Many of us can remember the popular Hanna-Barbera cartoon Dastardly and Muttley in their flying machines from the 1970s and 1980s as they tried to stop a pigeon from delivering whatever urgent messages with its satchel.
Well, Dastardly would have his work cut out with Armando the "Lewis Hamilton of racing pigeons" who has just been sold for a record €1.25 million at auction. The Belgian bird was bought by two Chinese fanciers who paid more than twice the previous record price for a pigeon.
The story made headlines around the world and so we thought we’d find out more about how one might breed a million dollar bird.
Dr. Richard Collins met Eugene Fitzgerald, President of the Irish Homing Pigeon Union along with pigeon fancier Bob Allen in Sandymount, Dublin.
The bird called Armando was sold by auction house Pipa for €1,252,000 after a two-week online bidding war. Nikolaas Gyselbrecht, the founder and chief executive of Pipa, told the Press Association "this pigeon has a race record that has never been matched by any other pigeon.
Mooney Goes Wild presented by Derek Mooney airs Monday nights 10pm RTÉ Radio 1. You can contact us at Mooney@rte.ie
