The world has seen many great minds — Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud and Alexander Graham Bell, to name a few — and now one more person joins that exemplary list.

While his name has not yet been released by authorities, I am sure it will go down in the history books. The man, a 23-year-old Australian traveler, demonstrated his sheer genius last week when he attempted to smuggle two live pigeons onto an airplane after a trip to the Middle East.

It is a brilliant scheme, especially since pigeons are one of the rarest and most beautiful birds, not to mention that they have a knack for leaving droppings in very strategic places. But the thing that truly demonstrates this man's high-level, bird-brained intelligence is his smuggling method. Customs officials found the pigeons wrapped in padded envelopes and tied to each of the man's legs with a pair of tights. Now that's planning.

He could get up to ten years in prison for the offense, which is kind of convenient for him. It seems most masterminds, both good and evil, do their best thinking and writing while imprisoned. Just look at some of the written works of Martin Luther King, Jr., Adolph Hitler and Ho Chi Minh.

Like many inventors and thinkers before him, our Aussie friend was building on the work of others, namely a Singaporean man who tried to smuggle a parrot onboard a plane in 2006. He anaesthetized the parrot, but not enough — it started singing while he was going through security.

Apparently the man wanted to bring the parrot home as a present for his daughter's birthday. Instead of a talking bird, he ended up giving her even better gifts: embarrassment, humiliation, money spent on fines instead of other presents and possible trust issues she can look forward to discovering later in life.

But the parrot scheme is nothing. Back in 2007, two American women were arrested for trying to bring a monkey back from Thailand — by pretending to be pregnant. That's right, one of the women placed the sedated money under her blouse as if it were a baby bump.

This was not just any monkey, it was a rare rhesus monkey known to carry parasites and viruses harmful to humans. But so what? Sometimes risks have to be taken for the greater good and I bet the other passengers on the women's plane were thrilled to be part of this vital progress in monkey smuggling. Maybe once they perfect smuggling small monkeys, the women can smuggle orangutans. Just tell the authorities she's pregnant with octuplets.

So, here's to a new Australian genius and the masterminds that came before him. Thanks for entertaining the world with your brainpower and cunning. I can't wait to see the next advancement in this developing field.