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Short Summary
Main recommendation: Pigeons, not ravens, are the birds best suited for reliable message delivery, a practice known as carrier-pigeon messaging. Their natural homing ability and training methods let them carry messages accurately, including two-way travel between set locations.
Key Points
- Ravens, despite their intelligence, are not the most likely birds for message delivery, unlike the birds shown in Game of Thrones.
- Pigeons have a natural homing instinct and have been documented flying as far as 1800 km to return to their nest.
- Historically, pigeons generally only sent messages in one direction, from a distant location back home, since their instinct was to return there.
- Pigeons can be trained to fly reliably between two locations by placing their food at one site and their home at the other.
- Pigeons can be trained in flocks, unlike many birds that need one-on-one training.
Details Worth Noting
- Concrete instructions: The video gives no step-by-step training protocol. The only actionable method described is to place a pigeon's food at one location and its home at another, which trains it to fly reliably back and forth between the two.
- Pigeons navigate using their eyesight, the sun and stars, landscapes, odors, sound waves, and possibly the Earth's magnetic field, along with an internal compass.
- Pigeons' migratory behavior makes flock-based training practical, which is a key difference from other birds.
- Carrier pigeons reportedly were used nearly 3000 years ago to announce the winner of the Olympics abroad.
Bottom Line
Pigeons, not ravens, are the practical choice for message delivery because their homing instinct and trainability make them far more reliable than the birds shown in popular fiction.