Darryl Laiu of the BBC made a nice two-and-a-half-minute video documentary about B.F. Skinner‘s Ig Nobel Peace-Prize-winning pigeon-guided missile project. The BBC describes it:
The WWII experiment to make pigeon-guided missiles
During WWII, psychologist B F Skinner tried to use pigeons to guide missiles towards enemy ships. His study proved it was possible, and it was finally recognised at the 2024 Ig Nobel Prize awards.
But how did the ‘crackpot idea’ even come about? We spoke to Skinner’s daughter, Julie Vargas, to learn more about the history of the study ‘Pigeons in a Pelican’.
NOTE: A week from today, on Friday night, on February 14, 2025, Julie Skinner Vargas will give a short talk about this experiment. That will be part of the Improbable Research show at the AAAS Annual Meeting, in Boston, Massachusetts. The show is open to the public (free of charge).