geekosystem

Last month the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) publicly posted a WWII code found with the remains of a dead messenger pigeon. They believed that the code was uncrackable without further information, and hoped that by making the code public someone could provide the missing piece of the puzzle. That's exactly what happened. A Canadian man says he was able to crack the code in 17 minutes with an inherited codebook. He even believes he knows who sent the message.

This morning in Things That Will Certainly Haunt Your Dreams, here are some catfish in France that have learned to hunt pigeons. The fish, which are not native to the River Tarn where they now dwell, were introduced about three decades ago, and in the ensuing time, have apparently developed a hunting technique never before seen in the animals -- the fish loiter in shallow water near sandbars populated by pigeons and, when a wayward bird steps close enough, the catfish lunge at it, dragging their feathered prey back into the water with them. You can check out the behavior in the video below, or you can just look directly at my worst nightmares if that is easier. Which I hope it's not.

When you think of "intelligent animals," pigeons are probably not the first thing that comes to mind. After all, they're just birds, how intelligent could they possibly be, right? Well, it looks like we, at least I, may not have been giving them the respect they deserve when I imagine how easy it would be to just kick one while walking down the street. No, it seems that pigeons can develop a grasp of the abstract concept of "numbers" just as well as many primates. It may not relate to their everyday lives, but they can still figure it out, which is pretty impressive.

Mind-blowing. (via Reddit | Refresher on the Fibonacci sequence, if you need it.)