Does $25,000 sound like much for testing out a missile guidance system to you?…how about if it was 1944?…fair enough you might say, war toys are not cheap to develop and build, it’s serious business. Would you believe me if I told you that Uncle Sam laid down twenty five large for research on a guidance system run by pigeons!?! ( I can’t type that with a straight face)

The pigeons were trained to peck away at a little target and doing so would keep the missile on course.
The research was eventually abandoned by the army, considered to be too ‘eccentric’ ( really!?). The Navy took it up again until Radar came along, putting an end to the kamikaze control pigeon’s place in war history!

BF Skinner and his experiments with animals comes up in in every educational paper at uni. Usually you hear all the same stories, but today the lecturer mentioned ‘pigeon guided missiles’ so I hit the big G up to see if it was true. Plenty of videos, photos and articles as well as Wikipedia all confirm this is now the coolest most crazy thing I have learned at Uni!

I hope they screened the pigeons to make sure none were ever previously trained as ‘homing pigeons!’

Ok, the video is in Russian…but you see that this stuff is the real deal……or is it?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMsSCryLMOg&feature=related[/youtube]