The Newest Frontier in Cutting-Edge Occupation Tech: The Homing Pigeon

In the past few months all eyes have been focused on the gadgety and tech based hacks of occupation, but a recent video uploaded by Syrian revolutionaries heralds back to one of the most basic media tactics of all. Enter the homing pigeon.

Homing pigeons have a fascinating history of relaying information for humans, but this seems to have gotten lost during the past century as people discovered new technologies for communication, like the vast social networking empire that’s currently in vogue for revolutionaries. In ancient Greece, pigeons were used by the like of Julius Caesar to send messages, and in pre-revolution France, homing pigeons were a sign of prestige and power for French nobility.

By 1914, at the onset of WWI, Allied forces started a coalition of homing pigeons that would eventually involve more than half a million pigeons with a 95 percent delivery rate. And apparently they were tenacious little suckers. There’s the story of Cher Amie, a pigeon who was sent to its command center in France when Germans opened fire on a 600 man battalion. Amie arrived at the post with one eye shot out, a bullet in its breast and its leg (the leg carrying the message) hanging by a mere tendon, but it made it. Homing pigeons were still used in WWII to deliver messages that were too sensitive to be caught on airways.

The recent use of homing pigeons in battered Syria has garnered worldwide attention and outcry in an age where communication even under occupation still seems to be governed and through interconnected digital networks such as Twitter.

“We thank Bashar for taking us back to the Middle Ages,” an activist in Homs (a stronghold for activity opposing Syrian President Bashar Assad) named Omar told Agence France-Presse regarding the use of pigeons for communicating. The messages, detailing the logistics of resupply operations, are flown across the borders of Old Homs, which have been on the receiving end of a relentless barrage of government shelling,

"From the activists in Old Homs (district) to those in Baba Amr, please tell us what you need in terms of supplies, medicine and food," reads one message attached to a pigeon's leg.

"God willing, we will deliver them to you," reads a response.

Most people on the outside question the use of an idea as old as carrier pigeons in this day in age. The Islamic Society of Western Massachusetts, who recently reported on the use of pigeons wrote sic, “can we ( Human being) be better than a pigeon?”

It’s a good question, especially in a time when most dialogue about communication revolves around social networking and related technology. Even “low-tech” hacks are centered on the use of analogue and radio technologies which at their oldest only have had roots since the 1940s, and thinking about relaying information in less tech developed areas touches on the use of sat phones and dial-up internet.

So where does the homing pigeon fit into this? Does it still have a place in warfare and the dialogue of occupation?

Let’s remember here that militaries around the world still heavily use animals in conflict situations. The US military recently told NPR that it’s relying on dolphins to sweep for mines in the Strait of Hormuz after Iran threatened a blockade of the waterway, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil supply passes. Indeed, the Navy’s Marine Mammal Program has been relying on the sonar capabilities of dolphins for decades.

Research conducted at the University of Auckland in New Zealand in 2009 found that homing pigeons use a simliar technique of using Earth’s magnetic fields to accurately navigate distance, adding scientific proof to the already common knowledge that homing pigeons are exceptional navigators.

Syrians may be referring to their use of homing pigeons as a practice that heralds back the Middle Ages, but they’re using animals that have navigation capabilities that rival more ‘high-tech’ GPS navigation systems that took humans hundreds of years to figure out. And hey, while they might not be instant, unlike most networked communication — Twitter, Facebook, or even satellite wireless technology — these little guys can’t be tracked from a computer by unwanted ears.