Why You Should Be Terrified of Doves
Parasite Theory
608 views
Why You Should Be Terrified of Doves
The dove is the most trusted animal in human culture. We release it at weddings. We print it on peace treaties. We hand it an olive branch and call the story finished.
We were never told what it actually is.
The white bird released at ceremonies and the gray pigeon on the pavement are the same species. It breeds year-round, feeds its young on a substance produced inside its own throat, and crosses hundreds of kilometers at highway speed. And because it could always escape a fight by flying away, evolution never gave it the one thing armed predators cannot survive without: an instinct to stop.
One of the founders of modern animal behavior science discovered what happens when that escape is removed.
This video traces the dove from the forests and cliffs it evolved on, through a laboratory cage in mid-century Austria, into research labs where pigeons sorted Monet from Picasso and classified cancerous tissue, onto the battlefields of two world wars, and finally into the empty sky left behind by a bird that once numbered in the billions.
It is not a gentle animal. It never was.
It is simply an animal we chose to stop looking at.
In this video:
Why pigeons and doves are the same family — Columbidae and the rock dove. How crop milk and year-round breeding made them unstoppable colonists. Konrad Lorenz and the cage experiment described in King Solomon's Ring. Why unarmed animals never evolved inhibition. The 1995 Monet–Picasso discrimination study. The 2015 PLOS ONE cancer-detection research. The 2011 Paris study on pigeons recognizing human faces. Cher Ami and the Lost Battalion, October 1918. The Dickin Medal and B.F. Skinner's Project Pigeon. Health risks associated with long-term urban roosts. The extinction of the passenger pigeon and the death of Martha on September 1, 1914. The dodo, and why it was a pigeon.
Sources and further reading:
Lorenz, K. — King Solomon's Ring (1949)
Watanabe, Sakamoto & Wakita — Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (1995)
Levenson et al. — PLOS ONE (2015)
Belguermi et al. — Animal Cognition (2011)
Scarf, Hayne & Colombo — Science (2011)
Smithsonian National Museum of American History — Cher Ami
PDSA — Dickin Medal recipients
This video is for educational purposes. Health information is general and is not medical advice.
#doves #pigeons #animalbehavior #naturedocumentary #wildlife #konradlorenz #passengerpigeon #animalintelligence
2 Comments
Why You Should Be Terrified of Doves
Parasite Theory
608 views
Why You Should Be Terrified of Doves
The dove is the most trusted animal in human culture. We release it at weddings. We print it on peace treaties. We hand it an olive branch and call the story finished.
We were never told what it actually is.
The white bird released at ceremonies and the gray pigeon on the pavement are the same species. It breeds year-round, feeds its young on a substance produced inside its own throat, and crosses hundreds of kilometers at highway speed. And because it could always escape a fight by flying away, evolution never gave it the one thing armed predators cannot survive without: an instinct to stop.
One of the founders of modern animal behavior science discovered what happens when that escape is removed.
This video traces the dove from the forests and cliffs it evolved on, through a laboratory cage in mid-century Austria, into research labs where pigeons sorted Monet from Picasso and classified cancerous tissue, onto the battlefields of two world wars, and finally into the empty sky left behind by a bird that once numbered in the billions.
It is not a gentle animal. It never was.
It is simply an animal we chose to stop looking at.
In this video:
Why pigeons and doves are the same family — Columbidae and the rock dove. How crop milk and year-round breeding made them unstoppable colonists. Konrad Lorenz and the cage experiment described in King Solomon's Ring. Why unarmed animals never evolved inhibition. The 1995 Monet–Picasso discrimination study. The 2015 PLOS ONE cancer-detection research. The 2011 Paris study on pigeons recognizing human faces. Cher Ami and the Lost Battalion, October 1918. The Dickin Medal and B.F. Skinner's Project Pigeon. Health risks associated with long-term urban roosts. The extinction of the passenger pigeon and the death of Martha on September 1, 1914. The dodo, and why it was a pigeon.
Sources and further reading:
Lorenz, K. — King Solomon's Ring (1949)
Watanabe, Sakamoto & Wakita — Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (1995)
Levenson et al. — PLOS ONE (2015)
Belguermi et al. — Animal Cognition (2011)
Scarf, Hayne & Colombo — Science (2011)
Smithsonian National Museum of American History — Cher Ami
PDSA — Dickin Medal recipients
This video is for educational purposes. Health information is general and is not medical advice.
#doves #pigeons #animalbehavior #naturedocumentary #wildlife #konradlorenz #passengerpigeon #animalintelligence