guerrilla loose, and the guerrilla will
of course return home, thus delivering the message. So I
guess that's where you get the idea. You may have

(07:40):
heard the phrase of homing pigeon. Yes, it is returning home.
So here we are. We're talking about pigeons, we're talking
about owls, and we're talking about ravens. We figured we
we know that homing pigeons. This has been a subject
that that numerous podcasts have covered. I know, Josh and
Chuck covered homing pigeon a while back on their show.

(08:01):
Oh that doesn't surprise me. Yeah, and uh, and so
we we wanted to to to discuss them, but we
figured this might spice it up a bit, to also
discuss them in relation to the owls and the ravens
of the world of Harry Potter and the world of
wester Ros. And in doing so, we'll be able to
highlight why the pigeon has worked so well for these

(08:21):
purposes and why we use the pigeon, and likewise why
we don't actually use ravens and owls. What is it
about ravens and owls that that would make them ideal
for this sort of work? And then also what you
know prevents us from using them for this sort of
work to begin with? Well, I say, let's go pigeon first. Yeah,
let's go, so let's hit reality and then we'll dip

(08:42):
our toes into the fantasy a bit. So, first of all,
let's let's consider some of the you know, the the
epic facts UH from the history of homing pigeons that
I think UH should ground their use in a real
world that feels as epic as anything from wester Ros uh. So, So,
first of all, it seems that pigeons were originally domesticated
for food UH in the Middle East and in Europe,

(09:05):
much in the same way that the jungle foul that
we now call it chicken was originally domesticated in India
and East Asia. So they were domesticated for their meat,
for their eggs, which a pigeon has tiny eggs, but
you can't eat them. The pigeon, UH is maybe not
as robust as a modern uh, you know, hormonally enhanced chicken,

(09:27):
but it's still is edible. I mean again, if you've
read the song Advice and firebooks, one of the common
menu items at feasts and stuff is roast squab or
stuffed squab. Of course squab would be like a young pigeon. Yeah,
and you can still find squab on on menus in
various places. Now, when we're talking about homing pigeons, the
homing pigeon is technically Columba Olivia domestica. That's the domestic

(09:51):
version of the rock pigeon, which is just Columbo Olivia. Now,
one interesting fact about the common pigeon, the rock pigeon,
also known as the a dove, in their natural habitats,
their cliff dwellers, they tend to live and nest on
cliff faces and rock ledges, which probably at least partially
explains why they thrive so well in modern urban landscapes

(10:13):
full of buildings that function as artificial cliff faces. And
I think we talked about this some with with our
guest Jason Ward, who came on the show. Wants to
talk about urban evolution, especially of birds. Absolutely a highly
successful species, but back before their success was so guaranteed, Yeah,
they were this this wonderful edible bird that you could

(10:35):
stuff in cages pretty easily. And as you might imagine,
people were you know, kept their birds, and they doing
so prohibited from flying away. And as they traveled around
with these birds, and then I'm assuming they probably discovered
the curious, independable way that these birds could then return
to their home nest across increasingly long distances. And as such,

(10:57):
we have been using bird, these pigeons for thousands of
years to deliver messages. Uh, it is you know, it
is a is a pretty ancient practice, but it appears
to emerge out of this original domestication for food. First
to eat them and then you put them to work, right,
which which you know that it sounds rather this is

(11:17):
ultimately we're talking about very mundane use of the bird. Right,
We're going to use it for eating, and we're gonna
use it for delivering messages. But it's also worth noting
that pigeons have sacred significance in many cultures, though we
often refer to them in doves in that in these instances,
at least in the English language, right, the pigeon and dove,
this is the same thing. Yeah, I mean, we're talking
about the about birds from the family Columbidae, which is

(11:40):
doves and pigeons. Um. But you know, we can think
to the roles of say, doves and Christian symbolism. Uh.
And even as it's kind of a secular symbol of peace, right,
releasing doves um. Uh, you know, to is you know,
a symbolic act. Right. Likewise, we can go all the
way back to ancient Sumerian Mesopotamia where we see the

(12:02):
use of the dove as an associated animal of the
goddess in Anna. Ah. We love Ananna on this show.
But that's interesting because Anana has multiple valences. Anana can be,
of course, like a fierce goddess of war who screams
death through the rebel lands, or she can be, you know,
like a peaceful goddess of fertility. She has kind of
both meanings in different contexts. And I wonder which which

(12:26):
way the dove comes in there? Is it like the
way we associate doves with peace or is it the
way that doves can be used to send messages and
gather intelligence during war? Yeah? I mean as it just
as a means of conveying information. It can serve both ends, right,
But it doesn't really seem like this. You know, this
prior relationship of domestication with the pitch and is ultimately
what sets it up for use. Is the carrier bird

(12:49):
um or earlier people domesticated them, live with them and
picked up on their abilities, and really the only other
bird they think, Think to the other birds that have
a legacy of domestication, and uh and and in each
one we can try to imagine to what extent they
could have actually been used to carry messages. I mean,
you have the chicken, it's not gonna work. The duck,

(13:10):
the goose, that's the carrier chicken. Yeah, the messenger chicken.
That would be like a good cartoon. Well, okay, so
the chickens out the duck and the goose. I couldn't
find any real discussions of this, but I mean, they
are migratory birds, so it's it's it sounds possible. But

(13:31):
are they Are they ever domesticated? I don't know. I
guess they are sometimes. Well, yeah, I've seen them listed
as as birds that we have domesticated in some cases,
likewise the goose, the guinea fowl, the turkey, canaries, and finches.
But but of these, the domestication of the chicken, the duck,
the goose, and the turkey. Those go back thousands of years,

(13:51):
but canaries only go back to the fifteenth century, and
the finch to the eighteenth century. But you know, to
put ourselves back in in sent shoes on this right
as as one presumably you know, picks up on the
ability of the of the pigeon to carry messages. Just
think of the advantage, uh, in a world where message

(14:13):
delivery is only as fast as a human or a
horse and rider can can travel across either open terrain
or more likely a series of winding paths or roads. Yeah.
I mean, we take for granted now that we have
wired or wireless communication that can send information electronically or whatever.
I mean. Back then, of message had to be physically

(14:35):
taken one way or another. Either you tell it to
a person and they go deliver it in person, or
it had to be carried by hand. Yeah, you had
to have a runner carrying it or carrying it to
the next runner. Um. Oh and then yeah, yeah, if
you're going from point A to point B, you're probably
not able to go in a straight line. But the
bird can. The bird can fly, you know, literally as
the as the crow flies. Yeah, the bird also has

(14:57):
the advantage that this is seen sometimes in the Song
of Fire series, where say, if your castle is under
siege and no person, no human messenger would likely get
by without being captured, a bird probably could get by. Yeah,
the bird can leave a besieged city and go relay
a message. Um, you know, they might try and and
shoot it out of the sky with a with an arrow.

(15:19):
But that's why you have multiple pigeons, I imagine, or
multiple owls or ravens in your fantasy set of treatments.
Birds can also carry messages quickly over water, that's right.
Humans can't or I guess maybe could by boat. But yeah,
it's it's easy to just to sort of focus on
the sort of the primitive nature of tying a message
to an animal with and and and just forget the

(15:42):
tremendous freedom of movement that a bird like a pigeon has, uh.
And then in terms of speed with a pigeon, we're
talking speeds of of like fifty to sixty miles per
hour and up to record speeds. And I think this
is you know, when you're really pushing, when you're racing them,
you can get into the low nineties. Horses on the
other hand, Uh, you're only going to reach at the

(16:05):
mid fifties. And that's going at full gallup. And that's
like a world record for horse. Yeah, that's like a
common that's like really going. And uh and again, the
chances of you being able to send a message by
horse at top speed, at record speed in a straight line,
like on this magical highway that you've built between Fortress
A and Fortress B, it's just not It doesn't stack

(16:27):
up against the power, the the the message delivering power
of the pigeon. So to give everybody you know, some
more ideas about it, just that the history the legacy
of of carrier pigeon use. I was looking at the
Hallowed History of the Carrier Pigeon by Mary Bloom from
the New York Times two thousand four, and so some
of the high points of the author mentioned here, and

(16:49):
I believe this was uncovering a museum exhibit about the
carrier pigeon. But we have, like an addition to mythical
uh stories of in Anna and her association with the
with the pigeon or dove, you also have biblical accounts
such as uh Noah releasing doves or pigeons. Yeah, it
was to test whether the floodwaters of the Great Flood

(17:10):
had abated. I think it's in Genesis chapter eight where
uh Noah releases multiple doves or either the same dub
multiple times or multiple doves to go out and see
if it can land somewhere. At first, it goes out
and it can't find anywhere to land, and it comes
back to him. The second time it goes out and
it brings back a branch, and that means the waters
must have receded from somewhere. In the third time it

(17:32):
goes out, it just stays gone and never returns. So
if you love a dove, set it free. So the
ancient Romans used pigeons for chariot races to tell owners
how their entries had placed. Genghis Khan established pigeon relay
points across Asia and much of eastern Europe. Charlemagne made
pigeon raising the exclusive privilege of nobility. Pigeons were used

(17:56):
for military communication well into World War One, when the
Germans rolled out carrier carrier pigeons with cameras that were
soon replaced by reconnaissance planes by the end of the
Under the war France had mobilized thirty thousand pigeons, and
they had declared that anyone impeding their flight could be
sentenced to death. There's actually a famous story from World
War One, I believe about a group of Allied soldiers

(18:19):
who had come under friendly fire from artillery and only
managed to communicate to their allies that you know, like
stopped shelling us by accident by the use of a
carrier pigeons, I'll saved many lives. Pigeons have been used
to transport blood samples from remote regions regions of Britain
and France. In eastern India, they were used for communication

(18:39):
between remote police out outposts, and as of at least
last year, at least one of these uh lines was
still in use. The US has used pigeons to spot shipwrecks.
Drug drug traffickers have used pigeons seemingly around the world.
I was looking up various stories about this, and you know,
I was finding hits for um, North, South and Central

(19:01):
America as well as in the Middle East. You know,
obviously you're not going to send like an entire brick
of hashish up into the at a pigeon, but if
you want to send a small amount of something like
across the border or police area. Yeah, like you take
a pigeon from its home, attached the drugs to it,
and then let it fly home. And that's exactly what
some people have done. Uh. This is a fun account

(19:24):
that my wife shared with me. She was remembering a
West Virginia whitewater rafting place from sort of like the
predigital photo age, and they used pigeons. So what they
did is, um, you know, you're going on this whitewater
rafting ride, right and uh uh nowadays we just take
this for granted. Right, You ride some sort of a

(19:44):
ride like a roller coaster, and at the end they
sell you a picture of yourself enjoying the ride, and
of course now we do it was just digital photography,
but this particular White Water rapid place, the way they
did it is they had a photographer with a long
lens up on a hillside where they could get a
good shot of the river. Uh. They would snap your
picture as you were going down the river, and then

(20:05):
they would take the film. They would attach you to
the homing pigeon, send the pigeon like to the end
of the river where the pickup is. They would develop
the film and then they would sell you the picture,
because you know this is a course of that's when
you want to sell the picture, right, you're just getting
off the rafting rides, are excited like, oh that was awesome.
I didn't die, it was great, and then there's the

(20:25):
picture ready to go like magic, and you pay for it. Now,
that probably wasn't even possible until like sellularly to acetate film. Right,
try to attach it to garat type plate to your pigeons.
Work to understand that joke. Make sure you listen to
our series of episodes on our other podcast, Invention, about
the invention of photography. Those have been a lot of fun.

(20:45):
If you're not listening to Invention yet, what are you doing?
Go listen? Yeah, and you can check out the website
at invention pod dot com. Okay, I got one for you.
You ever wonder about the origin of the term pigeonhole. Oh,
I'd never thought about it, but now I am. Yeah,
pigeonhole as a verb, right, like I don't want to
be pigeonholed as just another whatever. I don't know exactly

(21:06):
how I guess it means, like, uh, it's sort of
like the the idea of being type cast, right, I
don't want to be pinned down in this kind of
narrowly defined space. Well, apparently this expression has a very
literal origin in the domestic pigeon raising trade. It comes
from when pigeons used to be given like individual holes
or recesses to nest in. And then after that it

(21:29):
later came to have another definition of quote one of
a series of small open compartments, as in a desk,
cabinet or the like, used for filing or sorting papers. Uh.
And so that's like a standard definition which I think
morphed further into the more abstract metaphor of having your
person pigeonholed into a narrow slot. Interesting. Yeah, I'd never

(21:50):
thought about it before, but that makes perfect sense. And
that metaphorical definition came about, I think in the eighteen
sixties and the mid late nineteenth century. Alright, so why
how do pigeons carry out these impressive feats of speedy delivery? Yeah?
Why them? Why not some other bird? Why not owl?
Why not owls? Why not ravens? Why not rats? Why
not the you know, than the neighborhood house cat. And

(22:12):
I think you might be able to answer this question
two different ways that we could that we can get
into more as the episode goes on, But one explanation
might be rooted in the sort of innate tendencies or
abilities of each of these animals, and another answer might
be more rooted in just accidents of history. Yeah, yeah,
I think so. Like we already touched on the fact

(22:33):
that the pigeon was domesticated seemingly originally for food, and
so that kind of like provided the groundwork for further
domestic uses of the animal. Yes, but it is certainly
true that pigeons have some very impressive qualities when it
comes to navigation and long distance travel. Right, their navigational

(22:53):
abilities are essentially twofold. So first of all, they have
a compass system and this tells them which direction they're
headed inn and the sun, the position of the Sun
and the Earth's magnetic field make this possible. But then
they also have a map system, which tells them where
they are in relation to where they want to go now.
And it's this ability that is a lot more controversial

(23:15):
that we have sort of competing hypotheses, uh, competing theories
about how they're actually working. So it's not totally settled
exactly all of the methods that pigeons have to navigate
the way they do and find their way back home. Right,
there's still there's still research ongoing as to what's going
on and and complicating all of this is the release
site bias. This is when birds go off in the

(23:38):
wrong direction at release, leading investigators to ask, well, what's
happening in these cases to disrupt their return? What can
we learn about the functionality by looking at the disruption events?
And so the basic theories for how the mapping system
works are as follows. First, there's the smell theory UH
so odors carried on the wind allow the pigeons to

(24:01):
map their way home, and studies have shown that the
atmosphere does contain the necessary olfactory information UH and pigeons
have been observed to get disoriented when their sense of
smell is impaired or when they don't have access to
natural winds at their home nest. And then there's the
Earth's magnetic field lines so like there is a theory

(24:21):
that there's some kind of inherent magneto reception in the
birds right as a Cordula Vi Mora and Michael M.
Walker pointed out in a two thousand nine, studying the
proceedings of the Royal Society b Biological Sciences. Quote, pigeons
may derive spatial information from the magnetic field at the
release site that could be used to estimate their current
position relative to their loft. Okay, so this sounds like

(24:45):
it might especially help with like initial orientation towards their
target destination. Absolutely and again working with that compass system.
So these two things working together. Now, there is also
a third theory that I ran across, and this one's
not as big as the other two, but to just
get every everyone, you know, an idea of some of
the alternative ideas that are being explored here. Geophysicist John

(25:08):
Hagstrom has this theory that they follow ultra low frequency
sounds back towards their lofts and that that this is
why certain areas can confuse them and throw them off.
He argues that topographic disruptions and ultrasound account for why
some pigeons are thrown off track in known disruption disruption zones,
such as in parts of upstate New York. That was

(25:29):
the region that the UH that Hagstrom was actually looking
at and conducting. You know, some experiments in UH and
homing pigeons, they can hear sounds as low as point
zero five her hurts, so so they do have you know,
they do have impressive hearing that that space. Yeah. However,
it's also been pointed out particularly I was looking at

(25:50):
a National Geographic article New Theory on how homing pigeons
find home by Jane J. Lee Uh pointed out that
the given pigeon my use uh, you know, either the
smell or the magnetic field uh mapping system. It might
just depend on where their rays uh, you know, leaning
on magnetic fields in some cases, smell on the others

(26:12):
other areas, or perhaps leaning on ultrasound if that is
in fact one of the methods at their disposal. Well,
and that would sort of make sense given what we
know about our senses that we use for navigation. I mean,
it would depend on where you were that you were
trying to find your way to. Right, Like, some places,
it might be good to listen for traffic or something

(26:32):
if you don't know if you're like trying to get
back to a trafficked area and an otherwise wilderness like area,
or it might make more sense to just look with
your eyes and see what kind of place you're going to. Yeah,
I mean in all of these cases, I keep trying
to put myself in the shoes of the pigeon and
imagine somebody like sticking me in a cage, transporting me, say, um,

(26:53):
you know two counties over, releasing me in the wild
and giving me a message to return to my house
with to my house us uh, and I would probably
just die in the woods in those casas. So it's uh,
you know, it's we look at something like the pigeon,
an animal that is not um held in high esteem
by most people. You know. We we think of pigeons,

(27:14):
we think of essentially winged rats in the city, and
we we we may not stop to realize, you know,
what kind of amazing navigational abilities they have, but they do. Uh.
They the pigeons can do, can do these feats that
that humans would be completely lost to try and replicate.
Do you think the pigeons internal uh navigational computer is

(27:38):
as annoying as the navigation app on most phones or
like you know, uh GPS devices. Um, I would think not,
because it's a part of them, right. I mean that
the annoying thing about GPS technology is that it is
external and uh, it's it's something we have to divert
attention to or and or you know, we we draw

(28:00):
our phone out of that little cradle, or horsing around
with it while going down the interstate. I don't know
what brand it was, but there was one I used
to interact with fairly. It wasn't mine, it was somebody else's.
But uh, but it was incredibly passive aggressive, so like
anytime you missed a turn, you would almost hear it,
like get kind of huffy. It would go recalculating. Yeah, yeah,

(28:23):
they're all sorts of weird quirks like that. They've gotten
a lot better, but yeah, it's still they don't Still
they still don't feel like a natural instinct by any stretch. Now,
obviously we could spend more time here talking about the
navigational abilities of pigeons and and certainly the way that
pigeons and other animals, uh, you know, seemingly interact with
the magnetic field, but we want to take a quick

(28:46):
break here. When we come back, we're gonna move on
to the next animal. In this episode, we're going to
discuss the owls of Harry Potter, but more specifically the
owls of the real world. Thank alright, we're back, all right, Robert,
give it to me straight. What are the what are
the chances the fighting chances of a military force that

(29:08):
wants to deliver messages between its ranks by the use
of war owls. Well, it depends if we're talking about
muggles or we're talking about members of the wizard In Community.
I'm talking about real real world here. Well, just to
take the pigeons of World War One replace them with owls.
What happens, um, Well, then the messages don't get delivered

(29:28):
for starters, because I think ultimately an important part of
this is the of course, the legacy of using the pigeons.
But the question that the bigger question is what what
if there had been no pigeons? What if for some
reason early on people had gone the direction of the
wizard In community in the Harry Potter novels and had said,
let's use owls. Let's let's not focus on any other animals.

(29:51):
Let's focus on this species or the species of owl.
Can we use this animal to deliver our messages? Right?
Whether rain or snow or dead of night, will this
owl deliver your message? Right? And I have to say
when we we set out to do this episode. My
initial suspected answer was going to be, no, they can't.
And I suspected that the reason was going to be

(30:11):
that owls are dumb, that owls are like really dumb
because and this is this is like, this is pre research,
but I've found that multiple bird shows that I go to,
you know, bird shows or like wildlife rescue places, places
where they have say an owl that can't be rereleased
into the wild because it has a damaged wing, and

(30:31):
so it's used for educational purposes. Multiple times. Uh, the
you know, the individual caring for the creatures has pointed
out that, well, this owl is really dumb. It's just
not a smart creature. Um. And so you know, we
have their their limits on what we can expect from
from it. That's strange. I tend to find that people
who work directly with animals are tending they tend to

(30:52):
air on the side of overstating the animals intelligence. Well,
and I don't mean to speak for every like wildlife
rescu you um individual out there or bird show worker,
et cetera. But you know, it stood out to me,
and it probably stood out to me because there is
this idea of the wise owl. You know, um, you
know it's it's firmly established not only in pop culture,

(31:15):
but in our mythic traditions. The owl was the bird
of Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom. They were thought
to see the future, and of course they're nocturnal nature
in their silent flight made them creatures of occult fascination.
The Romans saw them as portents of doom. Uh. They
fulfill a number of roles among the native peoples of
North and South America, ranging from dire omens to uh,

(31:39):
you know, actual spirits of the dead. And in some
some traditions the owl is an evil creature uh. And
in other times that you know, it's associated with the goddess,
as in Athena's case, or in Welsh mythology, the goddess
Blotta wed is associated with the owl. It is not
hard at all to imagine how owls could come to
occupy a place of like terrifying spiritual power, because have

(32:03):
you ever been out in the woods at night and
heard an owl? It's I mean, it's a cliche now
because it's in the movies and all that, but in
person it is freaky. Yes, yeah, and then they have
enormous eyes which you can't help but lock eyes with
the owl, and it's it's intimidating to to look at them.
They're just in there, just fascinating, impressive specimens. Um. And

(32:26):
in terms of pop culture, who can forget the great
owl from the Secretive Nim It's so good. Yeah, but
kind of Wilford Brimley faced owl. It had some heavy
brows and mustache from what I recall, but it also
glowing eyes. Yeah. Um. And you know, there are a
lot of different types of owls. There's something like two
hundred species roughly. They're amazing creatures. And there's somewhere in

(32:47):
the neighborhood of two hundred different species of owl. Um.
By the way, possibly the largest owl ever to walk
the earth the Cuban giant owl, which stood about three
foot seven or one point one meters tall and was
either flightless or nearly flight A giant flightless owl, So
what was it like a like a raptor that like

(33:09):
run around along the ground and snatch up its prey
I be least, so yeah, and you know, we could
possibly have achieved you know, very limited flight, much in
the same way a chicken may fly, but but owls
are are specialized killers. They're they're mostly solitary creatures. There's
not a lot of social complexity to their brainload. Um,

(33:29):
you know, it's it's it's more about the spotting uh
and and perceiving prey and then stealthily swooping down on
them and uh and um and snatching them up. But
but I was, I was looking into this more and
I found a book, uh titled The Science of Harry
Potter from two thousand two by Roger high Field. And uh,

(33:50):
it's it's a pretty cool book obviously, Um, you know
it's it's been out for a few years. But um,
so this would have only been like the earliest Harry
Potter books, right, Not that the use of owls really,
you know, change as much in the series. It's pretty stationary.
Owls are just how you send messages. But the major
reason he says that owls wouldn't be ideal for this

(34:10):
sort of work is that most of them are rather setentary,
so they don't migrate, uh and migrate Harry skills, you know,
would be ideal for the sort of messaging work. Um,
it's it's kind of like if you've heard I know
you and I have heard this uh presented and kind
of like a self defense uh scenario by saying that
if if someone is looking to say rob you on

(34:32):
the street, uh, they have a remember the term uses.
They have a small office, they have a small work area,
and you want to get out of that work area
because there's like just a you know, it's like a
pickpocket or robbers working like within like one street worth
of area. And that's the similar case with a lot
of predatory organisms. Uh. They ultimately have a small zone

(34:54):
in which they operate. They operate very well in that zone,
but you out of that zone and you might be
in the clear. Now, that might be a good point
about the owls not being migratory and being fairly sedentary.
But then again, I believe pigeons are non migratory or
at least most in most cases non migratory, and yet
they have this powerful homing and messaging ability. And then

(35:15):
also in high field does acknowledge that, well, you do
have some owls that are migratory, so you have I
think two out of the five native UK owl species
are migratory and nature and in theory could handle the
ranges involved in most Potter World letters. Um. And they
have great eyesight which would be useful as well. So

(35:36):
we think of like the ways that these uh you
know that that that have given messenger species would find
the places that needs to go. Well, the owl has
excellent eyesight, could be it would be very useful. Now
as for their brain power, um he he pointed out
that there had not been a lot of systematic study
of owl brain power. But this would have been two

(35:56):
thousand two, right, but he said, but he also acknowledged that,
you know, there have been some some work in you know,
looking at the memory of barn owls, specifically by Eric
Knudsen at Stanford University, and that research seemed to show
that they did have solid working memories. Um. While on
the other hand, some owl species were considered to be
quote rather dim due to their the predatory niche that

(36:20):
they depended on. Now, but of course, in all of this, anytime,
we're talking about animal intelligence, where it's always a bit unfair, right,
because ultimately a given species is as intelligent as it
needs to be for what it does, right. And I mean,
even given that caveat, I think we have learned a
lot more about bird intelligence just in the past couple

(36:42):
of decades than we knew before. Like, uh, it is
becoming increasingly clear how smart corvids are, and we'll talk
about that when we get to ravens in the next section.
But we didn't always know everything we know now about
bird intelligence. I think the picture is becoming clearer that
the birds are much smarter than we have long thought,

(37:02):
though not every bird is equally more intelligent than we
have long thought, right, I mean it ultimately is a
lot is going to depend on what that that particular bird,
or in this case, what that owl does. UM. For instance,
I was looking around at some UM, some some other
some actual studies on this UM two thousand thirteen study
from the International Journal of Comparative Psychology found that the

(37:22):
great gray owl or Stricts nebulosa, which that's one of
my favorites. There, that's that's I mean, that's that sounds
like a spell from Harry Potter. Um. These particular owls
didn't do so hot and cognitive ability tests, they said
to quote, our results suggest that the owl's failed to
comprehend the physics underlying the object relationships involved in the
task presented. But then again has pointed out in any

(37:46):
two thousand four study published in Nature from Levy Duncan
and Levin's burrowing owls or Atheny Cunicularia, which is another
nice one. Uh. They use dung as a tool, or
at least they use dung as bait to a track
that dung beetles, which are a favorite prey. But you
could would that be a like novel or cognitively discovered

(38:07):
behavior or is that more probably like an instinct? I
don't know, but they they they were framing it in
terms of, you know, this is a potential tool use.
That is, you know, and granted any time your tool
is dung, these deasbit I mean, it's not quite the
same as using a uh you know, a crafted twig
uh to to pull grubs out of a out of

(38:28):
a log or something. Just because it's dune doesn't mean
it's not a tool. Yeah, but I mean it still
works for him. So, I mean, ultimately, high Field had
argued that, well, maybe maybe the NOWL could be used
for such purposes, and I think, uh, you know, based
on some of the other research we're looking at, it
does seem like the NOWL could pull off some of

(38:49):
the feats involved. Well, I think one of the big
questions that you would need to ask about whether a
bird could be trained as some kind of messenger would
be how well do they respond to training right and
to domestic domestication. I mean, sadly, the popularity of the
Harry Potter books and movies reportedly caused an increase in

(39:09):
the trafficking of pet owls, which J. K. Rowling has
is vocally condemned. By the way, do not go out
and try and buy a pet owl just because you
like Harry Potter. Um. But one of the important cases
here is that that outside of the magical world or
the realm of professional wildlife rescue efforts, owls should not
be kept in cages and they're you know, they're not

(39:31):
going to deliver your mail for you. But but more
to the point that, you know, handling pigeons is one thing.
Stuffing them in and out of cages by hand, it's
one thing. But an owl has some pretty vicious talents
that can certainly send you to the hospital. So owls
are just generally not good candidates for domestication right outside
of a magical um you know, fantasy series. Uh, it

(39:55):
doesn't say like the talents alone would give me. Pause. Um,
if you you know, look up if you're if you're
curious about this, do a Google image search on like
owl related injuries. You'll find some nice wipes and slices
here and there, and it'll be enough to make you think, well, yeah,
maybe we should leave the owls alone as much as possible.

(40:16):
All right, let's take a break. When we come back,
we will talk about ravens as messengers. Thank alright, we're back.
We've talked about real world homing pigeons. We've talked about
the owls of Harry Potter, and to what extent the
owls of the real world could or could not match

(40:36):
up to their to to the sort of message delivering
service that we see in the Harry Potter novels. They
don't seem like great candidates. I think, yeah, it seems
like you're better sticking off sticking with the pigeon, unless
you have the magic to make it possible. Uh So,
let's turn now to Game of Thrones, to wester Roast
and the use of ravens. Why are we not using
ravens And if we really wanted to, could we use

(40:58):
ravens to deliver our messages? Uh? This one I think
the prospects are different, but maybe a little bit better
than owl. So you mentioned in mythology earlier that, uh,
you talked about the doves of the Noah story in
the Book of Genesis. You know, Noah releases doves and
eventually they let him know that all the waters are
gone from the earth. But don't forget, there's another part

(41:19):
of the story. This very strange doesn't necessarily really seem
to add up to anything, but Noah actually sends out
a raven. First. It's kind of hard to tell what
the raven is supposed to be doing in the story
when it starts off by saying, then it came about
the end of forty days, so it's been you know,
forty days and forty nights of raining. At the end
of forty days that Noah opened the window of the

(41:40):
arc which he had made, and he sent out a
raven and it flew here and there until the water
was dried up from the earth. And then after that
it just goes straight into the story with the doves. Uh.
So that's confusing. I'm not quite sure what's happening there.
I do know that there is some uh, there's some
theories about the version of the story of the Great
Flood that have that say that it's actually at least

(42:02):
two different original stories that have essentially been edited together
in the version that we have of the Book of Genesis.
So it could this could reflect different versions of the
same story just sort of being stitched together. But I
don't know that. So, like one of them is the
George R. Martin, Yes, exactly. It was never finished, so
they had to dislike slap it together with this other

(42:23):
version of the story. Yeah, so some other author is like,
I don't like the raven I'm gonna do doves, okay,
But they also didn't want to throw anything away, so
the ravens still there. But yeah, anyway, that's one of
those interesting little textual mysteries. Uh so, but yeah, the
question would ravens be good messenger birds as in Game
of Thrones. Now, in the world of George R. Martin's

(42:44):
Song of Ice and Fire and the TV show Game
of Thrones, the people of Westeros they use ravens mainly
to send long distance messages. Like we're talking about much
very very comparable to the way people have used messenger pigeons.
There's a scene where Master Aim and the the master,
like the sort of uh learned person at the up
at the wall tells John snow quote, doves and pigeons

(43:08):
can also be trained to carry messages, though the raven
is a stronger, flyer, larger, bolder, far more clever, better
able to defend itself against hawks. So I think we
should keep that in mind, and we'll come back to
it later to see whether Master Raymond's mostly or not
on the money there. The first thing we should look at,

(43:28):
of course, is whether in fact ravens are far more clever.
And I think the answer to this is a resounding yes. Yeah.
And this was I guess before we went into the research,
my suspicion was they might be too clever like that
that and this may be you know, unfounded bias, but
it was like, maybe maybe the owl is too dumb,
maybe though the raven is too smart in the pigeon

(43:51):
is just this perfect uh uh you know a mix
of skill and uh in navigational ability. But also it's
not gonna, you know, get bored and curious on the way.
I can totally see why you would think that, but
I don't think that's what I would think. After the
research for this episode, I think that that sort of
underestimates owls a bit, maybe overestimates pigeons and ravens and

(44:14):
and the unruling nous of intelligence, because it is the
case that for many very intelligent animals it doesn't necessarily
manifest as like a surliness and rebellious nous. I mean,
often very intelligent animals can respond well to training and conditioning,
though often they respond in ways that are unpredictable to you,
which is that's an interesting thing we'll get to in

(44:36):
a minute about ravens. So ravens are corvids. They're a
family of birds, containing many other kinds such as crows, jays,
and magpies. Both corvids in general and ravens in particular, have,
especially in recent years, but for a long time, been
known to be extremely intelligent, and especially in recent years,
we've gotten these studies that show these startling displays of

(44:59):
intelligence and la conditions. And there are tons of examples
of this. If you want a whole episode focused on
this subject, go back to the one we did a
couple of years ago called the Unsettling Depths of Bird Intelligence.
Oh yeah, that was a good one, and that we
also talked a little mythology in that one. I remember
Hoogan and Moon and oh yeah, the Norse mythology that
represents aspects of what Odin's memory, his thoughts and his memory.

(45:23):
Uh yeah, And we also talked about it with Jason
Ward when he came on the show to talk about
the Birds of the City. But yeah, there's just so
many interesting stories about what corvid's and ravens in particular
can do. Just one recent example I was reading about
about the intelligence of ravens in particular came from a
couple of researchers at Sweden's Lunda University named Can Kabadii

(45:46):
and Matthias os Fath, who did a study where they
showed really intelligent, interesting forethought, or at least what seems
like evidence of it in ravens. So it's already been
demonstrated many times that corvids, like crows and ravens can
use tools, and that's one of the hallmarks of complex intelligence,
once thought to belong to primates alone. You know, if

(46:08):
you go back and look at old textbooks, it's like
only humans and the great apes can use tools. But
nowadays corvids and certain occupy take issue with that. Oh yes, certainly.
And one of the interesting things about this to me
is that tool using suggests that if you go way
back in time, rewind the clock and just let evolution

(46:28):
run out in a different way. If other types of
animals with the seeds of tool using intelligence could have
independently developed their own technological civilization the way primates like
us did. Yeah, what sort of world would it be
if it was a world of corvid technology? Raven world?
But so, yeah, we know now that corvids like ravens

(46:51):
use tools. And this more recent study showed that once
ravens had learned that they could use a particular tool
to open a box and get a piece of dog kibble,
which they absolutely love, they would choose if they could
to grab that particular box opening tool and keep it
on hand when the food box was not even present,

(47:13):
so that they could use it to open the box
later whenever it was presented to them, maybe you know,
minutes or hours later. So that's already interesting. Like the
bird is is recognizing, Okay, I can use this tool
to get food. I'm going to hang onto the tool
even though I can't use it right now. Yeah, they're
thinking ahead. Also, the same researchers demonstrated evidence that ravens,

(47:34):
on average have a pretty strong ability to delay gratification
to get better rewards, like as demonstrated in humans with
the marshmallow test. Yeah, yeah, so of course the classic
marshmallow tests. Why am I getting a tickle that that
somehow people have questioned the setting of that test. Now,
they've certainly been a legacy of reproducing the test and

(47:58):
altering the Yeah, different versions of the test. Well maybe
I don't remember what that is off the top of
my head. Maybe we can revisit that in the future.
The basic ideas like, you know, if you cannot eat
this marshmallow for five minutes, you'll get three marshmallows or something.
Um and and they do a version of that kind
of thing with different animals to test their abilities. By

(48:19):
and large, animals are terrible at this, just hopeless. You know,
they live in the moment, They have impulses immediately if
a piece of food is in front of them, they're
gonna eat it. But in this uh, this current group.
What the study found is that when you give the
ravens a choice between okay, you can grab an okay
piece of food right now, or you can grab a

(48:39):
tool or a bartering token that the ravens have learned
can be used to access a better, more delicious piece
of food. Later. One of these experiments showed that ravens
will pick the delayed path to better food more than
seventy percent of the time to be exactive, with seventy
three percent of the time they'd get the tool or
the bartering token I knew would lead to the better

(49:01):
delicious piece of kibble. And in these experiments the intelligence
of the ravens in question was even sometimes an impediment
to controlling the experiment, because, for example, I was reading
a Motherboard article about their research where they talked about
how there was one raven that started building his own
tools to defeat the box uh and so instead of

(49:22):
using the tool they were supplying to the raven, it
was like, I can I can get around this, and
so it was like putting together sticks in an arrangement
there where it could trigger and open the box without
the tool they supplied it. And also that one raven
apparently started trying to teach the other ravens how to
exploit the box, and neurologically speaking, it's been shown for example,

(49:44):
in a paper in P and A. S by Alkawitz
at all that birds like corvids and some parrots have
an enormous number of neurons packed into the four brain areas.
Uh quote. Large parrots and corvids have the same or
greater four brain neur on counts as monkeys with much
larger brains. Avian brains thus have the potential to provide

(50:06):
much higher cognitive power per unit mass than do mammalian brains.
So you know, mammals primates like us, we've got bigger
brains than birds do. But it seems like birds are
really packing in the neuron connections in there to make
make more with less matter. But they're also really startling
examples of social intelligence in corvid's like ravens like there's

(50:29):
stories of how bird trainers who have close relationships with
pet ravens can train these ravens to follow and fly
ahead of them. There's even videos watching before we came
in here of a BBC Earth segment where they had
a raven trainer who had a relationship, a previous existing
relationship with this raven that he trained for a long time,
and this guy's riding along on the side of a

(50:51):
fast moving truck with the raven just like flying along,
chasing after him, trying to land on his arm. So
I mean that kind of activity, like the raven chasing
after him makes me think, Okay, I see its potential
possibility for like a delivery system involving ravens doesn't seem
entirely out of the question. You know, I'm just remembering

(51:12):
when we did this earlier episode on bird intelligence. One
of the things we did was I interviewed one of
the researchers who had worked on a paper that we
talked about in that episode on on bird intelligence. Uh,
the researcher owner Gunterqune. And you know, I was asking
him about the differences in cognitive ability between different bird species,

(51:34):
and basically the question of like, have we underestimated all
birds or is it like just basically corvids and parrots
that are smarter than we thought. And he was pretty
generous in his estimate of all birds though, of course
corvids and parrots. He said, you know, essentially there's no
major cognitive difference between what they can do and what

(51:54):
primates can do. Uh. So you know, he's putting them
like way up there on the cognitive ladder like that
are much smarter than we realized for a long time.
But even birds like pigeons and chickens, he put more
on the level of like mice and rats, which you know,
I think the average person would probably assume that mice
are a lot smarter than pigeons, that that's not necessarily true. Yeah,
and then the idea that a chicken is up there

(52:16):
as well, I mean, checkmate Verner Herzog, Yeah, that's right.
Who I believe what he was Herzog had said, that's
something about their being just this like the overwhelming immensity
of stupidity and guys looking back at you from a
chicken chicken. I think what he's seeing there is not stupidity.
He's seeing like profound ancient magic. That chicken is a dinosaur.

(52:41):
I mean birds are again dinosaurs. They're the Avian dinosaurs.
They're the dinosaurs that are left. And he is seeing
a lineage going back tens of millions of years all
the way to the JUNGI sorry, some deep cuts on
Herzogs here, but I can't go too deep. Uh. But anyway,
I think it is fair to say that ravens are

(53:02):
much more strikingly intelligent than pigeons, but also that pigeons
are probably more intelligent than people usually give them credit for. Um.
One interesting and funny Game of Thrones parallel I came across.
There's a scene in the in the Song of Ice
and Fire books where you know, the three eyed crow
in the books, he's called the three eyed crow in
the books and three ad Raven in the show. The

(53:23):
guy played by Max von Sdlo in the books, he
you know, he's talking to young brand Stark, which another
side note I just found out the other day that
brand in Welsh I believe means raven or means But
he's speaking to the character brand Stark, and he says,
it was the singers who taught the first men to

(53:44):
send messages by raven. But in those days the birds
would speak the words the trees remember, but men forget,
and so now they write the messages on parchment and
tie them around the feets of the birds who have
never shared their skin. So I think this is different
because he's talking about war, gang and magical stuff. It's
in the books, but he's saying it used to be

(54:04):
that you'd like tell the message to the raven, and
the raven would go carry the message, and when it
got there, it didn't let you didn't have to take
a tag of parchment off its leg. It would just
tell you the message. And this actually does have some
basis in reality, because ravens, much like parrots, can be
trained to mimic human sounds, like talking even better than
parrots in some cases. And if you don't believe me,

(54:26):
look it up. There are videos of this online talking ravens.
It's creepy. No, it's not creepy, it's gorgeous. Yeah, well,
that that's amazing because I would have just have assumed
assumed that you know, this is just a purely magical
wrinkle in the world building here. But yeah, the idea
that you could you can on some level train a

(54:47):
raven to mimic human language, that's that's incredible, I think,
especially if you bred them for it, like the best,
the best ones best at mimicking human language and talking.
You bred them for repeating phrases, and you train them
individually in their lives. I don't know. I think it's
not out of the question, but I don't know of
any cases in the real world where there have been

(55:08):
like breeding programs to try to bring out like the
best talking ravens or even I mean, I didn't even
know to what extent that's been done with with parrots
A I wonder. Uh. Anyway, a few other things of notes.
So I was reading about the University of Vienna biologist
Matthias Claudio Loretto speaking to the writer Ella Davies for

(55:31):
The Guardian in seen on the question of ravens as messengers.
So they're directly addressing this question from the Game of
Thrones show. And so Loretto is a researcher who works
with ravens, and he said the following. So he said,
they're good flyers, maybe not well suited to quickly crossing
long distances. Uh, some bird species are already biologically adapted

(55:53):
to rapid long distance migrations. Ravens are not one of them. Basically,
everywhere except in the Arctic, ravens are quote non migratory
and move rather opportunistically. That said, they can sometimes fly
across moderately long distances. And now I'm trying to think
back to my my maps of wester Ros and exactly

(56:14):
what sort of distances we're talking about between say, the
Wall and winter Fell. I think it's supposed to be
pretty far. I think I remember off the top of
my head that the wester ros is supposed to be
roughly the size of the continent of South America. But
to mention specifics about ravens traveling abilities that that that

(56:34):
research I just mentioned. Loretto and a couple of other
researchers published a studying current zoology in two sixteen that
GPS tagged ravens to track their natural movements out in
the wild, and they found a maximum movement range for
one day of of about a hundred and sixty kilometers.
That was the maximum, but this was not common, and

(56:54):
it's way less than the daily traveling distance of say
a car, you know, and a lot of ravens. Mostly
what they did, the researchers discovered was they hung around
quote anthropogenic food sources. That's not surprising, you know, like
the bodies of the dead that have been put up
on pikes by some victorious army. That absolutely would be

(57:15):
an anthropogenic food source. I imagine this is more likely
kind of a pizza rat scen area. Okay, But in
terms of how fast they travel, they could be found
traveling at speeds of up to forty per hour about
twenty five miles per hour UM. So let's see how
this matches up against the Masta Raymond quote I read
earlier about why ravens are better than pigeons at at

(57:36):
delivering messages. So compared to the pigeon, Mast Raymond says,
a raven is a stronger flyer, larger, bolder, far more clever,
and better better able to defend itself against hawks. So
when he says that a raven is a stronger flyer
than the pigeon, it's hard to know exactly what he
means there. It would depend on what stronger means, But

(57:58):
in general I don't think that's true. If it means faster,
that seems to be a no. Because the ravens normal
top range of traveling speed looks like it's about forty
kilometers an hour. As we saw earlier. You mentioned the
pigeon flies more than double that speed and generally flies
a lot farther. Now, if he means by stronger he
means like more acrobatic, that could be true. Ravens do

(58:21):
have some kind of they got some good moves like
and you can if you watch raven flight and slow motion,
it can be very cool because they'll do like flips
and twists and flapside down and all kind of strange stuff. Now,
in addition to the speed and distance of travel, I
haven't seen any indication that ravens have the same kind
of long range navigational abilities that pigeons do. They obviously

(58:43):
have some kind of navigational abilities, but I've not seen
evidence that there's has been shown to be of the
same power as that of the homing pigeon. So the
whole ability to find their way back home from great distance,
that that may be more unique to the pigeon. Now,
the part where he says it's more clever, that's absolutely true,
undoubtedly more clever. But does that matter much in delivering messages?

(59:06):
I don't know how clever does it have to be
to just get something from one place to another, right,
I mean, if they're not actively engaging in spycraft, if
they're just taking a message and delivering it without getting
snatched up by a hawk from one fortress to another, Yeah,
how what do you need? I will come back to
something you just mentioned there though, another thing. The raven

(59:28):
is generally larger, that is what what mace to Raymond says.
That is certainly true, but does this matter if it's
just delivering a small message written on a piece of paper.
I mean it might be able to carry a heavier
load if it needed to deliver something big. I mean,
if you're smuggling milk of the poppy around, I guess
come in hand you. But yes, yea for just a message,
what's that can matter? Yeah, he says it's bolder. I

(59:51):
don't know exactly what that means, but I think that's
probably true if it means like more aggressive, more likely
to approach unfamiliar objects, execute its training. You know, ravens
are I think it fits that they are smart and
bold and they'll do what they need to do. When
it comes to being better at defending itself against hawks
and other predators. I assume ravens are large. They have

(01:00:12):
very few natural predators, mainly just humans and some of
the larger predatory birds, sometimes including hawks. Uh So yeah,
I think that probably is right. They are better able
to defend themselves. So I think, based on what I've read,
I want to say that while pigeons are generally preferred,
and it seems like they naturally, especially when they've been
bred this way, fly farther and faster, with a message.

(01:00:35):
I don't see any reason why ravens couldn't in principle
be trained to become messenger birds, especially if they're bred
for that purpose over many years like the pigeons have been.
I mean, that's another thing to consider the domestication program here. Yeah,
again we have to look at the the longstanding traditions
that have enabled the carrier pigeon uh to to be

(01:00:56):
the species of choice for delivering small slopes of paper. Right.
But then again, while it may be the case that
pigeons are more suited for long range delivery for multiple reasons,
ravens might be more useful on other kinds of long
range jobs. I would say, for example, if you wanted
to train an animal to actively do spying or reconnaissance

(01:01:18):
of some kind, like, I could imagine that you might
be able to train ravens to go into an enemy
encampment and recover certain kinds of objects and bring them
home to you. Uh, probably better than you could train
a pigeon to do something like that. Like if you
were to train or raven like basically, the raven new

(01:01:39):
that if it found a flash drive, yes, it could
return that and get a special treat yes, and then
you would just you know, receive flash drives and hopefully
they would have something of interest on them. Yeah. And
I think there are some reports that throughout history ravens
have been rumored to have been considered for for like
war surveillance and and sp nage purposes. I don't know

(01:02:01):
to what extent they've ever been fully used, especially not
to the extent that pigeons have been. But there's your
movie set up, Raven, James Bond. Yeah. I was trying
to think of examples of other messenger animals and fiction,
and nothing was really coming to mind except for the idea.
And I didn't read the book series. My wife had

(01:02:22):
the books, but at least the television series The Magicians
that Arizon Sci Fi. They have these talking rabbits that
they'll share, these messenger rabbits, and they'll just sort of
pop into existence on say, your table, and then they'll
speak in this um this kind of like weird uh uh.
I'm almost Gilbert Godfrey ish voice to deliver the message. Wow. Yeah,

(01:02:47):
but nobody, that's not We're not even gonna consider the
possibility of messenger rabbits here on this podcast. I think
we should consider messenger Cicilians like underground amphibians, burrow through
the earth until they get to their target and give
you the message. And messenger worms it's dirty. It's dirty
by the time it arrives. There's some significant slime. Yeah. Well,

(01:03:09):
I wonder if there are any other really fascinating treatments
out there. I mean, ultimately, the bird a bird is
going to give you the best bang for your buck, right,
It's gonna be able to to fly, it's gonna be
able to travel in a straight line, it's gonna be
able to execute a fair amount of you know, reasonable
like stealth and avoidance of threats. And they're smarter than

(01:03:31):
we thought. Yeah, unless I don't know in West in
water World, did they have like messenger fish that they used,
even that wouldn't be as good as a messenger bird though, yeah,
messenger rats, I don't know. Well, at any rate, if
you're out here out there listening to this episode, perhaps
you have encountered another messenger animal or another variety of

(01:03:52):
messenger bird uh in fiction, and you'd like to share
that with us. Likewise, a lot of people still raised.
But I have a friend who who just picked up
raising carrier pigeons. So perhaps some of you out there
have some expertise with pigeons that you would like to share.
Perhaps you have some expertise with with owls or ravens

(01:04:12):
you would like to share you have some insight on, uh,
the intellect of of the raven or the owl or
the pigeon. Obviously we would love to hear from you.
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