Bird-Brained Bombs?

While Pavlov's dogs and B.F. Skinner's work with behavior conditioning are the quintessential studies of learning for psychology and neuroscience alike, the archives of experimentation have even stranger stories to tell.  Some are gruesome, but others are so absurd that you can't help but marvel at human ingenuity and creative thought.

My favorite example of "the odd" starts in the dire settings of America amidst World War II.  B.F Skinner, the famous behaviorist psychologist, wanted to assist in the war efforts.  In particular, he saw a need for improvement in the missile guidance of America's air craft.  The key issue was, we really didn't have one.  Bombers approximated when they were over their target and then dropped the full payload in the hopes that a few would accurately hit.  The sheer inefficiency of this system sent Skinner in search of a solution.  And what better experience did he have than working with operant conditioning?

His solution was to train pigeons to peck at a target through a glass lens marked with crosshairs.  As long as the target was in the center of the lens, the pigeon pecked at the center and the bomb flew straight.  But if the explosive began to veer off target, the trained pigeon would peck off center (in order to hit the target it saw through the glass), altering a complicated series of mechanisms which would change the angle of the bomb's fins and redirect it towards the target.

The military actually funded a good part of this research and initial tests looked promising.  However, by late 1944 the military withdrew their funding in favor of more immediately promising technology.  The idea was revived for a short time in 1948 and paid for by the Navy but ended permanently in 1953 after computer guidance was shown to be consistently reliable.

An image of B.F. Skinner's pigeon contraption.

Still, I can't help but crack up at the idea of pigeon-headed bombs falling on enemies.  Animal rights groups would be aflutter with animal cruelty and abuse claims nowadays.  Nevertheless, I'm perversely proud of Skinner and his finally thinking "outside the box."


*Get it?  B.F. Skinner is best known for the "Skinner boxes" he used to condition his animals in his initial testing.