Pigeons have better eyesight than humans do and have been trained by the US Coast Guard to spot orange life jackets of people lost at sea. They also carried messages for the US Army during World Wars I and II. (Credit: iStockphoto)

1. The purpose of this thread is to find those old games from the past whose title you just can't remember, or even a newer game you can't put your finger on. All questions pertaining to this subject.
2. The Hexen II demo ended with the note that no sheep were harmed during its making. At the end of Jungle Strike for the Sega Genesis only, there is a disclaimer that says something along the lines of 'No bovine were harmed during the making of this game.' Parodied at least in the box art's back cover for the PlayStation version of Brain Dead 13.

“Electrocuting An Elephant” (1903) This list is meant not as a grim catalog of animal abuse for its own sake, but as a list of accidental or deliberate harm done to animals in the process of creating filmed entertainment. So we largely excluded cases where animal killings were captured in documentary films, like Roger & Me or The Cove. But Thomas Edison’s 1903 short. 'No Pigeons' is the second and final single by Sporty Thievz, released from their 1999 album Street Cinema. It was a rebuttal to TLC's smash hit single 'No Scrubs' and received much radio play at the time of its release.It peaked at #12 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, at about the same time the TLC single was enjoying a successful chart run.The music video also features female rapper Eve. A few of the children were brought back and put in front of a process screen on a treadmill. They ran in front of the screen on the treadmill with the Bodega Bay footage behind them while a combination of real and fake crows were attacking them. There were three rows of children, and when the treadmill was brought up to speed, it ran very fast.

Pigeons can categorize and name both natural and human-made objects—and not just a few. The birds in a new study categorized 128 photographs into 16 categories.

The finding suggests a similarity between how pigeons learn the equivalent of words and the way children do, according to Ed Wasserman, professor of psychology at the University of Iowa and corresponding author of the study.

“Unlike prior attempts to teach words to primates, dogs, and parrots, we used neither elaborate shaping methods nor social cues,” Wasserman says of the study, which appears online in the journal Cognition. “And our pigeons were trained on all 16 categories simultaneously, a much closer analog of how children learn words and categories.”

For researchers like Wasserman, who has been studying animal intelligence for decades, this latest experiment is further proof that animals—whether primates, birds, or dogs—are smarter than once presumed and have more to teach scientists.

“It is certainly no simple task to investigate animal cognition; But, as our methods have improved, so too have our understanding and appreciation of animal intelligence,” he says.

“Differences between humans and animals must indeed exist: many are already known. But, they may be outnumbered by similarities. Our research on categorization in pigeons suggests that those similarities may even extend to how children learn words.”

Peck the symbol

Wasserman says the pigeon experiment comes from a project published in 1988 and featured in the New York Times in which University of Iowa researchers discovered pigeons could distinguish among four categories of objects.

This time, the researchers used a computerized version of the “name game” in which three pigeons were shown 128 black-and-white photos of objects from 16 basic categories: baby, bottle, cake, car, cracker, dog, duck, fish, flower, hat, key, pen, phone, plane, shoe, tree.

The birds then had to peck on one of two different symbols: the correct one for that photo and an incorrect one that was randomly chosen from one of the remaining 15 categories. The pigeons not only succeeded in learning the task, but they also reliably transferred the learning to four new photos from each of the 16 categories.

Smarter than your average bird

Pigeons have long been known to be smarter than your average bird—or many other animals, for that matter. Among their many talents, pigeons have a “homing instinct” that helps them find their way home from hundreds of miles away, even when blindfolded.

They have better eyesight than humans do and have been trained by the US Coast Guard to spot orange life jackets of people lost at sea. They carried messages for the US Army during World Wars I and II, saving lives and providing vital strategic information.

The researchers say their expanded experiment represents the first purely associative animal model that captures an essential ingredient of word learning—the many-to-many mapping between stimuli and responses.

“Ours is a computerized task that can be provided to any animal, it doesn’t have to be pigeons,” says psychologist Bob McMurray, a coauthor of the study. “These methods can be used with any type of animal that can interact with a computer screen.”

How children learn

McMurray says the research shows the mechanisms by which children learn words might not be unique to humans.

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No Pigeons Were Harmed During The Making Of This Game Tonight

“Children are confronted with an immense task of learning thousands of words without a lot of background knowledge to go on,” he says. “For a long time, people thought that such learning is special to humans. What this research shows is that the mechanisms by which children solve this huge problem may be mechanisms that are shared with many species.”

Wasserman acknowledges the recent pigeon study is not a direct analogue of word-learning in children and more work needs to be done. Nonetheless, the model used in the study could lead to a better understanding of the associative principles involved in children’s word learning.

“That’s the parallel that we’re pursuing,” he says, “but a single project—however innovative it may be—will not suffice to answer such a provocative question.”

National Institute of Mental Health, National Eye Institute, and National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders supported the research.

Source: University of Iowa

When you think of pigeons, you probably think of pesky flocks hanging around hot dog carts. But did you know carrier pigeons (aka homing pigeons) were once heroes of war? That’s right. Pigeons had important and dangerous jobs throughout military history, including World Wars One and Two. So let’s show a little respect!

What did pigeons do in war?

Before the use of radio, pigeons acted as animal cell service providers. Julius Caesar sent messages by pigeon, as did Parisians in the Franco-Prussian War (1870). They have been delivering messages since the 6th Century BC, if not earlier.

Pigeons were especially useful during conflict, as they allowed military units to communicate remotely from field to headquarters. During the World Wars, a soldier would place a message in a small canister tied to a pigeon’s leg. The pigeon would fly to its destination coop where it would trip a wire alerting the Signal Corp.

How Did The Birds Know Where To Go?

Military pigeons participated in rigorous training, but the science behind the method is still hotly debated.

One theory is that pigeons recognize landmarks from above. But this doesn’t explain how a pigeon would fly from London to Paris, without ever seeing the route before.

For a time, many believed that pigeons use the Earth’s magnetic field as a compass to determine direction, although this was recently disproved. A more recent theory suggests pigeons can hear “infrared sound”, ultra-low frequencies that signify one location in relation to another. This theory explains why on certain days, especially with inclement weather, a pigeon might fly off course.

Scent Maps

The most accepted theory is that pigeons identify “home” by using their sense of smell to create a mental map. They recognize the smell of home from far away and “follow their nose” like Toucan Sam.

Either way, in terms of military use, pigeons were kept at a home base roost and then transported in boxes or cages with deployed army units. When released from the units’ random location, the pigeons would be able to identify the their home base from afar, and return home with a message.

When delivering messages across enemy lines, heading home became a dangerous commute.

Why Was It Dangerous?

The enemy would try to intercept the messages without any interest in keeping the pigeons alive. Enemy soldiers would send hawks after the pigeons and shoot them down in mid-air when given the chance.

Pigeons were often celebrated and awarded medals of honour for their crucial role. 32 pigeons recieved the Dickin Medal, instituted in 1943, to honour animals who showed “gallantry or devotion to duty while serving in military conflict”. Never mind that the animals never really had a choice in the matter.

Pigeons of Distinction

No Pigeons Were Harmed During The Making Of This Game Ever

The following is a selection of pigeons who received the Dickin Medal for their service in World War 2.

Paddy

Paddy hailed from Northern Ireland and trained as a racing bird under the Royal Air Force. He was an extraordinary flyer who could reach 90 km per hour. He was sent on a special D-Day mission with American Forces. In terrible weather conditions, Paddy evaded German falcons to deliver information back to the Allies’ home base.

William of Orange

This pigeon worked for the British MI14 and saved over 2000 lives in the Battle of Arnhem in September 1944.

German troops had the Allied forces surrounded, and were disrupting their radio signals. Pigeons became their only option for communication. William flew over 400 km from the Netherlands to the United Kingdom and delivered one of few crucial messages. Although German forces won the battle, William’s message saved many lives.

Winkie

An RAF Bomber crashed into the North Sea on February 23, 1942. The four passengers were freezing and struggling to survive in their watery surroundings. They released Winky without a message as a last resort.

Winky flew over 200km to his owner who alerted the Royal Air Force. Although Winky carried no message, the RAF was able to approximate the bombers’ location based on the known flight path and time of Winky’s arrival.

Mary of Exeter

This pigeon was known for her endurance despite sustaining several injuries over the course of her career.

Mary received 22 stitches after an attack by German hawks, and still managed to deliver her message. On a separate occasion Mary was shot in the wing with several bullet pieces were lodged in her body. This still didn’t keep her down. During her final mission, Mary was hit in the neck by shrapnel. Amazingly she survived to receive the Dickin Medal sporting a supportive leather collar.

G.I. Joe

G.I. Joe saved the Italian town Calvi Vecchia from a bombing in 1943. The Allies were planning to bomb the town, when the Germans’ vacated unexpectedly. Locals’ attempts to inform the British forces by radio failed and the attack was looming. Enter G.I. Joe. He flew 32 km in 20 minutes with a message to the American Forces who managed to cancel the attack. This noble pigeon saved an estimated 1000 lives.