r/interesting • u/I-T-Y • Jul 14 '26

NATURE Pigeon walks into falcon's nest

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61.4k Upvotes

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3.6k

u/mamut2000 Jul 14 '26

what was the plan there?

5.0k

u/Organic_Initiative93 Jul 14 '26

Friends said "Just ask her, the worst she can say is no"

143

u/batiwa Jul 14 '26

I don't think he even asked anything there lol, just walked in like it was his home

115

u/SnooCupcakes6107 Jul 14 '26

Pigeons have no brains

209

u/0m3gaph03nix Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 14 '26

Humans domesticated pigeons for 200 years and then kicked them to the curb back into the wild with no survival skills when they didn't need carrier pigeon services anymore. That's why pigeons cling to populated cities and don't seem so afraid of us. We're all they knew for two centuries and we're all they know now. Except now we call them pests and they eat human garbage to survive

129

u/Raptor_Zefier Jul 14 '26

To my understanding, this is partially true. I did a bit of googling to look things up since that doesnt really make sense to me. Messenger pigeons still where hunted by Falcons and Hawks in flight, so they should still have some flight instinct when faced with one even when domesticated. This is what I found out;

They stay close to cities because they never were evolved for living in forests. Wild Rock Pigeons nest on cliff faces and tend to eat grains and seeds. Forests favor a more insectivorious diet, while there ARE seeds, grain is hard to come by. However in cities, these things are plentiful.

They have survival skills, just for their own environment which a city best replicates with its artificial cliffs in buildings. Cities just fulfill their needs better then the forests that usually surround big cities. Moreover, theyre rather smart, being one of the few animals to pass a mirror recognition test.

The above video highlights a kind of interesting quirk with Pigeon survival instincts. They dont recognize landed falcons as threats readily. Primarily because a landed Falcon isnt typically hunting. A falcon in the air is when its most dangerous and is usually hunting, and that's when the flight instinct kicks in.

In short this is kind of an odd rare quirk you'll see in Pigeons where they dont see roosting predators as threats, because that's just not when they're usually hunted.

Granted theres still truth to what youre saying, such as a Pigeons lack of fear of humans. However the truth of what's going on in the video is a bit more complex.

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u/Flashy_Moose7267 Jul 14 '26

You sir, are doing god’s work.

1

u/TorpidPulsar Jul 16 '26

Not to mention the landed falcon wasn't a threat until the pigeon tried to snuggle with it.

8

u/TheAmazingRando3000 Jul 14 '26

Beautiful post; thank you.

4

u/Then_Expression8526 Jul 14 '26

I appreciate your rational thinking, the efforts you put in to find out this information and then brining us back your research . Thank you

5

u/plethoradepinata Jul 15 '26

And human written. Take a well deserved upvoot 🫡

3

u/Audiblefill Jul 15 '26

Very well said. I enjoyed reading that.

3

u/Competitive_Bag7868 Jul 15 '26

While I wasn't going to google it, the previous comment didn't click right as I was reading it because humans wouldn't be able to domesticate a relevant fraction of the pidgeon population to doom the whole species; the dumb domesticated pidgeons would die back to nature but all wild ones would keep going normally.

2

u/No-Temperature-9916 Jul 15 '26

I would like to subscribe to your newsletter

2

u/[deleted] Jul 15 '26

Sounds like the answer a stack of pigeons dressed as a man would say.

1

u/ElectricalEmploy8097 Jul 15 '26

They used to use pigeons in precision guided bombs

1

u/KaptainKaos54 Jul 15 '26

Well… they experimented with it. They didn’t actually do it. It was an attempt by an animal behaviorist (B.F. Skinner) to solve the problem of how to guide the Navy’s new glider missile that could be steered towards the target. TV was supposed to be used to let a ground operator drive the thing, but it was so new that they couldn’t get it right. So Skinner said “Hey, use pigeons the same way we used to train carrier pigeons! They’ll get the job done!” And yeah, they theoretically could’ve. The tests Skinner performed for Navy brass conclusively demonstrated a pigeon could successfully fly the glide bomb. But the Navy said “cool story bruh, but nah.” Even after Skinner designed the system with three birds, two of whom would have to provide the same input to steer the bomb to ensure reliability, the Navy passed. So no pigeons were harmed during the development of the bird-bomb, and no such bomb was ever actually produced or deployed.

1

u/ElectricalEmploy8097 18d ago

You got me hahahaha but color me impressed someone actually cares about useless information that is extremely relevant to the discussion of modern evolution. The human-pigeon relationship has followed many different topics of serious debate. But when we are evaluating for solutions, sometimes the lowest tech option is the one that teaches you the most. This study in specific proved that random animals are as capable of war as humans, and determined that guided munitions weren’t just possible, they existed before they were invented, further shoving the world’s leaders into the engineering arena of automation. Only, the idea was minimized to “well if we can program a computer to think on the level of a pigeon, we have blueprints for guided bombs”. This stigma bolstered all research programs to do with missile development, motivating precision munition advancement for the following years, even if you fail to find anywhere online that this is true. Project pigeon was widely known and recognized among all of leadership [at that time] in its upcoming, and was a running joke among them. Everyone wanted to laugh it off. But nobody wanted to recognize it was a generational leap in technology by using an animal that thinks like a computer being interfaced by an actual computer that used a voting system to determine probability and do the actual steering. That concept is so high level it’s actually serious. The guy who thought this up may have been a psychologist. But he was not an engineer, he was a philosopher with his hands in inventing. That fact in specific made the whole program seem ill-prepared with shotty function. But if he simply proposed that the pigeon was a placeholder for an autonomous computer, I guarantee you we would have created guided bombs years sooner.

That is exactly why it is important to listen to important people with an open mind, not only a credentialed basis that determines culpability above all else. Those are the obstacles that inventors commonly faced back when you couldn’t google someone’s name. This led to an enhanced stigma of the program being a joke and a waste of money that stood on principles we don’t necessarily prefer. That type of thing will shoot anyone down so hard that they aren’t labeled a genius anymore.

Not that I support blowing up animals, just so we’re clear.

If you look in history with regard to inventing, you’ll find a multitude of cases where a smart person said something that was interpreted differently by someone else that advanced the design. This one program, project pigeon, was one of the many that nobody else built on even though it was a complete success. When this happens, usually it’s because of a barrier that is insurmountable. Something like when a program is stigmatized as a joke.

If you don’t see the value in project pigeon back in the 40’s, your mind is stuck in the 2000’s because we missed an opportunity to listen to a real research program that returned real results, and skipped the period that we could have had these munitions earlier, costing lots of extra money, so we could invent it on-track with a normal research pace.

Some smart people will never be credentialed with the title of genius simply because of unexpected emotion with their proposals.

1

u/douglasjunk Jul 15 '26

While I suspect all of the above is true, I also suspect that some pigeons are smart and some pigeons...not so smart. I think we know which one is in this video.

1

u/Sweaty_Boysenberry41 Jul 15 '26

Yeah,well. This one clearly wasn't informed about their intellect as he walked straight into his own death intentionally

1

u/Gullible-Hose4180 Jul 15 '26

I used to play the sounds of screeching birds of prey when I had pigeons living outside the window and it scared the living fuck out of them

1

u/FyreBoi99 Jul 15 '26

What an awesome read

1

u/Stockinglegs Jul 15 '26

Forests are usually pretty far from cities, so it's kind of a trek, but I suspect that if a bunch of pigeons were transported to a forest, they would do all right. Not all, but I think many would do OK.

1

u/malchure Jul 19 '26

this is all well and good except it's a wood pigeon in the video. different species. everything you said is irrelevant for wood pigeons. it's the rock ones that were domesticated.

82

u/beerme81 Jul 14 '26

Fuck, we suck.

65

u/0m3gaph03nix Jul 14 '26

Yeah, we're goddamn monsters as a species

42

u/Lissba Jul 14 '26

We destroy everything we touch.

We’ll cook this mother alive 🌏

5

u/opmopadop Jul 14 '26

We don't destroy everything, there was that one thing.

2

u/Lissba Jul 14 '26

Oh yeah just the climate only 😅

2

u/libertad740 Jul 15 '26

The earth will be fine. We’re cooking ourselves.

1

u/Lissba Jul 15 '26

And a lot of other animals as well

1

u/blahblahmama Jul 14 '26

I thought you were talking about pigeon meat for a second.

2

u/Lissba Jul 14 '26

No it’s lobsters we do that to

1

u/blumoon138 Jul 14 '26

Pigeons ARE delicious.

1

u/Lissba Jul 14 '26

I mean it’s gotta be pretty chickenish

1

u/Kit_Karamak Jul 15 '26

Eventually, but the ole’ gal has been through over 50,000 years of anatomically modern homosapiens-sapiens, and we are our own biggest threat.

1

u/Lissba Jul 15 '26

Come now. You know it’s only been 200 years of burning fossil fuels at this volume.

2

u/Kit_Karamak Jul 17 '26

I mean over all, and how we burn entire forests just to prove a point.
But yes, the most damage has been recent stuff.

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u/WellRespectedJ Jul 14 '26

Oh, please lol 🙄

6

u/Lissba Jul 14 '26

We…literally do though.

Look it up - every ecosystem we touch we wriggidy wreck to extinction

2

u/SocksInTheTub Jul 14 '26

Yeah agent Smith hit that nail directly on the head

2

u/wolfmansgotnards81 Jul 14 '26

We definitely need to chiggidity check ourselves.

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u/Arnoldneo Jul 14 '26

Negative thoughts will get as no where fast we most do what we can now to improve.

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u/0m3gaph03nix Jul 15 '26

Acknowledging the reality of something negative isn't a "negative thought". It's just awareness. You cannot genuinely improve unless you understand the nature of what you're improving. That's why we are where we are now. Because schools have erased history in favor of promoting "national exceptionalism". Now no one knows the history of this place and they have no f*cking idea that there's a need to improve on it. Plugging your ears to ugliness doesn't make it go away. It just opens room for that ugliness to repeat itself. *gestures broadly at everything"

1

u/Arnoldneo Jul 15 '26

Yes i suppose but getting caught up in just the negative parts of the world won’t help anyone acknowledging it is important as you say and the education system does wash away much of the evils of historical figures and what we have done there is a right balance to be struck I just haven’t found it myself and I don’t really know were it is for others either .

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u/Lissba Jul 14 '26

Denial ain’t working either brother

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u/0m3gaph03nix Jul 15 '26

Nope! It's actively making everything worse. Reference my reply to that goofy ass message they posted

1

u/Arnoldneo Jul 14 '26

It definitely doesn’t I was once in a dark place like that but what gets me up every day is hope that today and tomorrow will be better solar power is on its way synthetic almost perfect replacement for animal meat are on there way we can move forward while knowing things are not good in the moment at least I hope so the future is now for better or worse and all we can do is do are best pick up trash plant trees exercise tell other people who are willing to listen and try to spread positivity hoping it will be paid back in turn although most of the time it won’t.

0

u/Lissba Jul 14 '26

Dark place? I wake up like the king, my life is rad af and I’m enjoying it.

I can love life and own up to the devastating lethal impact of humanity on nearly all other species (mileage varies). It’s just facts brother.

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u/Future-Barracuda5650 Jul 14 '26

So start using pigeon mail again....

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u/Kazamiiiii Jul 14 '26

No, cause that wasn't my fault in the first place man, I'm tired of the world going to shit and we have to pick up the garbage 🤣

6

u/cardamomgrrl Jul 14 '26

Honestly, with the current USPS speed, carrier pigeon doesn’t sound like a bad idea

1

u/Jegator2 Jul 14 '26

You can thank prev Postmaster Louis Dejoy, (appointed by n big donor of trump)for all of his "improvements"! He was there just under 5 yrs

2

u/ApostateAZ Jul 14 '26

You think that is bad, wait until you hear about factory farms.

1

u/beerme81 Jul 15 '26

I know them all too well. I live in a farming community and Upton St Clair's book The jungle radicalized me further left.

When I was young it radicalized me against meat eating. Now that I'm older I use it for the other points the book made, workers rights and communal organization of the economy.

It's wild what man will do for profit over people.

0

u/Elderbrute Jul 14 '26

Most pigeons are wild and always have been.

They are stupid but as with many successful species they are highly adaptable they are just as at home in a city as they are in the woods or cliffs, really anywhere they can nest up high and there is food of any sort pigeons will thrive.

They do especially well in cities not due to domesticattion but because there is an abundance of food, shelter and hardly any natural predators.

4

u/ABadHistorian Jul 14 '26

Do a little research on this dude.

Vast majority of pigeons in cities are descended from domesticated pigeons.

3

u/RebelliousInNature Jul 14 '26

I feel sorry for pigeons since I learned just that. It’s our fault as a species.

3

u/RandoPizzaGuy Jul 14 '26

Humans domesticated pigeons for a lot longer than 200 years. They were domesticated before our earliest recorded history. In fact, to my knowledge, nothing can become domesticated in a mere 200 years.

3

u/spocktalk69 Jul 14 '26

More than 200 years... Carrier pigeons have been used for over a millennia... So probably like 1000 generations minimum...

3

u/pangolin_of_fortune Jul 14 '26

This is a wild wood pigeon though. Not domestic. Also not clever.

2

u/cosmoscrumb Jul 14 '26

That one looks like a wild wood pigeon rather than the feral variety tbf

2

u/Hot_Ad1101 Jul 14 '26

Yep. If any species out ther deserves to exact revenge on humans it is 100% the pigeon.

2

u/Adept-Branch-4624 Jul 14 '26

You're right, but the pidgeon in the video is a wild pidgeon, not a domesticated one.

3

u/Dry_Recognition_6724 Jul 14 '26

This is a wood pigeon and were never tamed.

1

u/ibuprophane Jul 14 '26

Thanks, came here to say this. They are truly naturally dumb and slow, I am surprised how many there still are in the UK given how slow they are.

1

u/Dry_Recognition_6724 Jul 14 '26

Yeh, have had numerous close calls with them in the car.

1

u/gm0ney2000 Jul 14 '26

More like 2000 years...

1

u/nopleasenotthebees Jul 14 '26

There's no lessons there about how people relate to each other.... Wait oh shi

1

u/omerbrussels Jul 14 '26

Who domesticated the pigeons? Did all humans on earth do at the same time? What kind of survival skills they had and then lost after this massive domestication? If nature of an animal can change in such short time why it didn’t changed again making them adapt the nature and gain same survival skills? Where all this info is based on?

1

u/VivaLaDiga Jul 14 '26

we didn't use them for carrier pigeons. we used them for three things, mainly: eggs, meat, and poop (as fertiliser). Carrier came later.

1

u/Sechelx Jul 14 '26

And we do the same thing now. Just new model of phone

1

u/naturalskrrt Jul 14 '26

I think we brought them over as a food source as well. They clean up food scraps and garbage and people love them in the city

1

u/AegidiusG Jul 14 '26

I want to add that the romans described escaped wild living pigeons in the city, so this is something that happened more than 2000 years ago and eventually several times in history.
I guess there is also something in the nature of the species, so that they kinda lose fear very easily.
There is a couple of Wood Pigeons with a nest in the tree right before my balcony.
On the same tree a squirell did eat the babys of swallows, lets see if the squirell will get blood thursty again :O

1

u/dommiichan Jul 14 '26

if they're into human garbage, I can suggest a few politicians

1

u/mileXend Jul 14 '26

Carrier pigeons were a real thing?!

1

u/Tiddlesnatch Jul 14 '26

Wow thanks for the history lesson, I did not know that! Explains a lot

1

u/7wasser Jul 14 '26

But that one is a wood pigeon

1

u/ggs77 Jul 14 '26

Funny, but regarding there are about 300 different breeds of pigeons it's kind of over simplified...

1

u/pippi_longstocking09 Jul 14 '26

I know. I love pigeons so much. They're so sweet.

1

u/XLIVtetsuo Jul 14 '26

Damn…….perspective changes a lot here…….

1

u/Never_enough_naps Jul 14 '26

Humans are garbage.

1

u/Embarrassed_Blood247 Jul 14 '26

Carrier pigeons were a subspecies, extinct.

1

u/CableAltruistic8687 Jul 15 '26

Add about 2800 years to that and you'll be closer, but everything eles is correct. We took them in, fed them, trained them, relied on them for millennia for long distancecommunication, and then almost over night we abandoned them. We only keep around the useful toys, the broken and obsolete get left behind 💔😢

1

u/The-law-is-the-law Jul 15 '26

A bit like wild dogs but less dangerous and no rabies, gotcha

1

u/Slyraks-2nd-Choice Jul 15 '26

That’s a heartbreaking story

1

u/Lythaera Jul 15 '26

yes, but 10,000 years, not 200. Also that isn't a domesticated pigeon.

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u/Curiousity1024 Jul 15 '26

Strange, the Pigeons in my Area is so afraid of humans .

5

u/lazinonasunnyday Jul 14 '26

No survival instinct in this one even. I could tell the Falcon was like “WTF are you doing!?” right away. The pigeon didn’t react accordingly. It just kept poking its nose where it was not permitted. So the Falcon decided it was time for it to go.

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u/theevilyouknow Jul 14 '26

r/BirdsArentReal

No, but they do have CPU's.

2

u/jeremyjava Jul 14 '26

This isn’t much different than many people’s situational awareness, eg, on subways or walking down the street while in cellphones… who knows who is sussing them out while they’re oblivious.

2

u/GipsyDanger45 Jul 14 '26

Tell that to Cher Ami and all the other highly decorated homing pigeons that saved lives during the world wars

1

u/Much-Degree1485 Jul 14 '26

they used to but with no purpose they are dumb now

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u/Carlobo Jul 14 '26

Might be because we domesticated them then they forgor how to do stuff and we were like "We don't need you guys anymore" and let them go so if you look up pictures of pigeons nest it's like a couple of twigs.

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u/MortalStorm1960 Jul 14 '26

Really? So much for instinct I guess

1

u/theobstinateone Jul 14 '26

They can get elected to public offices, though

1

u/DarkstarBinary Jul 14 '26

Actually they are intelligent, but maybe they got confused? 😂

1

u/threalsfog Jul 14 '26

That's actually not true.

0

u/Ok_Inspection910 Jul 14 '26

Finally proof. So stupid

4

u/x_Advent_Cirno_x Jul 14 '26

Pigeons do be like that

2

u/Tight_Watercress_402 Jul 14 '26

Looked the falcon right in the eye and proceeded to make himself at home.

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u/WinterTrek Jul 14 '26

there was a moment in the beginning when he could've turned back