Pigeons are Fast

Who knew? As a city dweller, I generally consider pigeons dirty creatures. Yet they are smart (from the London Review of Books):

Pigeons are more intelligent than we give them credit for, one of the few animals — along with great apes, dolphins and elephants — able to pass the mirror self-recognition test. If you mark a pigeon’s wing and let it look in a mirror it will try to remove the mark, realising that what it sees is a reflected image of its own body.

and fast:

They can fly extremely fast – up to 110 miles per hour – and with a following wind can cover 700 miles in a single uninterrupted flight (pigeons don’t like to fly at night but can be trained to do so). There are faster birds – peregrine falcons, the pigeon’s main predator, can reach 200 miles per hour on the stoop – but none can fly horizontally, under its own power, as quickly as a pigeon.

I also only have three free articles this fortnight…