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Comment by qvrjuec | Hacker News Reader

This just seems like a silly hoax... Carrier pigeons don't go to arbitrary destinations, they're capable of going to 2 places that they've already been familiarized with, maximum.

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I was about to write exactly this; I thought that the way messenger pigeon delivery worked basically boiled down to "pigeons are obscenely good at finding their way back 'home' from an arbitrary distance." I didn't think you could just tell them a latitude and longitude or address and have them go there.

However topology may be restricted.

"Connection oriented service is available in some cities, usually based upon a central hub topology."[0]

[0] https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1149

They can, but you need to speak pigeon.

Or embed a microchip in their brains

-- https://www.marketplace.org/2015/09/30/mail-wing-and-prayer/ - link from their twitter that is mostly weird tweets about trying to get into YC --

pigeons don't tweet.

Yes, and in fact, pigeons coo! See: https://pigeonpedia.com/what-sound-does-a-pigeon-make/

Side-note: When i looked up what sound pigeons make, i was pleasantly surprised to learn that there exists a Pigeonpedia! :-)

Good find. I have a pet pigeon. This looks like a good resource.

Actually, pigeons go multiple places each day and keep a schedule. I used to have this neighbor who would feed a bunch of wild pigeons and they would be there all lined up on the roof over his door waiting for him to get home from work. After he moved they quit coming around, probably because these other neighbors were feeding about a dozen feral cats at the same time (who all mysteriously disappeared).

So, yeah, train the pigeons well enough and they can set up delivery routes.

This is true. I have a pet pigeon, and you can pretty much set your watch by some of his behaviours.

I suppose you could set up a network of pigeons. After all, an ethernet cable merely connects two points. Maybe you could train additional pigeons to route the messages somehow.

Perhaps they can pivot to avian delivery of one-time passwords — turn the inability to access arbitrary destinations from a bug to a feature.

Pigeons are smarter than you realize.

Go on

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