For Most of History, Pigeons Were Beloved. What Happened?

It was once a god—or at least it was associated with the divine. It served as a symbol of valor, fertility, and peace. We welcomed it into our homes, before we booted it out.  

Today, people love to hate pigeons. In recent decades, they’ve been derided as flying rodents that defecate on sidewalks and bring disease to cities.  

But the birds are only somewhat comfortable around us because our ancestors made them that way. Whether kept as pets, cooked for food, or used to relay messages over hundreds of miles, the reviled pigeon was once nearly universally revered—a fact that a flock of modern pigeon lovers is only now rediscovering.  

“Pigeons are our own historical detritus,” says Colin Jerolmack, an environmental sociologist at New York University and author of “The Global Pigeon.” “They're leftover remnants from a time” long passed. 

One of the first avian species domesticated, the rock dove, or Columba livia, is one of humanity’s oldest companions. Some of the most ancient archaeological evidence of their coexistence with humans comes from around 1400 B.C. from Cyprus, where researchers have dug up the bones of doves burned and buried together after ritual feasts.  

(Scientifically speaking, any of the more than 300 species in the family Columbidae can be called either pigeons or doves. The latter term is usually used to denote the “prettier” and “daintier” ones.) 

An analysis of isotopes in the fossils in Cyprus of birds used for ritual feasts showed they had a diet almost identical to humans, a sign it was “something more important than just a trash bird,” according to Anderson Carter, a zooarchaeologist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. 

“That was a pretty big find that indicated that they were eating scraps from the humans or they were being intentionally fed a specific diet,” adds Carter, who led the study published in the journal Antiquity. 

Beyond Cyprus, pigeons “started settling in cities and on the peripheries of cities from the moment humans settled down,” says Jerolmack. Ancient city dwellers welcomed the birds as they adapted to urban living for both their meat and their guano, which was used as fertilizer for growing crops. 

In many cultures, the relationship with pigeons transcended food. Doves were often depicted with Aphrodite, the ancient Greek goddess of love and beauty. Noah sent a pigeon from his ark to see if the floodwaters had receded and to herald a new beginning. In the Gospel of Luke, the Holy Spirit took the form of a dove to descend upon Jesus after his baptism. And according to Islamic tradition, a pair of pigeons helped shelter the prophet Muhammad in a cave from would-be assassins.  

Native to the Mediterranean, the cliff-dwelling birds are born with a seemingly supernatural ability to “home”—that is, to fly back to their lofts over great distances. Long before modern biologists deduced that pigeons sense Earth’s magnetic field to orient themselves, sailors exploited that instinct to help navigate the Mediterranean. 

From there, the use of the pigeon as a messenger went worldwide. Ancient Egyptians used pigeons to send messages about rising flood levels and ascending pharaohs. The Greeks used the birds to relay the results of Olympic games. Julius Caesar sent news of his military conquests in Gaul back to Rome by pigeon. Word of Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo made its way to London on the back of the bird. 

Perhaps history’s most famous carrier pigeon is the feathered World War I hero named Cher Ami. In 1918, a battalion of Allied troops was pinned behind enemy lines. Bombarded by their own side, the troops attached a note requesting a reprieve to the bird’s leg. Despite being shot in the chest and leg, Cher Ami—French for “dear friend”—arrived back to its loft 25 miles away in time to save 194 lives. The cherished bird was nursed back to health and awarded the French Croix de Guerre.

Pigeons that stayed closer to home were bred to sport plumage with outlandish shapes and vibrant colors. The naturalist Pliny the Elder grumbled about the high prices his fellow Romans would pay for their pets. “Pigeon fancying” reached its zenith in Victorian England, where Charles Darwin was among the many Englishmen who belonged to pigeon-breeding clubs.  

Though “On the Origin of Species” is best known today for its descriptions of animals on the Galápagos, Darwin dedicated the first chapter to the domestication of pigeons to help explain his theory of evolution. His editor, knowing how popular pigeons were, urged Darwin to write his next book exclusively on the birds. 

Despite all the laurels, public perception of pigeons took a nosedive in the middle of the 20th century. With the advent of modern communication and artificial fertilizers, the birds had outlived their usefulness as messengers and sources of guano. And unlike bulkier chickens and turkeys, pigeons don’t lend themselves well to factory farming.  

“Attempts to create breeds of pigeons that were like ‘broilers’ simply were not as successful as with chickens,” Jerolmack says. 

With nowhere else to go, pigeons congregated in cities. Centuries of domestication turned pigeons into birds that bred quickly, ate a wide variety of food, tolerated cold temperatures, and were comfortable around people—all traits that allow them to thrive in urban environments. 

As pigeons filled cities, health officials increasingly—and often incorrectly—attributed illnesses to the birds. In 1945, authorities in Philadelphia claimed hundreds of pigeons were infected with psittacosis, a disease that can spread to humans through bird droppings. In 1963, a New York health official attributed two deaths from cryptococcal meningitis to pigeons. Signs popped up in Queens saying: “Do Not Feed Pigeons. Pigeons Are the Greatest Disease Carriers.” 

“They were easy scapegoats,” Jerolmack says. 

But the biggest blow to the bird’s reputation came in 1966. With New York in economic decline, city officials launched a campaign to revitalize Bryant Park. As part of the push, officials promised to crack down on the “winos,” “litterers,” and “homosexuals” that they claimed overran the Midtown Manhattan park.  

But authorities saved some of their sharpest vitriol for “our most persistent vandal.” Officials told The New York Times the park’s 500 resident rock doves destroyed vegetation and presented “a health menace.” Thomas Hoving, the park commissioner, called the pigeon “a rat with wings”—likely the first recorded instance of an epithet that would tail the bird for the next half-century.  

By the 1970s, the phrase was popping up in newspapers in other American cities. Woody Allen further popularized it by referencing “rats with wings” in his 1980 film “Stardust Memories.”

“By the '90s, every newspaper story is just like: ‘pigeons, commonly called rats with wings,’” says Jerolmack. 

In reality, pigeons are not the disease vectors the comparison to rodents suggests. Arturo Casadevall, an expert in infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins University, says pigeon poop can contain high levels of the fungi responsible for cryptococcosis and histoplasmosis, diseases that primarily affect those with weakened immune systems. But one usually needs to breathe in aerosolized pigeon excreta—by, say, cleaning out a pigeon coop—to be at serious risk of getting sick.    

“Getting a disease directly from a pigeon would be a very rare event,” he says. “Mosquitos and ticks are far more dangerous animals than pigeons.” 

In recent years, the bird’s reputation has enjoyed a bit of a renaissance. In 2024, New York City erected a giant, 16-foot pigeon statue named “Dinosaur” by Colombian artist Iván Argote.  

It was supposed to be a temporary installation, but more than 7,000 people petitioned to keep it up. Ultimately, the statue came down, but not before inspiring hundreds to attend the city’s Pigeon Fest in 2025.  

Some city dwellers have even gone so far as to welcome pigeons back into their homes, as some of our ancestors did. When Abby Jardine rescued a struggling fledgling from the streets of Brooklyn, she didn’t think she would keep her for long. “At first I was like, ‘Oh, it's temporary.’ We didn't put a huge amount of thought into her name.” 

Three years later, the bird, which she named Pidge, has helped Jardine garner over 84,000 followers on TikTok by perching on her shoulder as she does her makeup and gets ready for the day. On Instagram, the hashtags #pigeonlove and #pigeonsofinstagram have around half a million posts from like-minded influencers.

“They see you as their family,” Jardine says of pigeons. 

Cynthia Bardouka-Large, whose Bay Area nonprofit pigeon rescue Palomacy has about 300 birds in its care, says pigeons have suffered from “a couple of generations of really bad PR.” But she adds once someone welcomes an adoptable bird into their home, “most people fall in love.” 

“The birds themselves are absolutely charming, funny, beautiful, loyal, gentle little creatures,” she says, “and people just go crazy for them once they have them.”