Two experiments conducted in 2009 with the pigeon Winston and in 2023 with the pigeon Grey would suggest that, for short distances and limited amounts of data, i racing pigeons are surprisingly competitive and can transport data faster than an internet connection with optical fiberat least up to certain distances and excluding predators and other “logistical” problems due to the nature of this bird.
Disclaimer: However, let us remember that, beyond the more or less suggestive curiosity, these results are certainly not enough to obscure the indisputable advantages deriving from the use of modern transmission technologies, such as broadband, as they are clearly more reliable and safer for covering distances. global in a continuous manner and without the various problems that physical means of transporting information have.
The 2009 Winston pigeon experiment
In the 2009a South African company, fed up with the slowness of its ADSL connection, decided to put it to the test with a carrier pigeon named Winston. Equipped with a 4GB SD card, the Winston pigeon flew around 100km from Howick to Durban, comfortably beating Telkom’s Internet connection.
From one location to another Winston employed 1 hour and 8 minutes. After another hour it was possible to download the contents to the target computer. With a total of 2 hours, 6 minutes and 57 seconds the data transfer was completed. In the same period of time the ADSL line was able to transmit only 4% of the same amount of information.
The story sparked ironic comments on social media, one of which read:
Please dear Winston, lead your people out of the cyber stone age. Free us from the tyranny of Telkom. Take us to the promised land where data flows seamlessly.
The Gray pigeon experiment of 2023
An experiment similar to the one mentioned above was carried out by the well-known technology YouTuber Jeff Geerlingwho decided to test a pigeon with a much heavier load, in step with current digital storage capabilities. Geerling tied to a pigeon called Grey three 1 TB flash drives, placed in an anti-static bag to prevent them from being damaged by the bird’s possible exploits. The challenge? Transfer this data to a distance of 1.6 kilometers to see if the pigeon could beat a Gigabit fiber optic connection, theoretically capable of transferring data to 1Gbps (Gigabits per second).
The pigeon finished the race in approx 150 minutesincluding in this calculation also the time for transferring the data to the computer used in the experiment. The Gigabit connection, however, took longer 7 hours and 30 minutes to complete sending the 3 terabytes of datademonstrating that pigeon does indeed remain a highly competitive “data transfer” method over short distances! The advantage decreases, however, as the distance increases. According to calculations made by the YouTuber, a Gigabit connection would begin to outperform a pigeon only beyond 900 kilometers, and over extremely long distances – over 8000 kilometers – it would become the fastest and most reliable option.
If you want, you can take a look at video of the experiment:
