Abandoned by Humans, Forsaken by Nature: The Plight of Pigeons (2024)

https://adalinebenila.medium.com/abandoned-by-humans-forsaken-by-nature-the-plight-of-pigeons-7d4f1d32a3cb

by thunderbong • 8 months ago

34 17 8 months ago

adalinebenila.medium.com

anonzzzies• 8 months ago

Here they are abandon or kill (not fast) kill hunting dogs when they are 'too old'. Humans are great.

KyleW9• 8 months ago

I suppose their domestication is partly to blame for their infamous nest making skills, but its still a shame that they’ve been discarded considering previous use cases that were once popular like letter delivery

hastamelo• 8 months ago

they were discarded 100 years ago? somehow they are still everywhere

mschuster91• 8 months ago

Pigeons are highly adaptable and pretty smart, on top of breeding like hell.

jackyinger• 8 months ago

They were also popular as food, and for use of their excrement as agricultural fertilizer. Probably more so than letter delivery.

ahazred8ta• 8 months ago

My father's family raised pigeons for local restaurants in 1930s California. They were cost-competitive with chicken back before the 1950s-60s chicken breeders shifted the dollars-per-pound growth curve.

Spastche• 8 months ago

one of my tomatoes grew almost 20 feet this year entirely off a little bit of pigeon guano, that stuff is crazy as a fertilizer

SamBorick• 8 months ago

pigeons are domesticated rock doves. rock doves nest in small caves, so the only nest building they need to do is a few sticks to prevent eggs from rolling out of the caves.

chaps• 8 months ago

Used to hate pigeons in my 20s. Not like, vile hatred or anything like that, just.... man, what's up with these pigeons.

Now, I live at a place that has a tiny pigeon colony right outside my window. Every morning, a cute pigeon couple flies up to my window sill to watch me for a bit. Sometimes they're not there, presumably hanging out with other pigeons.

Their instinct's to fly away from me if I get close or adjust in my seat, but when we're all just chilling, their feathers floof up into a ball of what looks like comfortable warmth. They slowly blink their eyes like cats and their preening care for each other is always cute.

They are not graceful.

bashmelek• 8 months ago

I used to see pigeons everywhere as a kid. Now they are very rare. I like these animals and many others, and I wish TFA went more into what can be done.

foxyv• 8 months ago

I'm always happy to see pigeons around. They are a lot rarer these days. I remember, before West Nile came around, they would blanket an area. People would have to wash their cars every other day because they would poop on the roofs. Especially if you parked under a tree.

It was the same with crows and sparrows too. Now, you're a lot less likely to see cool birds in urban areas.

hnuser123456• 8 months ago

Around the mich med main campus/huron river, in the winter, there will be a couple of days here and there that thousands and thousands of crows decide to blanket the campus with poop and caw at you as you try to navigate it with your feet. Good idea to have a hood up or hat on.

jmclnx• 8 months ago

But in doing so, we’ve stripped away the very traits they need to survive on their own

Interesting, I wonder if these explains why I do not see pigeons around the small city (~100,000) I live in. 40 years ago, you saw them everywhere, but in the mid to late 90s, hawks started showing up in the city.

Now, you hardly seen any pigeons.

hosh• 8 months ago

This article does not do a very good job of talking about why pigeons were domesticated, and instead, rely upon argumentation by pathos. It only mentions racing in passing, but breeding pigeons for racing weakens the whole argument.

In the Middle East, pigeons were raised as a food source. There are structures that allow flocks to nest, and from time to time, people would cook some for food.

I have seen a video of someone doing so in London with one of the many free roaming pigeons.

There may be other relationships pigeons have with humans.

It’s still possible to redomesticate pigeons. There are some obstacles. If they are going to be harvested for food, then people need some way to make sure they are disease free, and on-site butchering is legal.

zrn900• 8 months ago

This is an Angloamerican thing - especially British - propagandizing and hating pigeons to the extent of calling them 'flying plague' and whatnot. Its not seen elsewhere in the world, even in the Mediterranean. You can still find major city squares full of pigeons as a policy, where people go to see the pigeons or feed them.

xg15• 8 months ago

Without the knowledge of how to forage or avoid predators, it is left to rely on scraps from human hands—often unhealthy, processed foods that weaken its body and leave it vulnerable to disease. While we might feed them out of kindness, their growing dependence only deepens their inability to adapt to the wild.

There are a lot of animals, both wild and domesticated, that are adapting to life in urban areas because food sources in other spaces have been decimated through aggressive building or farming. The city is the wild now.

Abandoned by Humans, Forsaken by Nature: The Plight of Pigeons (2024)

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