ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Project Pigeon

Project Pigeon was a plan that some people came up with a long time ago to try and train pigeons to do important jobs. The idea was that these birds could be trained to fly special missions for the military during World War II, like carrying messages or even bombs.

The way it would work is that the pigeons would be trained to peck at buttons or symbols on a screen, and depending on what symbol they pecked, that would trigger a certain action. So for example, if the pigeon pecked at a button with a picture of a target on it, that would tell a bomb to be released from the pigeon's backpack and hit the target on the ground.

It might sound kind of crazy, but experts at the time thought it might actually work, and they did some tests with the pigeons to see how well they could be trained. However, in the end, the project wasn't successful and was eventually abandoned because other ways of delivering bombs and messages proved to be much more effective.

So even though it didn't work out in the end, Project Pigeon was an interesting idea that people had to try and make use of the amazing abilities that wayward pigeons have.