Sheldrake was wrong...

[Wile E. Coyote]

Since I am not entirely familiar with how homing pigeons work, I need to ask a few questions.

First, I thought you could blindfold a homing pigeon and take it to a completely unknown place, then let it go and it would find its way home.

If this is not true, correct me.

If this is true, then how could it possibly use unfamiliar landmarks to find its way back home? How would it even know which general direction to start going?

 

[CFLarsen]

Since I am not entirely familiar with how homing pigeons work, I need to ask a few questions.

First, I thought you could blindfold a homing pigeon and take it to a completely unknown place, then let it go and it would find its way home.

If this is not true, correct me.

If this is true, then how could it possibly use unfamiliar landmarks to find its way back home? How would it even know which general direction to start going?

Yes, you can "blind" them. Sheldrake speaks of frosting contact lenses, and he also mentions a very crucial point: Far from all return home.

He does not mention how many (or few!) actually make it home. Since we have no idea how many are taken by predators and how many are lost because they lose their way (thereby indicating that pigeons do NOT know how to find their way home, even when blindfolded), the whole idea of blinding the pigeons is fundamentally flawed.

It's a stupid idea, that costs animals to be killed unnecessarily.

 

[Vitnir]

...
I thought you could blindfold a homing pigeon and take it to a completely unknown place, then let it go and it would find its way home.
...

Hey, I thought so too. But then again that impression is made by authors that may or may not know anything about messenger pigeons. The classic use of pigeons being the spy who is in enemy territory and pulls out a pigeon from a small box (how long would it survice in there anyway) and sets it off flying back to England or whatever.

How has these pigeons been used anyway? As a form of telegraph between two locations?

 

[Drooper]

Here is a map of the pigeon route taken by the pigeons in that study: