A closer look
Project Sea Hunt was a bizarre 1970s Coast Guard initiative that successfully trained pigeons to spot lost people at sea from the underside of rescue helicopters; the birds were placed in a glass bubble beneath the aircraft and trained to peck a button whenever they saw a bright orange life jacket floating in the ocean waves; pigeons turned out to be far superior to human spotters because they have a wide field of vision and do not suffer from search fatigue or motion sickness; sadly, the program was canceled due to budget cuts, meaning we abandoned a highly efficient, seed-powered avian search-and-rescue squad in favor of vastly more expensive human eyesight that barely works
