chickenkeeping:so fun fact. you know how Rock Doves (Columba livia) are the ancestors of domes
chickenkeeping:so fun fact. you know how Rock Doves (Columba livia) are the ancestors of domesticated pigeons? they look like this notice the two bars on the wings. all rock doves look like this. but if you go observe a flock of feral city pigeons you’ll notice birds with checkered wings, like Indigo’s in the first picture. where did this pattern come from? how did it get there? Columba guinea, the African Speckled Pigeon, is a close relative of the Rock dove. sometime after the domestication of rock doves humans decided to cross the two species. or maybe it was a natural hybridization? its not impossible but the two species had VERY different ranges, C. guinea occurring mainly inland in central and south Africa and C. livia inhabiting seaside cliffs in the Mediterranean, Middle East and North Africa. it was probably intentionalEither way humans took a liking to the resulting (fertile!) hybrid offspring, which inherited the checkered wing pattern of an African Speckled Dove, and the checkered pattern is now extremely widespread in domestic populations. because this increased melanism proved advantageous in an urban environment you’ll see checkered birds much more often in cities. so when you see one like this in the cityjust know his great great great x6,000 grandpa looked like this -- source link
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