But how do they tell the pigeons where to go? How do the pigeons know where to go?
Homing pigeons don't fly TO places; they are carried to them and released to fly HOME again.
So, for example, in the military service, they would first be trained to recognize their "home", which would be the military command post for the region. Then they would be carried by the troop commander or communications officer out into the field of battle. Finally, a message would be attached and they would be released to return to the main military command post with that message, with updates on the situation out in the field.
Carrier pigeons are a bit more sophisticated. They are trained to fly BETWEEN 2 distant locations. Released from one, they will fly to the other. This pigeon website has a bit more explanation:
http://www.pigeonweb.net/carrier-pigeon
Scientists have discovered that pigeons store a map of the earth's magnetic field in their brains. They also have a magnetic compass, meaning that they can sense which direction they are facing. They are not unique in having a magnetic compass, nor are they the only animals to exhibit homing behavior. Frogs, toads, and salamanders, for example, are able to find the pond or section of a stream where they were born and go back there to breed, even if they may be displaced by researchers miles away from their home stream, across several mountains, with more than one stream separating them and their home stream.
We still do not know how pigeons store such information or how they can tell between north, south, east and west. There is also no consensus as to whether they actually use the earth's magnetic field to navigate. Some researchers claim that they actually use low frequency sounds inaudible to us to navigate, but that claim is based largely on a single incident in which a large number of homing pigeons were lost after a Concorde jet was polluting the area the pigeons was flying with a sonic boom. They figure that if pigeons are lost because of the boom, they must have been confused by the blast of sound.
Personally I think the sonic boom may have killed the pigeon by shocking them with sound waves. Birds use their ears to balance themselves when they fly. A sonic boom could have damaged their ears, even deafening them, causing them to lose their balance and fall from the sky. There are also claims that pigeons use their sense of smell to navigate because pigeons that have their sense of smell disabled cannot navigate their way home. However, birds have a poor sense of smell and they may have used the olfactory lobe of their brain to store the magnetic map of the earth and to sense the magnetic field of the earth. It is possible that pigeons use more than one method, including visual cues, to navigate, but magnetic navigation appears to be the most likely.
That is because pigeons are carried by car, train or other forms of transportation to a place they have never been before and yet they are able to find their way home from that place. Unlike birds that follow their parents on their first migration, the homing pigeons have no chance to learn the landmarks and sights of the migratory route, and must rely on something else to navigate their way home.
I only learn that those pigeons know how to find their way back home.
But how do they tell the pigeons where to go? How do the pigeons know where to go?
