The Ethologist Jordi Casamitjana writes about how amazing pigeons are, despite being vilified by many and treated as urban flying vermin.
I grew up in Barcelona.
If you have not been there, it’s a cosmopolitan city by the Mediterranean Sea, the capital of Catalonia. It has all that you would expect of a big metropolis. Relaxing parks, big museums, wide promenades, architectural jewels, a myriad of restaurants, exciting theatres, a vibrant diverse population, and many tourists. As in all cities, it also has urban fauna, but what this is composed of tends to vary from area to area. For instance, in London, where I now live, it’s very common to encounter a fox in the evening, something that would not happen in Barcelona, while you can meet wild boar on the outskirts of this Mediterranean city, which would never happen in London.
However, there is an animal that you are very likely to meet in almost any city in the world: the common pigeon. Pigeons were possibly the first non-human animals I ever met when my mother took me for a walk in my buggy, as they were everywhere in the city. Back then, one of the attractions of the Plaça the Catalunya (Catalonia Square), the main square at the very centre of the city, was to feed the pigeons with seeds you bought from vendors selling them right there. I remember with fondness how you would be covered by pigeons on your head while they were eating the feed from your extended hands. You used to be able to do the same in Trafalgar Square in central London.
You can’t do that anymore. The councils of many cities no longer allow the feeding of pigeons. They do not want them in their cities because they consider them a nuisance (accusing them of spreading disease, soiling vehicles and pavements, and damaging buildings with their acidic droppings). They sometimes call them “flying rats” to vilify them and treat them as pests (there is no such thing as pests, though). That’s quite unfair because pigeons are amazing animals who have managed to tolerate our destructive existence — and even helped us to communicate with each other. They have lived with us for millennia, but unfortunately for them, have often been abused, and even killed.
I thought it was time for me to write about how amazing pigeons are.
Who are the pigeons?
Pigeons are birds of the Family Columbidae of the Order Columbiformes, characterised by having plump bodies, short necks, and slender bills with a fleshy cere (a waxy structure at the base of the beak, where the breathing nares are located).
Domestic pigeons (Columba livia domestica) are a common sight in most cities, but where did they originally come from? They are domestic versions of the rock dove (Columba livia), native to the Mediterranean region, the Sahara, the Arabian Peninsula, South Asia, but also, interestingly, the west coast of Scotland and Ireland. Wild rock doves are pale grey with two black bars on each wing, whereas domestic and feral pigeons vary in colour and pattern.
The domestication of pigeons probably occurred as early as 10,000 years ago, and since then they have been spreading all over the world. Feral pigeons, also called city doves, city pigeons, or street pigeons, are descendants of the domestic pigeons who have returned to the wild — and particularly thrived in cities that look closer to their original rocky homes. Although they are considered invasive species in many places (in the US they are labelled an invasive species by the USDA) because they are not technically native, and some people do not like how they adorn concrete and cars with their faeces, I think that, by now, we should all accept they are the ultimate urbanites whose right to citizenship has been earned.
Pigeons are robust athletic birds with strong pectoral muscles adapted for powerful and sustained flight. They can fly over 6,000 feet (1828.8 m), and very fast, averaging about 77.6 mph (the fastest pigeon ever recorded set the flight speed record at 92.5 mph (149 Km/h). Pigeons’ vision is very good, as they can see ultraviolet light and have a wider visual spectrum than humans. They can also detect sounds at far lower frequencies than humans can.
Pigeons are monogamous, with the female laying two glossy white eggs in a flimsy nest that barely holds them, and incubates them by night (whilst her male does it by day). The chicks are called squabs and are reared by both parents who work together to feed them by secreting a special kind of protein-rich milk from their crops. Pigeons are very clean and there is very little evidence to suggest that they are significant transmitters of disease. They are herbivorous, eating mostly seeds, grains, berries, and fruits.
Pigeons are gentle and social with their unique personalities and hierarchy within the flock (normally of 20-30 birds). They communicate through cooing sounds and wing-clapping during takeoff. In the wild, the average pigeon lives around six years, but they can live up to fifteen years.
Pigeons’ intelligence
Although all animals are intelligent because they can successfully resolve the problems they care about by thinking about them and applying solutions they have learnt or instinctively know, we humans tend to appreciate more the intelligence that we consider human-like. In this regard, we can say people who know them well would consider pigeons very intelligent.
For instance, we think that being able to return home is quite clever, as not all of us manage to do it without the aid of maps or mobile phones with GPS. Pigeons are very good at it, though. So good that this amazing ability was exploited for centuries when people used pigeons to send messages to each other. Homing pigeons are a variety of domestic pigeons selectively bred for their ability to find their way home over extremely long distances, so these pigeons were taken away from their homes, messages were attached to their legs, and after releasing them the pigeons would return to their home where people could read the messages.
Homing pigeons were potentially being used for delivering messages as early as in Ancient Egypt (1350 BCE). By the 19th century, homing pigeons were used extensively for military communications. They have also been used by pigeon fanciers in competitions to see which pigeon would return home first. Homing pigeons were still used in the 21st century to send emergency messages by certain remote police departments in Odisha state in eastern India, but this practice ended in 2002. The record for the longest distance a homing pigeon has returned home is 4,308 kilometres (2,684 miles), set by a pigeon named “Creation Invincible,” which completed the journey over 83 days crossing the Dead Desert in China in 2005.
Some say that they have these amazing homing abilities because they can see the stars during the day, while others claim that it’s due to their ability to sense magnetic fields. Another theory is that they use “olfactory navigation“, using the scent of key landmark features such as forests, coasts, rivers, etc. (pigeons have a better sense of smell than most birds).
Pigeons are capable of solving complex problems as well as understanding patterns. In a study from Wasserman et al. published in Springer in 2013, the authors study how pigeons reacted to patterned-string tasks, in which two or more strings are shown, only one of which is connected to a reward. The results showed that pigeons successfully learned patterned-string tasks, even in computerised models, and exhibited the same general performance profile as mammals.
In a 2011 study by Damian Scarf, Harlene Hayne, and Michael Colombo published in PubMed.gov, pigeons performed just as well as monkeys when it came to understanding numerical values. Pigeons can also use selective attention to determine which objects are important versus which objects are not, and they can also place everyday objects into distinct categories. A 2014 study from the University of Iowa proved this fact when they looked at whether pigeons could determine whether sets of images belong to category A (designated by a zebra pattern) or category B (designated by a geometric pattern) by pecking at a touchscreen.
Pigeons can recognise different humans, even after a change of clothing, possibly by memorising facial features. In 1986, Watanabe and Ono also found that pigeons can show altruistic behaviour and help others in distress. Specifically, the study showed that when pigeons witnessed their cage mates experiencing pain induced by electric shock, it inhibited their operant learning, which suggests that pigeons can recognise and respond to the distress of other pigeons.
Finally, pigeons can see their mirror reflection and partially pass the “mirror test” that very few species have passed. There are two independent aptitudes regarding such tests. One is the ability to detect synchronicity between self and foreign movement, and the other is the cognitive understanding that the mirror reflection is oneself. A 2021 study showed that pigeons are known to achieve the first but fail at the second aptitude, like most monkeys.
The suffering of pigeons
It’s tough for pigeons to live in cities. Not only are they often killed by the authorities that want to get rid of them, but many have deformed legs or even miss the fit altogether. People used to believe that it was caused by their faeces, which are corrosive enough to damage buildings (so they could damage their feet too). However, in 2018, researchers from the Centre for Ecology and Conservation Science in Paris conducted a study on 1,250 pigeons across 46 sites and came up with a new theory. They found that pigeons were more likely to have mutilated feet in areas with the densest human population, where the air and noise pollution was high, and, interestingly, with a high number of hairdressers. They concluded that the high movement of traffic and people would spread human hair and plastic threads, and then the pigeons’ legs would get tangled. When they try to remove them with their beaks, they accidentally pull them tighter, restricting the blood flow.
Another way humans have been causing suffering to pigeons is when magicians have been using them for their tricks. Doves can be stuck to the inside of magicians’ sleeves with double-sided tape, suffocated from being confined in small spaces for too long. Beauty Without Cruelty-India noted that birds in magic shows often have to travel long distances, which can be stressful, and if they are injured or die along the way, they’re simply “discarded and new ones take their place.”
Pigeons are also used in ceremonies and rituals. Some may be religious and may involve sacrificing them, but others may be celebratory events that have been spreading in recent times. For instance, in 2023, a pigeon who had been completely dyed with a pink colour to use at a party for a gender reveal of a baby was found and rescued but died a few days later. A man walking in Manhattan’s Madison Square Park, New York, US, found the pink-dyed pigeon, and took her to the Wild Bird Fund rehabilitation centre, which said the use of birds for these sorts of events is “an act of animal cruelty.” When the centre saw the bird and named her Flamingo, she was in critical condition and with multiple signs of malnutrition.
We then have the infamous “sport” of pigeon shooting. They can be shot when spotted in the wild simply as any bird is shot by casual shooters, but they can also be shot as part of competitions. There are two types of competitions, box birds and Columbaire. In box birds, the pigeons are held in a mechanical device that releases them when the shooter calls out, whilst in Columbaire, the birds are hand thrown by a person when called upon. Particular species (Columba oenas) or breeds of pigeons are used in these as they are bred for speed. Live pigeon shooting was held in the 1900 Paris Olympics. Live pigeon shooting was once the pastime of aristocrats in Britain, but this “sport” was banned in 1921. In the US, live pigeon shooting remains legal, although prohibited by statute in 14 states. It is also legal in Mexico, Spain, and other European countries.
Finally, as with many animals, pigeons are also killed to be eaten. Ancient Egyptian and Biblical texts mention pigeons being eaten and used in religious sacrifices, the Romans were particularly fond of pigeons, and in mediaeval Europe, pigeons were farmed for food by keeping them in lofts, especially in France. In Egypt, pigeons are still commonly raised and eaten.
As we can see, pigeons are amazing animals, and although the exploitation and abuse of any animal is wrong, when it happens to such incredible creatures the injustice seems worse. Fortunately, pigeons are very resilient, and we will likely be able to share our cities with them for the foreseeable future.
Seeing pigeons casually walking on the payment always makes me smile.
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