On MSNBC next to a photo of a marine with a birdcage:
“U.S. Marine Cpl. Joseph Ellis of Hickory, N.C., and Task Force Tarawa places sandbags on his Humvee as **parakeets used to detect chemical weapons **sit on the hood Wednesday in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah.”
Is the military’s chemical detection technology straight out of the coal mines? Is that still the best or most reliable way?
well i heard alot of reports that said the chemical weapon detection machines were giving off false positives when trucks with dirty exhaust and the like would pass by… if i had faulty equipment id probably wanna use a bird too
Well they used canaries in coal mines to detect toxic gases, I figure this is the principle in action. I would imagine the bird being much smaller leads it to succumb quicker, leaving us humans enough time to hightail it out of the danger.
I think they succumb quicker to the chemicals because they have a faster metabolism. I could have sworm I read an article by Cecil about this, but it’s not coming up in a search.
I read an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer a couple days back, about scattered usage of pigeons. One officer was quoted as saying something to the effect of “I’ve got a 17,000 dollar chemical detector and a 70 dollar pigeon, and i trust them equally”
but yes, smaller animal, faster metabolism, dies more quickly- i don’t know anything about reaction to chemical weapons though, just the old canary thing.
