Carrier Pigeons have played important roles in the history of the world. When message reception was not a reliable process in the past, the sought-after speed and distance covering of a bird carrying a message to important stops was initiated by training. War events have been won by a collection of fast-flying pigeons, birds that could ride the winds at super speeds of around 60 miles an hour, from ancient Greece and Egypt, where the birds were used to convey messages of events, on through to various wars where the reception of a message could alter the outcome of a battle. In Eastern India, there is the state of Odisha, where police still actively use carrier pigeons to travel messages between stations.
Modern-Day Winged Messengers
Odisha (once known as Orissa until 2011), one of 28 states in India, is the country’s eighth-largest state by area, and the country’s 11th-largest in population, making it a sizeable arena of citizenship. In 1946, the police units of Odisha opted to utilize reliable pigeons as a primary source of delivery. At the time, there were no phone lines or even telegraph systems in place.
The army of India provided the state with approximately 200 homing pigeons for it to try to establish useful communications between the stations. To date, the Odisha area still has the only method of message transport by carrier pigeon in use when compared with the world at large. And while this might seem an odd usage in today’s technological age, where cell phones are in use by so many, it was carrier pigeons that relayed valuable messaging as recently as 1980 and 1982, when the region was devastated by immense flooding events. In 1999, the pigeons proved just as reliable and essential when the region experienced the most destructive cyclone on record.
Fading Into History?
Today, the program currently in use by Odisha is being challenged. It is viewed as being a waste of money, with the convention of wireless messaging at an all-time high peak. But one must only look back at the not-too-distant events of flooding, a situation that Odisha is always under threat of, and the cyclone in 1999. Communications can be broken by weather and other extremes, thereby limiting valuable messaging. With the current staff of handlers and around 150 pigeons under their care, the usual governmental feud is with money. It is considered by government agencies as wasteful and is an often-targeted program for obsoletion. We hope the best not only for these heroic pigeons and their uncanny ability to find their way through the airways to deliver but also for their well-being.
Pigeons have strong instincts to zero in on a base. As such, they are in tune with the location where they recognize home to be. Being docile and easy to handle, makes the homing pigeon a perfect choice to carry messages, especially during periods of history where their use was of the utmost importance. And while the need is seemingly diminished in today’s world, their amazing abilities cannot be forgotten in a potential catastrophe of grid disengagement, a threat all too possible with terrorist/hacker attacks designed to disrupt forms of electronic transmissions.
Hats off to the Odisha collection of homing pigeons that are still in service.
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