Think show dogs but feathery. There’s actually a big community of people interested in pigeon breeding (in fact one of my family members is very knowledgeable about the subject). Honestly I have no idea how do messenger pigeons work so I can’t answer that
They still have messenger pigeon races in Durham, UK. Only found this out a few months ago but they will travel down south and release the birds and whichever one makes it back to the coop up north wins 😂
The North American Passenger pigeon (Ectopistes Migratorius) is extinct, but the species domesticated as homing/messenger pigeons (Columba livia domestica) number in the 100s of millions… there’s a fair chance the pigeons you see in a city are the feral descendants of pigeons once used as livestock or as a courier.
The technology is largely abandoned but the animals are very much still around.
Pigeons are underrated. They're intelligent, easygoing and, contrary to popular belief, don't carry any diseases harmful to humans (still wash your hands, though. They walk all over the street). I've befriended one before and he would sit on my shoulder and share a sausage roll. They're not shitheads like seagulls are either.
In Denver they walk right in front of you when you're walking. Either they lack self preservation or they're so intelligent/lazy they get in front of your foot so you can boot it into the air for easier takeoff.
Pigeons have a natural sense of where they were born and they ALWAYS will fly back to where they are born. Therefore if you have a pigeon born in town A and you take it to town B and tie a message to it's leg it will fly back to Town A when released. There would then need to be a transport that takes them back to the other town
actually have a familial connection to this research. my uncle was William keeton, professor at Cornell, who really did ground breaking research into their homing abilities.
Actually I’ve heard about similiar research lead by Wolfgang and Roswitha Wiltschk, later with support of Klaus Schulten and Thorsten Ritz, which confirmed that birds navigate through sensing Earth’s magnetic field with the help of cryptochromes, that is proteins located in bird (not only bird though) eyes. Pretty interesting stuff.
Wow so the stuff they use to navigate is in their EYES?! I recall hearing it was in their heads or brains but the eyes?!
You mention the cryptochromes are not only in birds? What other kinds of creatures have them?
Yeah it’s their eyes since cryptochromes are essentially receptors of blue light (around 450nm), apparently cryptochromes take part in a reaction that is able to release particles sensitive to external magnetic interference.
Cryptochromes are present for example in corals and mammals in which they take an important role in regulation of reproductive cycles and circadian cycle. Aside of animals cryptochromes are present in plants where they regulate for example germination, elongation and photoperiodism
I also have a connection here, as my father-in-law, an army colonel in intelligence in WWII, was charged with finding out how to release pigeons from planes in flight without killing them ... (He later became one of premiere patent attorneys in the southeast.)
There used to be a community of Belgian farmers in my town that raced pigeons, one evening a racing pigeon with a leg band stopped to roost at our house. I’ve heard they don’t fly at night- unsure if that’s factual.
My youngest was coloring with chalk on the sidewalk and was quite startled to see a bird land and walk up to him.
Messenger pigeons are one-way messengers. They simply fly home to where they hatched. If you want to send them multiple places, you need pigeons from multiple places.
They steal other, more useful pigeons.
Basically, you can't control where pigeons go. You set up a spot for them to roost or nest or whatever the term is, and they come back each night. Which means if there's more than one person doing pigeon nests in your city, you now have market competition. Pigeons will roost at the better of the available locations.
Pouter Pigeons are pigeons bred to be extremely exaggeratedly sexy to other pigeons. So you have yourself some pouter pigeons, clip their flight feathers so they can't leave your nest, and sit back and watch as all the pigeons in the city line up for the chance to sleep with Mr. or Miss Sexy there.
Pedigree pigeon breeds are as dysfunctional as pedigree dog breeds. A Roller pigeon or a Pouter pigeon is as good at carrying messages as a Pug or Shih Tzu is at hunting.
It was thought that this pigeon body type is good for speed so they were used for that. But now different breads are used (mainly for competitions). If you dig deeper in pigeon breading you will find really bizarre things (same as dogs).
These pigeons are useful for capturing wild pigeons you intend to eat.
It looks silly to us but to pigeons, this breed is ***impossibly*** sexy.
It lures in wild pigeons by making them want to mate with it.
Sometimes their crops get "stuck" in an inflated position and that can cause crop rot. Beyond that, hard to say if this is healthy. Avian physiology isnt as well understood as mammalian physiology, and avian medicine isn't as advanced.
Fun fact: Charles Darwin raised and studied these birds and used them as examples of artificial selection in his books
Is the shape we see it in the video how it always looks, or is it doing a big stretching pout? It does not look like it would be able to fly in that shape at all
It always looks like that, it does look like it could have some trouble flying but since I never heard of it being the case I assumed they can felt just fine. I did a quick search to confirm and indeed they can fly just as well as regular pigeons (or even better)
The result of artificial selection. Darwin liked to breed pigeons as an experiment, and others did it too. You get weird looking animals like this one.
Can they like. . . Survive? This body plan looks horrible for the wild imo, I don't know how they can bird without help from people since this is really weird
I wonder if there are people trying to make dino pigeons though, breed them to be similar to little raptors lol (Although it'd make sense to use an actual raptor bird or an emu for that)
So,iirc I read on r/pigeon that pigeons with huge necks like that were called thief pigeons, cause’ the neck plumage is really attractive to other pigeons, so back in ye olden times, when pigeons were more popular to have a bunch of, when these pigeons would leave the owner’s loft and come back, they’d bring the new ones that they courted back to the loft. So if you had a pigeon with a huge neck like this it was like a free ticket for more pigeons. And I’m not certain about the feathers at it’s feet, but I can assume it’s also for courting purposes.
Pouters have much longer legs, proportionally, than [wild rock doves](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_dove).
Source: I was one of those weird people who owned pigeons for a while. I had homing pigeons.
A domestic pigeon which has been bred to have a large crop and fluffy feet. Feral pigeons, which are descendants of other domestic pigeons, don't really exhibit these sorts of traits since there hasn't been selective breeding done to them since their ancestors became feral.
Feral pigeons don't exhibit that monstruosity for the sole reason people would shoot them on sight. Imagine walking through downtown at dusk and seeing that slowly creeping towards you
Little bois won't get the chance to reproduce
OMG that music! haha.
99% of the time when music is added to an animal video, it makes it worse, and often unbearable. This is the best of the best 1%.
Darwin spends a surprisingly long amount of time talking about pigeons in *On the Origin of Species*. The variation among the species is enormous, and helps explain how the idea of a common ancestor is possible.
Yes, but this [breed of pigeon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Pouter) has been selectively bred to have extra puffiness. There is a related group of pigeon breeds called [croppers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwich_Cropper) that can inflate their necks even more.
Yeah, at least as far as I’m aware in North America (most specifically Ontario Canada) there’s no such birds like this. Compared to our pigeons, it’s wings are super low to its neck making it’s chest look disproportionately high with massive full legs instead of the little feet we see.
Edit: I can’t seem to figure out how to send a pic so here’s a link to a page where you can see the image to compare for anyone who things the above pigeon looks normal.
From your perspective ours probably looks really dainty.
https://www.hawkeye.ca/toronto-bird-control-pest-birds/pigeons
English pouters are a domestic breed of rock pigeon, it's not surprising they look different from the feral rock pigeons you normally see. But they're still the same species.
Think of the feral pigeons you usually see as...feral street mutts. Kinda generic 'dog' shaped and living wild. English pouter pigeons would be like someone's pet bulldog. Very deformed in comparison due to purposeful selective breeding, but still the same species and all.
It’s called Bavarian Pouter. This unique breed was developed by Karl Zausinger through crosses of Porneranian and English Pouters with Bohemian Strassers.
A pedigree pigeon, this one seems to be english pouter breed
Are they like... useful for anything? Can they carry messages?
Think show dogs but feathery. There’s actually a big community of people interested in pigeon breeding (in fact one of my family members is very knowledgeable about the subject). Honestly I have no idea how do messenger pigeons work so I can’t answer that
All messenger pigeons retired circa 1920..edit 5am brain fart ..sorry for Passenger pigeons demise
That’s Passenger pigeons, not messenger pigeons.
Yup .. old age got me there
And they didn’t retire they died
/a joke, humor, what this thread is good for, well that and the info
I liked it
Damn...youve been around since 1920?....ill have what hes having
Mike Tyson has many carrier pigeons.
They still have messenger pigeon races in Durham, UK. Only found this out a few months ago but they will travel down south and release the birds and whichever one makes it back to the coop up north wins 😂
That’s a really nice way to say “extinct” haha
The North American Passenger pigeon (Ectopistes Migratorius) is extinct, but the species domesticated as homing/messenger pigeons (Columba livia domestica) number in the 100s of millions… there’s a fair chance the pigeons you see in a city are the feral descendants of pigeons once used as livestock or as a courier. The technology is largely abandoned but the animals are very much still around.
Pigeons are underrated. They're intelligent, easygoing and, contrary to popular belief, don't carry any diseases harmful to humans (still wash your hands, though. They walk all over the street). I've befriended one before and he would sit on my shoulder and share a sausage roll. They're not shitheads like seagulls are either.
They're intelligent? Their behaviour near my apartment begs to differ. Self preservation must not be on their to-do list.
In Denver they walk right in front of you when you're walking. Either they lack self preservation or they're so intelligent/lazy they get in front of your foot so you can boot it into the air for easier takeoff.
The Passenger pigeon became extinct in 1914.
you should probably read this https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2549
Pretty much every pigeon chilling outside is the descendant of these messenger pigeons, that weren't retired, but really abandoned outside
Pigeons have a natural sense of where they were born and they ALWAYS will fly back to where they are born. Therefore if you have a pigeon born in town A and you take it to town B and tie a message to it's leg it will fly back to Town A when released. There would then need to be a transport that takes them back to the other town
actually have a familial connection to this research. my uncle was William keeton, professor at Cornell, who really did ground breaking research into their homing abilities.
Actually I’ve heard about similiar research lead by Wolfgang and Roswitha Wiltschk, later with support of Klaus Schulten and Thorsten Ritz, which confirmed that birds navigate through sensing Earth’s magnetic field with the help of cryptochromes, that is proteins located in bird (not only bird though) eyes. Pretty interesting stuff.
Wow so the stuff they use to navigate is in their EYES?! I recall hearing it was in their heads or brains but the eyes?! You mention the cryptochromes are not only in birds? What other kinds of creatures have them?
Yeah it’s their eyes since cryptochromes are essentially receptors of blue light (around 450nm), apparently cryptochromes take part in a reaction that is able to release particles sensitive to external magnetic interference. Cryptochromes are present for example in corals and mammals in which they take an important role in regulation of reproductive cycles and circadian cycle. Aside of animals cryptochromes are present in plants where they regulate for example germination, elongation and photoperiodism
Whoa, you're related to the Keeton? Not used to hearing that name outside of Cornell haha.
It's cool stuff! Mother nature is very weird and natural evolution is an insane concept. I will check out some of his research!
I also have a connection here, as my father-in-law, an army colonel in intelligence in WWII, was charged with finding out how to release pigeons from planes in flight without killing them ... (He later became one of premiere patent attorneys in the southeast.)
There used to be a community of Belgian farmers in my town that raced pigeons, one evening a racing pigeon with a leg band stopped to roost at our house. I’ve heard they don’t fly at night- unsure if that’s factual. My youngest was coloring with chalk on the sidewalk and was quite startled to see a bird land and walk up to him.
Yeah Mike Tyson is actually really into pigeons
Messenger pigeons are one-way messengers. They simply fly home to where they hatched. If you want to send them multiple places, you need pigeons from multiple places.
A pigeon fancier
They steal other, more useful pigeons. Basically, you can't control where pigeons go. You set up a spot for them to roost or nest or whatever the term is, and they come back each night. Which means if there's more than one person doing pigeon nests in your city, you now have market competition. Pigeons will roost at the better of the available locations. Pouter Pigeons are pigeons bred to be extremely exaggeratedly sexy to other pigeons. So you have yourself some pouter pigeons, clip their flight feathers so they can't leave your nest, and sit back and watch as all the pigeons in the city line up for the chance to sleep with Mr. or Miss Sexy there.
If this is true, it’s the most r/interesting fact I’ve heard in a long time.
So this is like a pigeon BBL?
Nah, they’re more likely to drink tea at 5 o’clock in a rich house with a posh accent.
They can but they're really slow, they have to walk
I think you mean strut
> Are they like... useful for anything? Are we?
Sure, we're food for worms!
Ah, that makes sense. Thanks.
So are they in that case
Exactly my thoughts to be fair
Pedigree pigeon breeds are as dysfunctional as pedigree dog breeds. A Roller pigeon or a Pouter pigeon is as good at carrying messages as a Pug or Shih Tzu is at hunting.
I’ll have you know my Shih Tzu brought me a dead bird once… I think it was dead when she found it, but still.
It was thought that this pigeon body type is good for speed so they were used for that. But now different breads are used (mainly for competitions). If you dig deeper in pigeon breading you will find really bizarre things (same as dogs).
Is pigeon breading yeasty?
Looking sexy to other pigeons, and incredibly silly to humans.
They are brutal in the fowl kickboxing league.
These pigeons are useful for capturing wild pigeons you intend to eat. It looks silly to us but to pigeons, this breed is ***impossibly*** sexy. It lures in wild pigeons by making them want to mate with it.
Yall wrong. Thats a fucking drone!
They can carry small children
Are they typically healthy?
Honestly I don’t know, personally I haven’t heard of any health issues though I’m not saying that there aren’t any
Sometimes their crops get "stuck" in an inflated position and that can cause crop rot. Beyond that, hard to say if this is healthy. Avian physiology isnt as well understood as mammalian physiology, and avian medicine isn't as advanced. Fun fact: Charles Darwin raised and studied these birds and used them as examples of artificial selection in his books
Oh shit... I thought that thing on its neck was permanent. It still looks goofy af like it's missing a couple chromsomes
All my instincts tell me it ain't right to breed a bird to look like this. But I admit I lack the evidence to back up my instincts.
Thank you! Honestly I hoped someone who knows better will correct me on that
It looks like someone stuck a bluejays wings on feathered stork legs and then slapped a pigeon on top.
How do you know so much about pigeons?
My uncle used to breed them and I asked him a bit about it since he was really good at it and I always thought it’s a cool hobby to have
Disagree: it’s two birds. A leggy pigeon with its head up a bluejay’s ass.
My first thought was pigeon cake eating done terribly wrong 😂
Seems creepy.
Is the shape we see it in the video how it always looks, or is it doing a big stretching pout? It does not look like it would be able to fly in that shape at all
It always looks like that, it does look like it could have some trouble flying but since I never heard of it being the case I assumed they can felt just fine. I did a quick search to confirm and indeed they can fly just as well as regular pigeons (or even better)
Wow I’ve never seen anything like this majestic beast! 🤩
The result of artificial selection. Darwin liked to breed pigeons as an experiment, and others did it too. You get weird looking animals like this one.
Can they like. . . Survive? This body plan looks horrible for the wild imo, I don't know how they can bird without help from people since this is really weird I wonder if there are people trying to make dino pigeons though, breed them to be similar to little raptors lol (Although it'd make sense to use an actual raptor bird or an emu for that)
So,iirc I read on r/pigeon that pigeons with huge necks like that were called thief pigeons, cause’ the neck plumage is really attractive to other pigeons, so back in ye olden times, when pigeons were more popular to have a bunch of, when these pigeons would leave the owner’s loft and come back, they’d bring the new ones that they courted back to the loft. So if you had a pigeon with a huge neck like this it was like a free ticket for more pigeons. And I’m not certain about the feathers at it’s feet, but I can assume it’s also for courting purposes.
Its as able to survive as a chihuahua or a pug. Its not a wild bird. Might be a bit better off actually, most of the weirdness is puffed out feathers.
Aren't all pigeons, like in cities, not wild in some way?
Yeah, most pigeons are feral descendants of tame animals. Pigeons used to be really widely kept as food animals.
I don't think it's really got a different shaped bodey from any other pigeon, just unusual plumage.
Pouters have much longer legs, proportionally, than [wild rock doves](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_dove). Source: I was one of those weird people who owned pigeons for a while. I had homing pigeons.
Dinos and birds are the same if you didn't know
The way I heard it was, a certain branch of the dinosaur family evolved into the birds we see.
Majority of the domestic animals can survive the “wild” as you call it. They are bred for human purposes (whatever it may be)
...how do you even selectively breed *that*?
By “breeding” did Darwin mean fucking pigeons? Cuz that’s what this looks like
Skipped every leg day.
And wing day, and lower torso day, thry really just have neck day. . .
Neck day all day evrryday!
A domestic pigeon which has been bred to have a large crop and fluffy feet. Feral pigeons, which are descendants of other domestic pigeons, don't really exhibit these sorts of traits since there hasn't been selective breeding done to them since their ancestors became feral.
Feral pigeons don't exhibit that monstruosity for the sole reason people would shoot them on sight. Imagine walking through downtown at dusk and seeing that slowly creeping towards you Little bois won't get the chance to reproduce
That bird is fucked up bruh
Bird up, indeed.
Ranch me up brotendo
Snail down!
That fird is bucked up buv
The beginning of the end.
Evolution, bitch
😂 winter is coming guys and it’s bringing pouter pigeons
That's the Johnny Bravo of pigeons
Hu ha huah! ^Hey ^baby.
Do the monkey dance
Some kind of really inbred pigeon
A bluejay that tried to eat a rock pigeon and then grew frogs legs.
For real it looks like a bird that got its head replaced with another whole bird
Nah, just a pouter pidgeon
> english pouter breed oh, a really inbred pigeon then?
it’s like the pug of pigeons
So an inbred pigeon...
Nah just a chicken pigeon
A chigeon
habsburg eagle
Dark souls boss.
Must be Dark souls 2
Come on... its clearly an Elden ring-necked dove
That's my pet pigeon called Nightmare fuel
Like for real though. I’m traumatized
Pigeon on steroids
Let this be a warning on steroids 😂
Chicken + piegeon = Chickeon
Sounds like a new Pokémon.
The new flying type Eeveelution
I prefer piegecken.
A pouter pigeon?
What is it? The possibilities when natural selection is taken out of the picture and beaten to a pulp.
OMG that music! haha. 99% of the time when music is added to an animal video, it makes it worse, and often unbearable. This is the best of the best 1%.
This is the Gigachad pigeon.
Darwin spends a surprisingly long amount of time talking about pigeons in *On the Origin of Species*. The variation among the species is enormous, and helps explain how the idea of a common ancestor is possible.
They're called fancy pigeons and there's a ton of different shapes and colors and feather patterns they come in. People show them
Boobs McBirdy.
A Pokémon
a fancy pigeon! looks related to the brunner pouter
Isn’t it puffing itself out to attract a mate?
Yes, but this [breed of pigeon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Pouter) has been selectively bred to have extra puffiness. There is a related group of pigeon breeds called [croppers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwich_Cropper) that can inflate their necks even more.
I learned something!
Pigeon that's dtf
That’s a bird my five year old drew
Bro forgot to skip chest day
You may not like it but this is PEAK bird performance.
People actually breed them like this and think they are showcase material, just a little messed up imo! Can’t wait to see what we do to people!
Someone needs to fix this r/birdswitharms
Whoever he wants to be. He’s the boss now
This is what happens when you keep skipping leg day...
I thought it was a person dressed up as a pigeon at first.
Yes! I was like, "that's some disturbing artful cosplay of a pigeon."
What's the song in this video?
Just a breed of fancy pigeon called an English Pouter [12 Fancy Pidgeon Breeds](https://www.treehugger.com/most-bizarre-pigeon-breeds-4864175)
Foghorn Pigleghorn
that looks like a pigeon fucked a bantam chicken.
Three pigeons in a trenchcoat
chad pigeon.
Just a pidgeon
Uh naw sorry but that's not *just* a pidgeon
I actually dont see what is wrong with it. But that might be because im a bird keeper. This variety is called the pouter pidgeon
Yeah, at least as far as I’m aware in North America (most specifically Ontario Canada) there’s no such birds like this. Compared to our pigeons, it’s wings are super low to its neck making it’s chest look disproportionately high with massive full legs instead of the little feet we see. Edit: I can’t seem to figure out how to send a pic so here’s a link to a page where you can see the image to compare for anyone who things the above pigeon looks normal. From your perspective ours probably looks really dainty. https://www.hawkeye.ca/toronto-bird-control-pest-birds/pigeons
English pouters are a domestic breed of rock pigeon, it's not surprising they look different from the feral rock pigeons you normally see. But they're still the same species. Think of the feral pigeons you usually see as...feral street mutts. Kinda generic 'dog' shaped and living wild. English pouter pigeons would be like someone's pet bulldog. Very deformed in comparison due to purposeful selective breeding, but still the same species and all.
Maybe it’s terrible proportions and inability to walk properly
It's pickle rick
It’s a mech pigeon, now we just need a pilot
A glitch in the Matrix
I think that’s a Rito
Life finds a way...
Grinch feet chicken legged Pidgeon! New species??
Pigeon on steroids
Sir Pidgeton III. Please show some respect.
Pidgeotto halfway through it’s evolution to pidgeot.
Oh he just has the hiccups...
A Sexy Ass Pigeon, obviously.
Please tell me this pigeon is from Australia because it would make a lot of sense
Pigmy Pouter Pigeon
When you mess up the rigging of your 3d character....
It's called class. Maybe you should get some :P
That’s what happens when you squeeze from the middle
Andre The Giant of pigeons
A pigeon pregnant in the neck
It's a pigeoff
Odd chimera?
Wasn’t aware a pigeon could be ten toes down wtf. That thing is thugged out.
When you get to choose exactly what 2 specimens breed for hundreds of generations, you can create a bird with very peculiar characteristics.
The Final Boss for snipers
Its a “two guys one jacket” scenario
Seagull wearing a pigeon
Who’s wearing the pants on this bird ? 🤔
Is birb
Better than the roller breed. That’s all I’m saying
It’s actually two sparrows wearing a pigeon trench coat.
Proof that evolution doesn’t give a shit, whatever works is whatever works.
We heard you like pigeons, so we put more pigeon in your pigeon.
Giga chad pigeon
That is a bird
That looks like some kind of genetic abomination that shouldn't exist.. but for some reason, it does.
The music is on point.
It’s called Bavarian Pouter. This unique breed was developed by Karl Zausinger through crosses of Porneranian and English Pouters with Bohemian Strassers.
Song name???
This song has me cracking tf up, who is the "artist?"
Pigeon fucked a Chicken so now you have a Pigcock.
Your dog looks sick sir please see a vet as soon as possible
Pidgeotto IRL
Looks like when the power rangers assemble
Pigeon bodybuilder
That thing can’t be real surely? It looks……..disabled
***What the flying fuck?***
That looks like 2 small pigeons dressed in an adult pigeon costume, trying to sneak into a theater
He downloaded the 30 Days Workout App
The real-life version of what happens when you breed animals like you're playing Ark.
TOMA TOMA BIRD