The idea started when a worker at Unlimited IT in Durban, South Africa, complained about the speed of data transmission on ADSL broadband, commenting that it would be faster by carrier pigeon.
Enter Winston, an eleven month old pigeon.
Armed with a 4 gigabyte memory stick, Winston took on South Africa’s biggest web firm, Telkom. The race had strict rules, such as no cats allowed and no performance enhancing seeds.
The result?
Winston the pigeon took 1 hour and 8 minutes to fly between the two offices. It then took another hour to upload the data from the memory stick.
The ADSL transmission of the same data was 4% complete. Winston was an easy winner.
Hundreds followed the race ‘live’ on Facebook and Twitter. Winston even has his own Facebook page and lists his personal interests as Flying, Eating, Flapping and Landing.