By Ryan Calo

The New Breed: What Our History with Animals Reveals about Our Future with Robots byKate Darling (2021) 336 pp., £20 (hardback) Henry Holt & Co., New York, ISBN 978-1250296108

I read recently that a flock of trained pigeons can be as accurate at detecting breast cancer in mammograms as a human pathologist. Over the centuries, pigeons have carried private messages and delivered drugs. They have been used to spy and, on rare occasions, to kill. A pigeon was once awarded the croix de guerre, an honour bestowed on foreign soldiers by the French Army, after saving the lives of nearly 200 Americans in the final weeks of World War I.

page: 170 – 172
Prometheus: Critical Studies in Innovation Volume 37, Issue 2
SKU: 370205