Chicago Natur 



FormerlyM: 



History Museum 

 iTIN 



^liseum News 



Vol. 16 



NOVEMBER-DECEMBER, 1945 



Nos. 11-12 



DOMESTIC PIGEONS, DARWIN'S AIDS IN RESEARCH ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 



By KARL P. SCHMIDT 



CHIEF CURATOR, DEPARTMENT OF ZOOI.OCY 



The domestic pigeon, so familiar even to 

 city dwellers from the feral* flocks that 

 roost and nest on bridges and on ledges of 

 high buildings, supplies the attractive 

 material of a panel recently installed in the 

 Museum's systematic collection of birds in 

 Hall 21. 



RED ENGLISH POUTER 



Like the (anuils. the pouters represent an exaggeration of 



the normal courtship poses; both structure and behavior 



have been subject to man's selection. 



This panel presents two topics of special 

 interest to natural history: The Origin of the 

 Domestic Pigeon and the general subject of 

 Artificial Selection. It thus continues the 

 program of installing cases bearing upon 

 general principles to supplement and give 

 meaning to the conspectus of the Animal 

 Kingdom that forms, for the Department 

 of Zoology, the Museum's primary con- 

 tribution to public education. 



ILLUSTRATION OF PRINCIPLES 



While the primary exhibition collections 

 require much expansion and improvement, 

 the treatment of principles and ideas in 



the exhibition halls needs thought and 

 experiment in our continuing program. 



Although the ancestry of some domestic 

 animals and plants is obscure, even in the 

 light of archaeology and paleontology, this 

 is not the case with the pigeon. The pro- 

 genitor of all of the domestic breeds and 

 sub-breeds is plainly the rock pigeon of 

 southern Europe and southwestern Asia. 



This is a handsome bluish bird, very much 

 like the modern homer in appearance, with 

 a pair of black bars across each wing. It is 

 remarkable that the crossing of the most 

 strikingly different domesticated breeds 

 produces a reversion to the original type, 

 and such "wild pigeon" replicas are common 

 among the mongrel flocks in city parks. 

 The domestication of the rock pigeon 

 apparently took place in Asia. 



ON MENU IN 3000 B. C. 



The earliest known mention of the pigeon 

 as a domestic animal appears to be in the 

 menu of an Egyptian pharaoh of about 

 3000 B.C. Since that time, pigeons have 

 continued to be valued as food, but appar- 

 ently even more for their interest to fanciers. 

 More than 120 main breeds are recorded as 

 the result of this avocation, and these 

 include a great number of subordinate 



♦The useful word "feral" refers to domestic animals 

 that have returned to wild life, as cats and pigeons 

 familiarly do and as almost all domestic animals do 

 under favoring circumataQC«e. 



FANTAIL 



The fantail has the number of tail feathers increased from 



the normal 12 to 30 or even 40. 



races, some of them very recently produced. 

 Pigeon fanciers continue to be enthusiastic 

 breeders and showmen, and this fact was 

 impressed upon the Museum by the gift of 



prize-winning birds for its exhibition project, 

 partly from members of the Chicago Pigeon 

 Club, and partly from breeders in various 

 other parts of the United States. 



ARTIFICIAL SELECTION 



One of the remarkable races of domestic 

 pigeons is the giant runt, the largest of the 

 breeds and naturally a favorits for squab 



BALDHEAD TUMBLER 



The baldheaJ i:, one of the g:^-at number of varieties of 



tumblers, remarkable for their curious ''tumbling" maneu- 



verings while in flight. 



production. Exaggerations of the normal 

 courtship display are shown in the pouters, 

 the jacobins, and the fantails. The tumblers 

 are bred for erratic behavior in flight. 

 The homers, with their powers of flight 

 and homing ability, replace the older 

 carrier breed. The carrier, with its curious 

 wattles, has become one of the most bizarre 

 of the "ornamentals." The extremes to 

 which "fancy" breeding may be carried 

 are shown in the owls, the smallest of the 

 races. These have the bill so extremely 

 shortened that the parents are unable to 

 feed their own young, and the breed has to 

 be maintained by the use of foster parents. 

 All of these types can be bred for special 

 varieties of coloration. 



The idea of artificial selection, i.e., the 

 rule-of-thumb breeding method by which 



