One of my posts that continues to draw visitors beyond what I expected, is the one about Sugar the cat, who somehow found his way overland from California to Oklahoma to rejoin his lost family.
Paranormal psychologist J. B. Rhine investigated Sugar and decided that the story was authentic. He was interested in animal behavior as well as human, and devised experiments with cats, and with pigeons.
So when he heard this story he had to check it out.
Twelve-year-old Hugh Brady Perkins, residing in Summersville, West Virgina in 1940, was taken to a hospital when he fell seriously ill. The hospital was 120 miles from his home, with mountain ranges in between.
One snowy night he heard the sound of something tapping on the glass of his window. When he looked, he saw that it was a pigeon. He was sure that it was his pet pigeon, so he begged a nurse to open the window. She finally gave in, the pigeon flew into the room and it was discovered that the band on its leg had the identification AUCW167 – which was the same as the band on his pigeon. The nurses/doctors let him keep the pigeon in a box beside his bed.
So Rhine investigated this too, interviewed the people involved, and concluded that it was an authentic story. If you know anything about Rhine, you will know that he never hesitated to expose charlatans, or to dismiss cases that had little foundation.
How did the pigeon do this? We know that pigeons can find their way home from long distances, but this was not a homing incident.
Birds are notable for many skills that go beyond ours. They all have better vision. Not only is theirs more acute, but they see colors in a wider spectrum than we see. Some hawks appear to have a zoom lens for detecting small animals on the ground as they soar overhead. Many birds detect magnetic fields and read direction from them. They also have better hearing than we do. Pigeons are known to be able to perceive both infrasound (sound too high for us) and ultrasound (too low for us).
But none of that explains Hugh this. Some people say this is an example of telepathy, which it might be, but there’s something unsatisfying about that conclusion for me.
I prefer to simply admit that I don’t know. Only that way, it seems to me, can we open our minds enough that we might one day learn what we would like to know.
When I talk about a ‘paranormal world’, I don’t mean that there is some parallel, more complex, world side by side with this one. I mean that the world we’re in is paranormal in its very nature. If the physicists who promote String Theory with its 10 or 11 dimensions are right, then we – cats, dogs, pigeons, people and who knows what else, are probably multi-dimensional creatures. Which might explain a few things.
The next time you’re sitting somewhere with a coffee one morning, consider for a moment the possibility that you may be performing that act in 10 dimensions.
Alan Conrad 
Interesting article. I would describe avian vision and hearing as being different than ours rather than one being better than the other. Much like the difference between an autistic mind and a non-autistic mind. They each have advantages and disadvantages.
You are incorrect in stating all birds have vision superior to humans. The five species of kiwi all have extreme myopia and cannot even bring the tip of their beak into focus. At night their maximum distance of vision is less than 2 metres, during the day it’s around 60 cm. In fact there is some evidence that they are on an evolutionary path to blindness. Completely blind kiwi kiwi seem to flourish just as well as their (poorly) sighted relatives. Kiwi rely on the senses of smell, touch and hearing – all unusually heightened compared other birds. Sight is a very distant fourth.
But I agree animals, and probably humans, have senses and other skills we are not conscious of or aware of and therefore closed to scientific research. And as far as the possibility of being multidimensional beings, that hadn’t occurred to me. Fascinating and something to ponder on quiet evenings. Thank you for an interesting read.
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Yes, I should say most birds. And I agree it is difference rather than a competition. I didn’t know about the kiwi’s, but they are a very unusual bird. Presumably their myopia is related to being grounded, whereas I imagine the keen vision of most birds is connected with flight.
The minds of some birds are something else again. I just read an account by biochemist/paranormal researcher Rupert Sheldrake (who has studied pigeons) of his study of the African grey parrot Nkisi in New York – among other things, during the night it will call out comments on its owners dreams! Imagine how that would feel.
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