A carrier pigeon or messenger pigeon is a homing pigeon (specifically a domesticated rock pigeon, Columba livia) that is used to carry messages. Using pigeons to carry messages is generally called "pigeon post". Most homing or racing type varieties are used to carry messages. There is no specific breed actually called "carrier pigeon". Carrier pigeons that are the basic Racing Homer were used to carry messages in World War I and World War II. Thirty-two pigeons were presented with the Dickin Medal.
Read more about Carrier Pigeon: History, Wartime Use
Famous quotes containing the words carrier and/or pigeon:
“We know what the animals do, what are the needs of the beaver, the bear, the salmon, and other creatures, because long ago men married them and acquired this knowledge from their animal wives. Today the priests say we lie, but we know better.”
—native American belief, quoted by D. Jenness in “The Carrier Indians of the Bulkley River,” Bulletin no. 133, Bureau of American Ethnology (1943)
“Suppose that humans happen to be so constructed that they desire the opportunity for freely undertaken productive work. Suppose that they want to be free from the meddling of technocrats and commissars, bankers and tycoons, mad bombers who engage in psychological tests of will with peasants defending their homes, behavioral scientists who can’t tell a pigeon from a poet, or anyone else who tries to wish freedom and dignity out of existence or beat them into oblivion.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)