Darwin’s pigeons
How Darwin used pigeons for his work on evolution.
In 1855 Charles Darwin wrote to his friend Charles Lyell, who was planning a visit to Down House, ‘I will show you my pigeons! Which are the greatest treat, in my opinion, which can be offered to a human being’
Darwin had noticed how breeders had created hundreds of varieties of pigeon, some with short beaks, some with long beaks, some with long necks, some with curly feathers and although they all derived from the one species, Columbia Livia, they all looked dramatically different to the wild pigeon.
Darwin was captivated by how far this one species could be changed, which led to him keeping and working with pigeons to show the similarity between artificial and natural selection. The humble pigeon was at the heart of his explanation of evolution.
For the 150th anniversary of ‘On the Origin of Species’ I had been asked to take some photographs of some fancy pigeons for a magazine, so I travelled to the North of England to a ‘fancy pigeon’ show.
