Why Does Everyone Hate Pigeons?

Contents

History And Origins Of Pigeon

Although pigeons today are perceived as annoying birds who just defecate buildings. Way back in the day they caught the attention of the English naturalist – Charles Darwin. Darwin found a pigeon of various types to exist in nature with different types and colors of feathers. But at the end of the day, it was just one species Pigeon – the wild rock dove.

Evolution And Move To The Cities

Years ago, these pigeons used to live on the sea side cliffs. With the emergence of industrialization and large cities being formed, these birds moved to the cities. For a pigeon builds are just a replaced version of cliffs with a better architecture. The reason as to why they moved to the cities is because the humans used to consume them. From Egyptians to the romans, pigeons have been known to be consumed as food by the human race.

Present Day Perceptions

From being consumed as delicacy by the royals in the past, to now being looked at as the most annoying bird. How did this happen? This bird can not talk like a parrot or solve interesting puzzles like a crow. Infect their brain the size of a fingertip.

Five Colour Receptors: Pigeon Vision

Most of the area in their skull is taken up by their eye balls. Now those eyes have five color receptors as opposed to three in other species. These receptors help them see so many things that another species cannot. Going back to the history, a pigeon named Linus was made to remember thousands of images just by looking at them again and again. Pigeons can differentiate between paintings of various artists. They are also receptive enough to understand if a drawing is good or bad. They can pick out the correct spelling of words among those which aren’t spelt correctly. They have the ability to put together objects in numerical orders. They have the same competency with number as that of a monkey. Pigeons were also proposed to be used of in the World War II for their amazing abilities.

Day In The Life Of A City Pigeon

Like any other species, pigeon also go around searching for food during the day and return back to safety at night. They move in bands (Groups of pigeons) are very tightly knit to their families. They have great capabilities of finding their way back home because they use a lot of their own visual maps and also magnetic fields of the planet, the smells of the environment and places they visit and the angle of the sun as well. Due to this ability, they were used as messenger birds.

The reason why Darwin picked Pigeon as his study was because he believed that nature and humans co-exist. And hence, one does not have to far lengths in order to understand nature.