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Rollo Gleeson
Rollo
Hi, I'm Rollo. There's more about me here.

In praise of pigeons  ·  2006-02-15

Humans have decidedly schizophrenic attitudes towards animals. What, for example, is the difference between a filthy rat and a cute hamster, if it’s not a tail? How can spiders be creepy but lobsters delicious? They’re both arthropods, after all. And why do people venerate white doves but despise grey ones (ie, pigeons)?

Of course, not everyone can be bothered hating pigeons. To most people they’re just there. But pigeons are the only animals that most of us see every day, so it seems strange to me that no one knows the first thing about them. Why, for example, do they bob their heads while walking? Where do pigeons go home to at night, and is that pigeon the same one you saw yesterday?. Why are some of them dirty and dishevelled, unlike sparrows and wood pigeons? And what exactly is a wood pigeon anyway?

Nope, didn’t think you’d care. Well, you’ve got this far, so sit back and be educated, because I’ve done the research for you. The common pigeon is actually a “feral rock dove”, descended from escaped domesticated rock doves. It therefore lives exclusively in buildings, which resemble cliffs. The never-domesticated wood pigeon lives only in trees, of course, which possibly explains its cleaner appearance. Pigeons are sociable and monogamous and can live up to 20 years in good conditions.

And the head-bobbing? It’s because pigeons, with their eyes facing sideways, have to deal with parallax shift, the phenomenon whereby foreground objects move relative to distant objects. By moving their head forward in jerks, pigeons see the world in snapshots rather than in a confusing blur. If you put a pigeon on a treadmill, it will walk without bobbing its head. And that’s something you definitely didn’t know.