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How Did Pigeons Deliver Letters?
Skillful rats of the sky
It’s way too cool how we can effortlessly send messages today. It just takes a tap. A few decades ago, that idea might have sounded downright crazy. But now that I look back and imagine pigeons delivering messages, that’s a tad bit crazy too.
It’s all because pigeons, especially “homing” pigeons have a great sense of direction. They cannot exactly memorize or find out a path (that’s only for us humans) but they have an innate ability to always fly back home. So in order to deliver messages from one place to another, pigeons have to know the ins and outs of their home.
Of course, that was used to its best advantage by training them and starting what you can call ‘pigeon mails’.
The coming across of the idea
The idea of pigeons carrying messages from one place to another started about 5000 years ago. While initially delivering letters was done through human messengers and horses, they had quite a few drawbacks. For starters, there was trust required in handing your message to someone for delivering. On top of that, there’s always a chance of interferences in the…
