A pigeon suspected of performing as a overseas espionage agent has been launched again into the wild.
In Could final 12 months, police in Mumbai intercepted the chicken with what seemed to be a message in Chinese language calligraphy on two rings tied to its legs.
After eight months in captivity on the metropolis’s Bai Sakarbai Dinshaw Petit Hospital for Animals, it was lastly decided that the pigeon was in reality a racing chicken that had escaped from Taiwan.
The exonerated fowl was then transferred to the Bombay Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, who set it free on Tuesday.
Pigeons have a protracted historical past of getting used for espionage functions, and have even been trialed as potential candidates for lively fight duties.
Essentially the most weird episode undoubtedly pertains to a WWII-era programme developed by American behaviourist B.F. Skinner, in an try and create a bird-guided bombing system.
Dubbed ‘Operation Orcon’, brief for ‘Operation Natural Management’, the aim of the programme was to coach pigeons to take a seat inside missiles and successfully act as kamikaze pilots for the gadgets.
![Photo showing a small group of grey and white wild / feral domestic pigeons (Latin name: Columba livia domestica) that are pictured perched on the top of a traditional English red telephone box. The pigeons live in a busy town centre, scavanging crumbs of food from the thousands of shoppers that walk past each day. Many people consider these pigeons to be a real nuisance / pest, referring to them as 'flying rats'.](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/SEI_189753695-d396.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&zoom=1&resize=600%2C450)
The steerage programs had been mainly made up of three lenses put in on the entrance of a small glider, with the pigeons then pecking on the screens to be able to information the explosive-laden aircrafts towards their targets.
Coaching was performed by placing pigeons via visible simulations, through which they had been taught to anticipate a seed reward in the event that they had been profitable at maintaining crosshairs educated on pictures of enemy ships.
It’s additionally not the one time a pigeon has emerged on the centre of an alleged espionage scandal in India.
Again in 2015, one other would-be feathered James Bond was captured at an undisclosed location close to the Pakistani border, positioned below armed guard and brought to a neighborhood police station.
Talking with the Indian Instances, Superintendent Rakesh Kaushal stated on the time: ‘It is a uncommon occasion of a chicken from Pakistan being noticed right here. We’ve caught a number of spies right here. The world is delicate, given its proximity to Jammu, the place infiltration is sort of widespread.’
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The destiny of the supposed undercover agent stays unknown.
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