Ravens, along with crows, are the smartest creatures of the bird family, and they are believed to be excellent messengers. But is it true? We will learn more about it.
Ravens cannot be messengers because they have never been trained to carry messages. The belief that ravens are messengers is strictly prevalent only in magical communities and mythology. In the real world, it was pigeons who were tasked with the job of carrying messages.
There are a lot of questions surrounding ravens and their ability to be efficient messengers. We will tell you all about it here!
Can ravens be trained to carry messages?
Ravens are often renowned for their intelligence and ability to navigate distances. But can they be trained to carry messages? Let us find out.
Ravens have not traditionally been trained to carry messages and have no motivation to do so. Since ancient times, pigeons have been trained to carry out correspondences. In particular, homing pigeons have been used since time immemorial to carry messages from one place to another.
Ravens are often depicted as message carriers in fantasy worlds, but there has been no record of them being trained or used to carry messages in the real world.
How are birds used to send messages?
As we have established, ravens are not trained to carry messages, but several birds are. Allow us to tell you how.
Birds are trained to fly between two specific points, and this back-and-forth is possible due to their magnetoreception skills. Homing pigeons are the best for this job since they can easily find their way back home from different locations using cues such as the electromagnetic field, visual landmarks, and so on.
During wartime, homing pigeons were used to send messages since they could easily withstand disasters and pass through enemy lines. As such, they were also known as war pigeons. To date, pigeons can easily be trained to travel long distances and carry messages.
Why aren’t ravens good messengers?
Ravens do not make good messengers because they do not have sufficient motivation to help out people in carrying messages. Besides, they are quite territorial and prefer staying in one zone. So, if they are made to fly out a lot to a particular region, they may establish a new territory there.
It is not impossible to train ravens, but for them to carry messages back and forth would be unnatural behavior. Besides, they may get lost on the way and set up a new territory elsewhere. We must add that ravens do not have the same degree of perceptiveness and direction sense that pigeons do, and therefore, they do not make good messengers.
Can crows deliver messages?
Crows cannot deliver messages, despite being one of the smartest birds known to man. This is because they do not have any motivation to help us, just like ravens.
Crows and ravens use their intelligence to sustain themselves and seldom follow commands. Therefore, it is incredibly difficult to train these birds, even if you raise them.
Conclusion
Ravens are mysterious, intriguing birds that occupy a prominent role in numerous mythologies and cultures around the world. They are considered a symbol of loss and a bad omen, while some cultures view them as messengers of God. However, these birds cannot be tamed the way a pigeon can and, therefore, cannot carry messages, even though they are depicted as prominent messengers in various fantasy worlds.
