headspace-hotel:

kinka-juice:

homunculus-argument:

I wanted to look up what kind of dogs the vikings had in order to make a historically accurate shitpost meme, but while googling “viking dog”, figuring I’d find pictures of some kind of big cool war dogs or dogs used for hunting moose and bear, but instead I found this

the noble vallhund

herder of cows and biter of ankles

This is literally a viking corgi.

The Pembroke Welsh Corgi developed starting roughly 1,000 years ago from a mix of the 3,000yo breed that was the historical Cardigan Welsh Corgi (first brought to Wales with Celtic groups emigrating from continental Europe), and Spitz type dogs that were brought in with the Viking raids 1,000 years ago.

Corgis are a mix of Viking and Celt, and that’s neat. The vallhund is literally very close family to at least the Pembroke corgi.

There are a number of Scandinavian dog breeds that might be also associated with Vikings, most of which are spitzen. The Norrbottenspetz, Karelian Bear Dog, Finnish Lapphund, Icelandic Shepherd, Finnish Spitz, etc.

Special additional shout out for the Norwegian Lundehund, which was developed to hunt puffins. (Lunde means puffin). They look like a generic medium dog at first.

Except they have secret weapons just for clambering over rocks to get puffins. They have six fully-formed and muscled toes per foot, as well as extreme range of motion in their joints.

And there’s your lesson in weird Viking dogs.

The extra-toed puffin dog I only ever heard about in an encyclopedia of dog breeds until now. They’re very rare!

“As we fled our dying planet with dogs in tow, other animals grew jealous of domestication. The last people to leave reported owls that were friendly and playful, bobcats standing guard over children, and teams of deer trying to pull plows. They all hoped we would save them, too.”

-QuietPineTrees

Apocalyptic fiction is inherently weird, but too many books and movies have turned it into something tame and predictable. For more of my bizarre takes on genres you thought you knew, pledge to support the Quiet Pine Trees book!

Quiet Pine Trees

stepforddoll:

my daydream of feminization

Where do our horses come from? From the Western Eurasian steppes, north of the Caucasus, according to a new genetic study. There, a wild population was domesticated and bred some 4,200 years ago. The domesticated horse conquered in a few centuries the rest of Europe and Asia, replacing all wild populations. The genetic comparison shows that this horse was more docile and had a stronger backbone than its wild ancestor. Characteristics that ensured its success at a time when everyone in the Old World was travelling on horseback.

For the study, published in Nature, the genomes of 273 horses that lived between 52,000 and 2,200 years ago were analysed. One horse bone comes from our collections (pic 4): it was excavated in the 1860s in the Goyet Cave (near Namur) and is 36,000 years old.

Millennia-old specimens continue to yield new information thanks to modern techniques!

More:www.naturalsciences.be/en/news/item/21455/

here we go again! (this is the quickest way to answer all these asks without clogging everyone’s dashes with a bajillion bits of answer spam, btw, i’m not trying to hide these questions or imply they’re not good)

answered asks include the rules of war, Bayverse drillers, volcanoes, MREs, group homes, necromancy, self made packages, Omega Supreme, the extent of rewriting one’s coding, and detaching limbs

kind of all of the above? different cultures, governments, and people groups had different opinions and strategies on how war should be conducted throughout history, and tactics evolved along with technological and cultural changes. during the Prime Wars of ancient history, when the ruling Firstforged had largely disappeared and people were left to squabble over their relics of power and claim authority for themselves, it was a destructive free-for-all, and as time went on people slowly figured out generalized boundaries to respect or cross. but these were largely localized wars between tribes and people groups. the first universal civil war of Cybertron that encompassed everyone on the planet was the War of the Threefold Spark, started by Exarchon. this war saw an awful lot of changes to leadership and city-state structure, and features that remain in place today, like the Maxilla series of forts south and east of Rodion, established by the original Overlord to shore up defenses against Exarchon. the forces of the Threefold Spark were brutal and inhumane, but so were the opposition. out of that came some general rules of conduct and the concept of restraint when dealing with enemies, out of a respect for Cybertronian life. whether or not people actuallyfollowed those codes of conduct varies throughout history and culture

the modern Stratocracy actually comes from a military coup of the previous regime, the Triumvirate. the Grand Architect rose up and overthrew the three despots. naturally, his loyal forces installed him as the new leader of Cybertron, and he went on to conquer the colonies, unifying all mecha under his rule in a way that hadn’t been seen for vorns. as soon as that was accomplished, he dissolved the military, declaring war the pastime of either evil mecha or ones with no choice. the majority of his forces went directly into service as legal Enforcers. so while the Stratocracy may technically be a demilitarized state, their extreme police forces are essentially a domestic military exercised by the government for control of the populace. since they aren’t actually called a military, however, they are exempt from the historic precedent of restraint and boundaries to prevent war crimes

yes! drillers are a rare, giant species of mechanimal living deep under Cybertron’s surface, acting as excavators and tunnel architects to clear out the complex understructure of the layered strata. a different subspecies lives on Lunas 1 and 2 also, smaller but faster and more social than their aloof cousins. they’re almost never seen by mecha as they usually roam too deep, and the occasional underground team who does spot them must be very careful to leave unnoticed, lest they get eaten!

(also this is a Bayverse appreciation zone, i love those movies even though i have many many negative things to say about them, they and the Bumblebee movie got me into Transformers)

aside from the obvious answer of hotspotsofsentio metallico, there’s a few geological features that fit the bill

and after ten minutes of searching i am unable to find where i’ve mentioned them before so let’s hope i can recite these from memory. there’s a small handful of actual volcanoes, although they behave a bit differently since Cybertron is not a planet with a molten core/plate tectonics, and has a different composition from Earth. volcanoes spewing lava are more along the lines of giant smelter’s pits from natural forges deep inside the planet, instead of spots in the crust where liquid rock escapes. some of this lava is super funky looking too, like blue lava (a real thing, look it up!) and often mixed with sentio metallico or heavily charged energon from nearby leylines, with a good chance of photonic crystals forming once it cools. there’s also tar pits, yareta forges and other natural molten vents, flaming oil or gas reserves that have been burning for centuries, and heavily irradiated scars in the earth. more typical liquid rock type volcanoes are common on Caminus, Eukaris, and Pyrovar of Devisiun. Prion of Devisiun and Velocitron don’t have a molten core, and Carcer’s tectonic activity is ridiculously slow

i thought about making art for this, but i’ve sort of already answered this. to quote this post:

a protein shake (oops misspelled it in the picture) is a very silt-heavy drink, which means it’s full of granulated materials and nanites meant to provide self-repair resources along with fuel. Most often it’s a thick energon slurry with added powders, but sometimes other liquid bases are used. There’s an endless amount of flavors, and the only limitation is making sure not to add two ingredients that will react explosively or fuse into an undrinkable solid. It might be good for other dishes, but it kinda ruins the point of a shake.

what this means is a shake contains both energy and upkeep fuel necessary for a mech’s diet. silt-heavy shakes have enough physical material mixed in to count towards self repair while also providing the energon requirements. if something can’t be mixed into the drink itself, you can make the container out of that material and simply eat it afterwards. it’s not so much a battlefield food anymore, but definitely used for busy or overworked people who have no time to make real meals. it’s the ONLY thing empurata victims can eat, added directly to their fuel lines

(warning for child neglect and death)

@hashkivenu so it’s a little bit backwards from human society. group homes are the norm, and nuclear structured families are a personal choice. group homes don’t exist to be backups when nuclear family parents can’t or won’t take care of their kids, and they aren’t obligated to search for or take in new children from bad situations. the vast majority of them get new kids directly from the creches at hotspots, as patrons tour the planet every so often to pick up newsparks they feel will fit into their group home. there are some exceptions, like the Safeguard Aerie which was specifically founded to take in “troublesome” kids from other group homes in order to keep siblings together, rather than splitting them, which is the only reason Starscream, Skywarp, and Thundercracker are still being raised as a complete trine

every layer of society has some cultural enforcement of functionism, which means even early on in life a mech will be subjected to the perception of their frametype. if they’re obviously disabled or mentally unwell, have an undesirable frametype, or somehow otherwise aren’t considered good enough to be put in a group home, they could be straight up abandoned by the creche workers and left to be absorbed back into the hotspot. those who age out of the creches without being picked up by a touring patron are sent to overflow group homes, created to take “leftover” sparklings. there’s not usually a lot of “leftovers”, though. the patrons themselves are generally free to treat their kids as they see fit. abuse and neglect are illegal of course, and group homes never have to worry about lacking energon to feed their kids since rations are assigned by the state. but if a child with a function-impairing disability gets lost in the city on an outing and the patron simply cannot find them? well, the patron did all they could, how sad that the child was misplaced, truly what a tragedy. that’s what happened to Red Alert as a sparkling. abandonment at any age is the first most common way a kid becomes a junker, and many kids with stricter/unkind patrons live with the constant unspoken threat that if they misbehave, act too annoying, or otherwise make themselves undesirable, it’s a one way ticket to homelessness for them. this is, obviously, a horrific way to grow up, but it’s not uncommon, and that’s the kind of home Deadlock is from

the second most common is by familial circumstance. if a child is adopted by an adult, and that adult becomes a junker, then the child can either be passed to another preexisting parent or legal guardian, be surrendered to a penitentiary home, or follow their parent to the streets. this happened to Springer, since Impactor technically wasn’t a junker when he adopted Springer, and junkers aren’t legally allowed to adopt from a creche or group home. running away is also a rare way gutter children are created, by running from a predestined function, abusive home, or out of sheer childish recklessness. that’s how Bludgeon became a junker. Wheelie doesn’t remember ever having caretakers so he was probably abandoned, and Nightracer doesn’t remember anything prior to being a nymph, so she has no clue what happened to her

it’s funny you mention this because i will tell you that there are, technically, at least two necromantically revived characters alreadyin SNAP, and no this is not including the immortal characters like Hellscream and Optimus. don’t worry, you’ll find out more when we get to the zombie episode :) it’s in season 2, if you want to guess

but yea, it’s perfectly possible. i mean you could argue that the immortality of the heroes is a form of autonecromancy, and if Hellscream ever follows his damn character arc and learns to do good things for other people, he might figure out how to turn that power outward to revive others instead of just himself. (and this is so far ahead and incomprehensible i won’t consider it a spoiler, but in SNAP’s sequel someone who’s been dead a long time gets pulled literally from the brink of death back to life, which is basically textbook necromancy right). but it’s still a pretty rare and strange ability, and bringing someone back to life often causes more problems than it solves… especially if you were never meant to have that power in the first place

it can vary some, yeah! some folks probably have internal settings for different mass and dimensions, but still within certain tolerances, and dependent on having the physical resources to package. overstuffed packaging is probably uncomfortable to process, but doable

and yes, sympathetic covert gifts are very valuable to junkers. material processing frames make those gifts easy to create and distribute, but anyone cautious and clever enough could get a meal to a junker. junkers have to be pretty wary about what help they take, though, because plenty of people view them as failures of function instead of people to be helped. trusting the wrong friendly face was the reason Damus got empurata’d, and Nightracer and Red Alert know very well to avoid the “charities” set up to give “aid” to gutter children that really just take them directly to penitentiary homes

weeeeeeeell

this is spoilery, but. when the Autobots find Simfur, abandoned way down in the depths of the Forbidden Zone, they carve out a little niche for themselves. a safe spot, where the horrors of the dead city are out of sight and out of mind. they don’t often venture further into Simfur, but on the few occasions they do, they find what seems to be a great processional highway leading downwards towards a great gate that might very well lead to the center of Cybertron itself. they can’t get past the gate, however, because of the enormous, desiccated ship that lays crashed in front of it

it takes the Mistress of Flame far too long to listen to her cityspeaking instincts and realize that ship is somehow alive

the hard limit is what the physical frame is capable of, as determined by the spark’s inner coding and the way it was forged. the vast majority of frames are capable of processing hydroxide, it’s simply an error in code that means the digestive system fumbles and gets irritated, and fixing that would be relatively easy for someone very well versed in functional coding of the frame. but if you were to take something not universally edible, like literal junk food that was never created to be eaten in the first place, or incredibly corrosive acids, or large chunks of difficult material like diamond, it’s not actually a guarantee that a mech physically has a frame tough enough to deal with it or the specialty organs to process it, coding or not. even for junkers who have to eat that kind of trash, it takes a long time of eating this food and getting sick for the frame to start adjusting to their circumstances, and they still have a point at which there are things they simply cannot digest. you can recode the frame that exists as is to (hopefully) do what you’d like it to, within its preexisting limits

jacking into a mech’s systems, editing their processing, and changing their coding is always a risky business. processor surgery exists, used for things like beastformer domestication or naturalizing an added upgrade to one’s frame, and firewall upgrades and OS patches are distributed like vaccines, but that’s not the same as full-on recoding. mnemosurgery is an extremely unresearched field in SNAP, barely acknowledged by medical institutions and often explored only by the… less scrupulous, shall we say

and what those less scrupulous people have found is A) it is incredibly difficult to battle the deep set hardcoding created and maintained by the spark itself, governing the major functions of the frame and quite a few minor functions too, often overwriting whatever changes they make, and B) at some point, no matter how much upgrading, editing, careful coaxing, and unethical wildly overpowering changing you do, the frame will just… fail. the metal will fracture, or the processor will fatally crash, or the spark will gutter out. it’s like there’s some kind of unspoken, invisible barrier, and a mech simply cannot surpass it for some reason

so! assuming you had a junker with an extremely educated, very specialized background in the functional coding of the frame, with a sterile environment needed to safely open someone up and access their processing centers without barriers or firewalls, and the incredibly precise interface machinery needed to read, edit, and insert coding to a living frame… they might be able to change their colors. since the spark itself is what generates a person’s paintjob that paint nanites follow, only influenced by other sparks one bonds with as a child, you have a chance at changing colors, and then changing right back in a few days as the inborn coding of the spark reasserts itself. or, conversely, maybe you change the color no problem, but you give yourself sunspotting problems or fordite syndrome. or, perhaps you change the wrong colors, or the wrong places, or get the wrong shade, or accidentally kill off an entire section of nanites. or! maybe you change colors and there are no side effects at all! it’s a gamble. that’s why it’s so under researched, because it’s so incredibly hard to consistently get the results you want, despite the incredible possibilities of mnemosurgery and other recoding procedures. and of course because so little has been explored, that makes it harder to accomplish, which makes it less desirable to research, and the issue feeds back on itself. it’s a lot like genetic experimentation today, where taking out one little dot or removing “junk” genes or switching up a sequence just the tiniest bit ends up having enormous repercussions. viable as a path of research, but at the moment it isn’t anywhere near developed enough to be a common, normal procedure everywhere

that said, when editing coding directly often fails, editing coding indirectly can succeed! like i mentioned above with junkers eating largely inedible things for a long time, until the frame slowly adapts to toughen up the digestive system and eke out some nutrition from trash. for paint specifically, the most common indirect coding edit is tattooing, which for mecha can be either a temporary paintjob or a permanent frame inclusion. scarification is one method, and another is nanite mimics that integrate into a person’s top couple layers of paint and emit a passive signal that they’re supposed to be there, eventually tricking the self repair system into maintaining them and keeping the tattoo. a sentio metallico bath would end up removing both scarification and nanite mimic tattoos since it would boost healing enough to get rid of them, but those are still pretty effective indirect methods of editing coding

(the post this is referring to)

ehhhh hm. not super long, i think? it’s not like limbs are regular detachable kibble, meant to be taken off with inbuilt physical features that allow for it. the amount of time it would take to safely surgically remove, medically sustain and store, transport, and then reattach and heal someone’s limbs just to keep them dentained is wayyyy too much time, energy, and resources when you could instead knock them into medical stasis lock and be done with it

My dog lies on the grass in front of me. He’s flat on his back, his floppy ears are splayed out, his tail is wagging and he has a bright orange tennis ball in his mouth.

He looks ridiculous. Something my dog is very good at.

Yet, as I look down at him I have the sudden realization that somewhere, maybe as little as a hundred generations down the line, his fore-parents were wolves. The same animals which even today trigger fear in some primal part of our hearts.

It’s the same with my co-worker’s chihuahuas. The little yappy creatures charging up the driveway to try and drive off my car, and whom I could probably pick up and throw like a football, are descended from wolves.

Okay, they were probably runty cowering wolves who followed the camps of hunter-gatherers around and ate garbage, but wolves none the less. Wolves, who over time and generations would become the tiny little animal charging up towards me as if it were still a six foot tall apex predator, instead of the coyote equivalent of a quick snack.

If you have ever seen a wolf in the flesh, you will realize that this is quite a shocking change. You certainly wouldn’t confuse any of the dogs I’ve had over my lifetime with a wolf. Yet, the fact that domesticated dogs are descended from wolves is more or less solidly proven. They’re not some less-aggressive canid we’ve tamed, nor some hybrid that was easier to manage.

Dogs came from wolves, and it is quite the remarkable transformation. Moreover, dogs were our first success in domesticating other animals. Most genetic and archeological evidence suggests that dogs are the oldest domesticated animal. They predate sheep and goats by a significant margin, and even agriculture itself by at least a few thousand years. We’ve had a lot of time to shape them, both passively and actively.

And really, the ancient alchemists were wasting their time trying to turn lead into gold. Humanity had much greater success turning wolves into dogs, and what a transmutation it was. While no one can deny the similarities between a dog and a wolf, they are also two very different things to most humans. Someone brings are wolf into your car, you do not say “Oh yeah, that’s a huge dog.” You say “No, that’s a fucking wolf.”

Wolves and dogs have become two different animals, both in behaviour, appearance, and their place in regards to humans. Whether they are vermin, livestock, or loved pets, a dog will always be something different than a wolf.

As my dog lies there on the grass, belly up, tail wagging, bright orange tennis ball in its mouth, happily waiting for me to scratch its belly. It’s a very weird and stark realization that his ancestors were wolves.

If there is one thing that can be said, humans are very good at changing their environment. Now regardless of your views on climate change or greenhouse gases, it cannot be denied that humans have left a big and very literally mark on our planet.

We’ve been doing it ever since our primeval ancestors figured out that fire can be used to clear forest, and that the grasslands created by such burning attracts grazing animals and gives us a clear line of sight for our throwing spears and nets. We have been doing it ever since the ancient humans figured out they could damn creeks to make ponds that lured in waterfowl. That if you repeatedly burned a clearing, the berry bushes would keep coming back ever year. That if you created stone walls along the low tide line, you could create sandy terraces that are perfect for clams. We managed our resources, only fishing at certain times, only hunting certain types of animals, or only cutting certain types of trees.

Then we invented agriculture and we wrought even more changes on the planet. We cleared forests to make room for our fields, pastures and cities. We terraced entire hillsides to allow us to grow crops. We drained swamps and cut the landscape with irrigation canals to provide our crops with water. Often we changed the very course of rivers and altered the soil we relied on, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. Forests disappeared as our cities and emerging states needed timber for construction, ship-building, and fuel to make pottery, smelt metals, cook our food, and keep us warm.

But we didn’t just change the landscape, we also changed the plants we grew so that they suited our needs. We changed the animals we relied on. We turned wolves into dogs, auroch into cows, ibex into goats, jungle fowl into chickens, and wild boars into pigs. We called this process domestication, and soon quickly forgot that we had ever been without these domesticates.

We made artificial hills for our rituals, built mountains out of cut stone to mark the tombs of revered rulers, carved symbols into the landscape. Sliced into mountains to carve roads, mine metal ores, and quarry stone. We made monuments so astounding that people thousands of years later thought they must have been made by the gods, and buildings of the modern age that dwarf them.

We’ve also traveled. We’ve crossed all our oceans, bringing with us the animals and plants of our homelands, and returning home with the animals and plants of other lands. Some is intentional. New crops that offer new advantages. Animals from far away to awe visitors or remind us of home. Some is unintentional. Plant seeds lodged in the tread of our boots. Insect larva in the bilge of our ships. Rats that scurry and stay out of sight, and hitch a ride on our sailing ships and outrigger canoes. Some we regret bringing, intentionally or not, others have settled in and carved their own place in their new home.

And now we look to the stars and wonder if we could do the same to other planets. To bring our life and our world to the stars. To turn a red planet green and blue.

And what if we succeeded? What if a red planet turned green, and flushed with our success, we turned to other balls of rock orbiting distant stars.

And what if we encountered other life. Life that was like us, but also very different. What if they had never seen life like ours before, that spread to the stars turning red, grey, and brown planets blue and green.

What if some are fearful. What if they seen our domesticated animals, our sculpted landscapes, and our diverse nations and fear that we will assimilate and change them and their world like we did to our ancient animal enemies and our distant home planet.

But what is some our awed, and look at us and see a species that can not only adapt itself to new and challenges and environments, but that also changes the challenge and environment itself. Often changing and adapting to the changes they themselves wrought. For better and worse, humanity sailed the stars on the crest of a wave of change that they themselves have been creating since their distant ancestors set fire to the underbrush and realized they could use this.

Dispersal by Open Sesame!

Dispersal by Open Sesame!

In certain instances, “open sesame” might be something you exclaim to magically open the door to a cave full of treasure, but for the sesame plant, open sesame is a way of life. In sesame’s case, seeds are the treasure, which are kept inside a four-chambered capsule. In order for the next generation of plants to have a chance at life, the seeds must be set free. Sesame’s story is similar to the…

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Ancient art and genetics reveals saffron crocus was first domesticated in Bronze Age Greece

“The authors argue that artworks from the Minoan civilization of ancient Greece are likely the oldest to depict domesticated saffron. For example, the dense patches of crocus flowers on the fresco ‘The Saffron Gatherers’ from the island of Santorini (approximately 1600 BCE) suggest cultivation. Another fresco on the same island, ‘The Adorants’, shows flowers with long, dark-red stigmas which overtop dark violet petals, typical of domesticated saffron. Flowers with these traits are also depicted on ceramics and cloth from Bronze Age Greece, and symbolically rendered in the ideogram for saffron in the ancient Linear B script. In Egypt, tombs from the 15th and 14th centuries BCE depict how ambassadors from Crete brought tribute in the form of textiles dyed with saffron.”

ohmyvintage123:

lovelyskirts:

transmortifried:

elodieunderglass:

honoriaw:

cluckyeschickens:

nambroth:

abirdkeeper:

tinysaurus-rex:

crisscrosscutout:

So I was told that Human Planet had a segment about pigeons in the Cities episode that I might be interested in and I was honestly so underwhelmed. I haven’t finished the episode so maybe there’s more pigeon stuff but I feel like all I saw was more Birds Of Prey Are The Only Cool And Acceptable Birds and pigeons are Trespassers In Our Urban World Who Shit On Everything And Are Useless On Top Of It. Which isn’t true and I’m so tired of this being framed as some horrible burden that humanity must face. Pigeons are the victims here, not us. 

Hate of pigeons didn’t start until the 20th Century. Before that was about 9,900 years of loving them. The rock pigeon was domesticated 10,000 years ago and not only that, we took them freaking everywhere. Pigeons were the first domesticated bird and they were an all-around animal even though they were later bred into more specialised varieties. They were small but had a high feed conversion rate, in other words it didn’t cost a whole lot of money or space to keep and they provided a steady and reliable source of protein as eggs or meat. They home, so you could take them with you and then release them from wherever you were and they’d pretty reliably make their way back. Pigeons are actually among the fastest flyers and they can home over some incredible distances (what fantastic navigators!). They were an incredibly important line of communication for multiple civilisations in human history. You know the first ever Olympics? Pigeons were delivering that news around the Known World at the time. Also, their ability to breed any time of year regardless of temperature or photoperiod? That was us, we did that to them, back when people who couldn’t afford fancier animals could keep a pair or two for meat/eggs. 

Rooftop pigeon keeping isn’t new, it’s been around for centuries and is/was important to a whole variety of cultures. Pigeons live with us in cities because we put them there, we made them into city birds. I get that there are problems with bird droppings and there’s implications for too-large flocks. By all means those are things we should look to control, but you don’t need to hate pigeons with every fibre of your being. You don’t need to despise them or brush them off as stupid (they have been intelligence tested extensively as laboratory animals because guess what other setting they’re pretty well-adapted to? LABORATORIES!) because they aren’t stupid. They’re soft intelligent creatures and I don’t have time to list everything I love about pigeons again. You don’t need to aggressively fight them or have a deep desire to kill them at all. It’s so unnecessary, especially if you realise that the majority of reasons pigeons are so ubiquitous is a direct result of human interference.

We haven’t always hated pigeons though, Darwin’s pigeon chapter in The Origin of Species took so much of the spotlight that publishers at the time wanted him to make the book ONLY about pigeons and to hell with the rest because Victorian’s were obsessed with pigeons (as much as I would enjoy a book solely on pigeons, it’s probably best that he didn’t listen).  My point is, for millenia, we lovedpigeons. We loved them so much we took them everywhere with us and shaped them into a bird very well adapted for living alongside us.

It’s only been very recently that we decided we hated them, that we decided to blame them for ruining ourcities. The language we use to describe pigeons is pretty awful. But it wasn’t always, and I wish we remembered that. I wish we would stop blaming them for being what we made them, what they are, and spent more time actually tackling the problems our cities face.  

I just have a lot of feelings about how complex and multidimensional hating pigeons actually is

ALL OF THIS

And also pigeon poop was a very valuable fertilizer before we had other options, people would hire guards to stop thieves from stealing their flock’s poop.

#LovePigeonsAgain2016

Late night, reblogging, so bear with me here…

Thank you for posting much of my thoughts over the past year and a half! I am known by many as “that guy who keeps the raptors”. Yes this is true, I do keep and handle raptors for educational purposes, but what many fail to realize is, I am fascinated with pigeons. My interest with birds began with the obvious, the raptors, corvids, and parrots. Then I discovered pigeons. These wonderful little birds with big attitudes and the incredible ability to thrive among people. 

The organization I work with got its first pigeon a little over a year ago. She was a rescue with nowhere else to go. I was quickly drawn to her character and attitude about life. We rarely handled her, but we did spend time with her. She grew attached to our volunteers very quickly because their were no other birds she could socialize with in our facility. 

We never intended to train her for educational programs. It was a job reserved for our raptors. It was our pigeon who decided she would be a part of what we were doing. One day, when we entered her enclosure to change water and food, she decided to fly to my hand and perch like our raptors do. 

No training, no treats, just the reward of being with us. 

What we hadn’t noticed for the couple months prior was her watching us. This brilliant little bird had been watching us every day as we trained and worked with our raptors. Finally she decided she didn’t want to be left out any longer. She made her place on our hands.

This occurred several times before we finally put her on a glove and brought her into the public. Needless to say, she was right at home. She fluffed up and preened the entire evening while people gawked and asked us why we had a pigeon on one glove and a hawk on another. 

Since then, we’ve added 5 more rescued pigeons to our growing flock. And our pigeon (Tybalt) has become a mainstay ambassador for our programs. Each of our pigeons are incredibly fun to watch and interact with. Pigeons simply don’t get enough love. They are marvelous creatures incredibly suited to life alongside people both physically and mentally. 

Raptors my have been my introduction into birds, but pigeons opened my eyes to a new appreciation for them and the fascinating world of bird cognition.

NOT ONLY are pigeons very amazing, worth our respect, and INTERESTING (did you read any of that stuff above?), but they are beautiful too!

Look how lovely:

Photo by .jocelyn.

They have a complex and fascinating social structure, both within a flock and with other individuals:

Photo by Ingrid Taylar

AND THEY ARE JUST SUPER CUTE, HONESTLY:

Photo by Musical Photo Man

Not chickens, but I feel compelled to spread this gospel.

hmmm. this is making me rethink my new york pigeon hate

and, AND, haven’t you ever wondered why city pigeons come in a magnificent rainbow of unusual colors?

Most wild animals all look alike within a species, with TINY, RARE individual variations in terms of rare color morphs, unusually big or small animals, different facial markings and other subtleties. But there is no evolutionary benefit to having species where everyone looks slightly different, and in fact, it’s beneficial for species to be similar and consistent, with a distinctive aesthetic. Especially if you’re trying to blend into the environment - a black wolf is all very well, but it looks positively silly in the summer tundra, where its grey/brown/brindley cousins blend in. A white deer has a great aesthetic - and a very short lifespan in the forest. Distinctive Protagonist looks are rare in the wild, simply because natural selection usually comes down heavily on them.

To humans, most wild animals are visually indistinguishable from each other.

As a result, most wild animals are like

“Oh it’s obvious - you can tell the twins apart because Kara has a big nose.”

Wild animals usually have a pretty consistent aesthetic within their species. It’s important to them!

SO WHAT IS GOING ON WITH PIGEONS?

Look, in one small picture you’ve got a red color morph in the center, several melanistic dark morphs, a few solid black birds, a few variations on the wildtype wing pattern, a PIEBALD, a piebald copper color morph…

Like, there are LAYERS UPON LAYERS of pigeon diversity in most flocks you see. Pure white ones with black wingtips. Solid brown ones with pink iridescent patches. Pale pinkish pigeons.

WHY IS THAT? When other wild animals consider “being slightly fluffier than my brother” to be dangerously distinctive in most circumstances?

BECAUSE CITY PIGEONS AREN’T TRULY WILD.

MANY OF THEM (POSSIBLY MOST OR ALL) ARE FERAL MIXES.

THEY WERE ONCE BELOVED PETS, SPECIAL MESSENGERS, EXQUISITE SHOW-WINNERS, AND PRIZED LIVESTOCK.

THEIR PRETTY COLORS WERE DELIBERATELY INTRODUCED BY HUMANS.

AND NOW THEIR HUMANS DON’T LOVE THEM ANY MORE.

See, pigeon fanciers bred (and still breed!) a huge array of pigeons. And the resulting swarms of released/discarded/escaped/phased out “fancy” pigeons stayed around humans. What else were they going to do? They interbred with wildtype pigeons.

Lots of the pigeons you see in public are feral. They’re not wild animals. They’re citizen animals. They’re genetically engineered. And now that’s what “city” pigeons are.

These “wild” horses are all different colors because they’re actually feral. Mustangs in the American West are the descendants of imported European horses - they’re an invasive domestic species that colonized an ecological niche, but they are domestic animals. Their distinctive patterns were deliberately bred by humans. A few generations of running around on the prairie isn’t going to erase that and turn them back into wildtypes. If you catch an adult mustang and train it for a short period, you can ride it and have it do tricks and make it love you. It’s a domestic animal. You can’t really do that with an adult zebra.

No matter how many generations these dogs stay on the street and interbreed with one another, they won’t turn back into wolves. They can’t. They’re deliberately genetically engineered. If you catch one (even after generations of rough living, even as an adult) you can make it stare at your face, care about your body language, and love you.

City pigeons? Well, you don’t have to like them, but they’re in the same boat. They’re tamed animals, bred on purpose, living in a human community. Their very bodies are marked with their former ownership and allegiance; they cannot really return to what they once were; if you caught one, you could make it love you (in a limited pigeon-y way.) They have gone to “the wild,” but not very far from us, and they’d be happy to come back.

So next time you see a flock of city pigeons, spare a moment to note their diversity. The wing patterns. The pied, mottled and brindled. The color types.

All of it was once meant to please you.