Researching mines in northern Spain I came across this curious object. It's a canary cage designed to keep the canary alive in the event of a gas leak. If a miner saw the canary laying at the bottom of the cage it was time to abandon everything and leave the mine, but not without first closing the latched glass door and opening the valve of the oxygen bottle to save the bird. A miner would do that on their way out and take the bird with them. It's a signifier of the miner's legendary sense of solidarity, no lives lost to the mine on a miners watch. A solidarity that was also crucial in the fight for workers rights, creating safer and more humane working conditions, achievements of unionization and solidarity that some of us still enjoy today.
@zilog Very romantic, but probably untrue. Mining of the time was a brutally practical profession, with death of men and animals common and accepted, however much regretted. The canary-saving cage is an interesting and curious novelty, but plenty of non-saving cages were also used. Were those miners just colder? Probably not. A device like this would have cost real money, in a time and place when even men's lives were not valued much. There is almost certainly a different explanation for this.

@wesdym @zilog I'm quite sure, given the recorded history others have dug up, that these cages were in use and were at least in part used out of a sense of solidarity and kinship with other living beings.

I'm also quite sure that many other mines just let the bird die (or grabbed the bird on the way out and hoped it recovered), again for a variety of ethical and financial reasons.

It doesn't have to always be one thing.