Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to Brain Junk. I'm Trace Kerr.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: And I'm Amy Barton. And today we're going to talk about everything you never knew you wanted to know about the Harvard pigeon prank.
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Oh, I know about this prank, and I'm so excited to hear more about it. Let's go.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: Good. So for those of you who do know about it, you're probably into sports or like urban legends. For those of you who don't, please join me on this ride. Because I also hadn't heard of it. I saw something pop up in social media that one summer, an MIT student went to Harvard's football stadium. Every day over the summer. They put on a black and white striped shirt and they would blow a whistle and they would walk around the field scattering breadcrumbs or bird seeds so that the neighborhood pigeons would hear the whistle, see the striped shirt, know that it meant food, flocked to the field.
So then, at Harvard and Yale's opening game of the season, when the referee blew their opening whistle, hundreds of pigeons descended on the field, resulting in a half hour delay of the game. I'm like, that is amazing. I messaged Trace. I'm like, I want this to be true so much. And I was sure it was. And I'm not going to Chuck Norris you on this one. It's not true or it's unsubstantiated, I should say so. Did it happen?
Probably not. For a number of reasons. For instance, this assumes that Harvard just walks out onto their field the first day of the game, the first game day, and plays like they never practice or whistle on their field prior to the opening game.
So right there, that says probably this did not happen like this.
And oh, for those of you who are like me, that do not follow college sports, apparently there is a long standing Harvard Yale football situation that happens every year. Sort of like the apple cup.
[00:02:14] Speaker A: Ah, okay.
[00:02:15] Speaker B: I don't know. It's a thing. Yeah. Apparently MIT is filled with pranksters. And there is also a long standing tradition of pulling pranks or hacks. They call them hacks at the Harvard Yale game. And there are documented actual ones, multiple ones in the past like 75 years. Person documenting these things is Debbie Douglas, the Director of collections and Curator of Science and Technology at mit. She is the MIT hack historian and she's written, she's compiled the second edition of Night a history of hacks and pranks at mit.
And the more I thought about that, the more I realized, yes, those students that are away at college, and they're probably extremely highly intelligent and they're in this environment that encourages inquiry and research. Of course they are doing things like this. So again, the hack is the university's term for a clever or a benign prank or a practical joke. Debbie Douglas says it has good pacing, good humor, it doesn't hurt anyone or anything. Those are the keys to a good prank. And it seems like over the years they have stuck to that. It's become a bit of an unofficial pastime and sort of performance art. And of course it creates community among the students.
[00:03:46] Speaker A: Let's do mean things to other people. Haha.
[00:03:50] Speaker B: Sort of snarky and amusing things. So Atlas Obscura is where I pulled some of my information and they interviewed Dr. Aaron Blaisdell, who is UCLA Department of Psychology back in 2015 when the article was written. He may have retired by now. He says that although historically speaking it doesn't appear that the prank happened, it is very plausible if someone were to have done all those things, he can see it happening based how quickly it he was able to train pigeons to go to a queue that signals food because that was the area of his expertise in research throughout the years.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: Ah.
[00:04:30] Speaker B: Interestingly, he says it only takes a few weeks and you can get a whole flock of pigeons to start reliably going to a cue like a whistle, especially if you time bound it, if it's at the same time every day. So it's the Pavlov formula. You have a cue, you incite a response because they anticipate the reward. And so he says, yeah, you could do that. But again in this scenario it would have to be like nobody has played football and suddenly they walk on the field the first time. So it would happen at first practice, not at the game.
[00:05:05] Speaker A: Yeah. You know what's really funny is I thought it had happened and now that you're saying because you're right, because they would be practicing once we hit the end of summer and so yeah, they would just come and mob the practice that it makes sense. I'm a little disappointed.
[00:05:27] Speaker B: One thing I am not sure about and didn't look up is how long to undo that conditioning. So. But yeah, how do you undo that then? Have you caused chaos for months to come? Like now they send a guy out a half hour before practice so that they can clear the birds off the field.
So the other facet of this Atlas Obscura also interviewed Dr. Edwin Edward Wasserman and he studied pigeons for 45 years as a professor of expert experimental psychology at the University of Iowa. And he said pigeons are actually more Responsive to visual than auditory stimuli. So what they would really be responding to is the jersey. That would be the more important cue than the whistle. Pigeons might not even pick up on the whistle, but flying requires really acute eyesight. And so pigeons and most birds, I'm sure, maybe bats, maybe not bats. They run into each other anyway. They're adept at differentiating between all kinds of visual stimuli. And as we know with corvids, they know human faces, so other birds might too. So the outfit would be a better cue. Like a crazy big visual cue is going to work more.
[00:06:47] Speaker A: Oh, I kind of want to go down to the soccer fields.
[00:06:53] Speaker B: Yeah. He says if you have a really good bright outfit or some great visual stimuli that, like, within three days, you could have birds jumping on your head and shoulders. They're like, we'd like some food, please.
[00:07:07] Speaker A: Oh.
[00:07:09] Speaker B: So soccer moms waiting for your kids.
Let us know how it's going.
Okay, so you want to hear some of the pranks? That's all science. We're done with science.
[00:07:22] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:07:22] Speaker B: Okay. 1948. The first attempt of an MIT student to prank the Harvard Yale game. This comes from the Associated press. In a November 1948 article. Oh. The police found that students had planted wires underground and then planned to set off a detonating fuse during the game. What? And the explosion would have initialed the field with 15 foot square letters showing MIT.
[00:07:53] Speaker A: Oh, boy.
[00:07:54] Speaker B: It's good that they still stopped that. I feel like stadium workers saw the wires or discovered them and they're like, this is weird. And so plainclothes policeman apprehended the students.
[00:08:07] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a little too far, guys. A little too far.
[00:08:10] Speaker B: And he hung in. He was prepared. And he denied everything, saying, all MIT men carry batteries for emergencies.
[00:08:20] Speaker A: What? This weird crank thing that I'm carrying that kind of looks like something to set off dynamite. I don't know what you're talking about.
[00:08:27] Speaker B: Eight MIT students were suspended, with a ninth being placed on probation. Oof. By 1982, they got better. There was greater planning. And this is, I feel like the sweet spot between prudence and technology versus thing is, on camera, I don't think you could do these things very easily anymore. 1982 students at MIT studied Harvard security patterns. And the MIT students moved a small pump powered by a vacuum cleaner motor onto the field and buried it and attached it to a deflated weather balloon. And this took eight trips to the field between 1:30 and 5am and this is known because the pranksters gave a press conference afterward, which, after this you can go find it and watch it. Oh. And at mid game, the machine turned on and inflated the balloon to six feet in size. And it's like a purple balloon. And all over it is written mit. So, like, the field was clear. And then something starts happening on field, like that little divot clears and then this balloon starts inflating and then eventually pops. So go check out that video.
[00:09:43] Speaker A: It is a big balloon. Oh, my gosh.
[00:09:46] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:09:50] Speaker A: You know what I kind of love, though, is it's not Yale and Harvard doing this to each other. It's this third school. It's the middle child who is like, I'll show you guys. Pushes up their glasses, gets out their slide rule.
[00:10:04] Speaker B: That's exactly the vibe. You totally have the vibe, right? Yes.
[00:10:10] Speaker A: And I can just imagine, they're like, oh, my God, MIT go home. You're not even playing in a game.
[00:10:18] Speaker B: There's another one where, you know how they'll have the cards that flip at a game and they say something, they flip their cards at one game and the MIT guys and gals get the cards to say MIT instead of beat Yale.
That one makes me awfully happy.
Another one in the 90s, the pranksters planted an 8 1/2 foot by 3 1/2 foot banner with MIT written on it in the sod at the goal line. And propelled by a rocket which was fired by a battery powered control connected by wires from an MIT student's jacket, the banner flew over the goalpost saying mit.
So that's a good one.
Another one on scoreboards, it'll say the name of the school in big letters. This One is from 2006, and on either side of it, about the same font as that first big capital, about the first size, there's an icon with the schools, like the crest. So on Harvard's field, they have the shield next to Harvard University on there. And so it's not very big looking. MIT students managed to sneak into the stadium ahead of the game and replace the motto on the shield says Veritas. And so MIT changed it to say, and it split up. V E R I T A S M I T put H U G E E G O spelling out huge ego, which is exactly the vibe that you get from all these pranks.
That one made me awfully happy because it's a much more cuddle, like they edited themselves there. And that one is just a very much more chill but clever prank to me. I enjoyed that one.
[00:12:19] Speaker A: What's funny about these is, is there a club? Is there like a hack Club.
[00:12:25] Speaker B: Are they just. They randomly rise up. They're like, we hate those Harvard Yale guys.
[00:12:30] Speaker A: Yeah. But this takes planning.
[00:12:32] Speaker B: Yeah. Significant planning, you know?
[00:12:35] Speaker A: Are they. I have. Huh?
[00:12:37] Speaker B: It's the mechanical engineers.
It's their final project.
They immediately pass. If the prank works, wouldn't that be great? Although that would be unsafe.
[00:12:51] Speaker A: Yeah. Because they'd be back to trying to blow up the field, so that would be bad. Oh, that's so good that they interrupted that kid from. He was like, no, no, it's going to be totally fine. I. You know, I shaped the charges.
[00:13:03] Speaker B: Yeah, the charges. Yeah.
[00:13:05] Speaker A: It's no big deal. It'll be fine.
[00:13:06] Speaker B: And I'll make sure the field is clear.
[00:13:09] Speaker A: I don't know, man. This seems like a lot.
[00:13:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
Yeah. Somebody on the field, like a ref, loses a foot.
[00:13:19] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah. The one that just got probation, you know, he was the one who was like, I don't. I don't think we should be doing this.
[00:13:26] Speaker B: Yes.
Yeah. He ratted him out. He's like, hey, there's a guy with a weird amount of batteries over there. You should go talk to him.
[00:13:34] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. We can't. We can't be doing that.
[00:13:37] Speaker B: So I'm sorry that the pigeon prank didn't happen in that way, but I'm so delighted to have stumbled upon the rest of these.
[00:13:47] Speaker A: I agree. I love the idea of this rivalry that probably neither of those big schools even really pays attention to, and then it just happens. And. Yeah.
[00:13:58] Speaker B: Can you imagine being campus safety for the Harvard Yale game every year?
[00:14:03] Speaker A: And they're just looking for purple.
[00:14:06] Speaker B: We don't know what you need to look for. But giggling people in MIT colors, that's your target.
[00:14:17] Speaker A: That's crazy. So then my question is, do Harvard and Yale prank mit?
[00:14:24] Speaker B: I did not read anything about reciprocation.
Now, that's not to say it doesn't happen, but I didn't stumble across anything.
[00:14:32] Speaker A: MIT has been pranked by both. No, that's not go. You know, this whole AI thing, it's like, I don't need you to.
No, you put it in and they just talk about mit.
[00:14:44] Speaker B: Yeah. So either Harvard and Yale are not as devious. Like, the future supervillains of tomorrow are not going to Harvard and Yale. They are definitely at mit.
And good, Anya, MIT for steering them down a different path. We thank you for your service.
[00:15:02] Speaker A: Ah, that's funny. MIT is going to be like, you need to stop talking about us. If I come home and there's a big purple balloon in my recording studio, I'm going to be a little upset.
[00:15:11] Speaker B: That randomly rises up.
Yeah, I like that one. Because it had to have gone kind of slow, and people are like, what on earth is happening there? Like, did the sprinklers go crazy? And then it becomes apparent it's not sprinklers, which is.
Yeah, that was good execution for that one.
[00:15:33] Speaker A: That is good. Okay.
If you manage to train pigeons to come and mob the soccer field or, like, a baseball field, you need video of that, and you need to find us on Instagram or Facebook and send us some video, because that would be fantastic.
[00:15:52] Speaker B: It would be amazing.
[00:15:53] Speaker A: It would be amazing. Amy and I will catch you next time when we share more of everything you never knew you wanted to know, and I guarantee you will not be bored.
