🐦 πŸ’£πŸš€ Pigeons of Mass Destruction πŸ¦πŸ’£πŸš€

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(Edited)

Your book of useless knowledge, as @silverd510 likes to call me, is back with yet another useless and hilarious fact...Well, hillarious in a sad kind of way.

So, imagine this. It's World War II and scientists are trying out all kinds of unconventional ideas.. You may have heard of some, like the huge railway gun by the nazis called Schwerer Gustav or the silly looking Panjandrum by the Brits.

But the one I want to talk about was wayyyyy more... unconventional!

Enter Project Pigeon!

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This was a project let by Burrhus Frederic Skinnier, a psychologist, to develop a pigeon-guided missile πŸ˜’πŸ˜‚

Yes you read that right, Skinner based on his previous work on training pigeons aimed to develop guided missile using pigeons! The final goal was for the pigeons to use their pecks to steer the missile. Something like a kamikaze pilot but more... humane! :p

They were trained by being shown an image of the target and each time the pigeons pecked the image some seed would be dispensed. As long as the target remained in the center of the screen, the screen would not move, but if the bomb began to go off track, the image would move towards the edge of the screen. The pigeons would follow the image, pecking at it, which would move the screen on its pivots. source

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Although the project did achieve some success in training the pigeons, it was ultimately cancelled because it was taking valuable resources from other projects that seemed more promising.

It was revived by the Navy in 1948 as "Project Orcon" only to be cancelled in 1953 thanks to the emergence of electronic guidance systems. Something that pigeons were probably happy to hear πŸ˜‚

Here's some original footage I found from the Orcon project that will give you a better idea of how the pigeon bomb was supposed to work:

And that's the quick run down of project pigeon!

And if you think that is crazy... Just wait a couple more days because I have something even crazier πŸ˜‚

Posted Using InLeo Alpha



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31 comments
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What an insane project! A good use of taxpayer money for sure... You knew about the bat bomb too didn't you?
!BBH

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I think that’s the most ridiculous project ever. Pigeon guided missiles. What the f**k…..

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😳😳😳😳 wait what? I can't believe they actually tried to use pigeons to guide missiles. It's amazing what people come up with during wartime. Makes you wonder what other wild ideas never made it off the drawing boardπŸ€” it's hard for me to think whether I should laugh or cry man😳😳😳😳

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You received an upvote of 100% from Precious the Silver Mermaid!

Please remember to contribute great content to the #SilverGoldStackers tag to create another Precious Gem.

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(Edited)

Alternative Times News Flashed!
"European News November 1962 reporting wide scale panic all over the major cities in Europe as explosions destroyed countless statues all over Europe as what some say is the Soviet Union's reneging on their promise to no longer make missile deliveries to Cuba as signed under President Kennedy in September.
When contacted, the Soviet Representative denied and shrugged, "We have nothing to do with that, even Lenin's statue got blown up, however was also found evidence of unusual pigeon remains. We work with chickens and not pigeons. Ask NATO, they do pigeons."
Meanwhile there has been a long wait for a reply from NATO.

Keep Stacking.

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πŸš€πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸš€

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Imagine that, the Cold War could have escalated into a Mutually Assured Destruction of all Statues and Chicken coops all over the world.

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It sounds like a pretty crazy project. I honestly think it's more work than it's worth it for the results so I think it made sense to scrap it.

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Man, that's crazy, but I've heard that before. It's hard to imagine what else people can do when they use birds as weapons. I'm looking forward to the next post in a couple days.

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Humans can get quite.. Creative πŸ˜‚

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People in New York must have funded this project xD
!PIMP

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πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚

!pimp

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