Before the internet and telephone, societies relied on homing pigeons to relay important news across long distances. Here are three classic examples. Homing pigeons–which are pigeons trained by humans ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about biodiversity and the hidden quirks of the natural world. Air mail delivery is an essential part of modern life. The ...

Tim Guilford has received funding from EPSRC, BBSRC, NERC, RSPB, John Fell, Merton College. Pigeons have extraordinary navigational abilities. Take a pigeon from its loft and let it go somewhere it ...

Many birds travel in flocks, sometimes migrating over thousands of miles. But how do the birds decide who will lead the way? Researchers now have some new insight based on studies in homing pigeons.

Homing pigeons are bred for their navigation skills. They find their way along a mental map of signs and smells, using the sun and the Earth’s geomagnetic field as a biological compass to find their ...

Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD:Yes, it is true; CECOM's early history was for the birds… pigeons to be exact. Pigeons were vital to military communications during war and in peacetime. While pigeons had ...

Homing pigeons use familiar smells to navigate their way across hundreds of kilometers of unfamiliar territory. Researchers have now confirmed that artificial odors cannot be used to stimulate or ...

In 1943, the U.S. military had a problem. It didn’t suffer from a lack of bombs and missiles, but there was no reliable way to accurately guide them for a precision strike. A psychologist, though, had ...