The pigeons we know today come from Rock Doves that were domesticated way back in the past.
Wild Rock Doves live on sea cliffs and rocky ground across Europe, North Africa and western Asia, and domestication is thought to have happened somewhere in this range, probably in the Middle East or North Africa.
The pigeon and dove family as a whole is most varied in Southeast Asia and Australasia.
Some people have suggested that pigeons were domesticated in more than one place, but this has not been shown.
The Rock Dove’s scientific name is Columba livia, and it belongs to a large family, the Columbidae.
The family is usually divided into around 50 genera and roughly 350 species, and more than a dozen species have died out in the last few centuries.
The branches of this particular family tree extend all over the globe, incorporating many birds you would find surprising to be related to the pigeons we know and love.
Pigeons and their relatives live almost everywhere except Antarctica, the high Arctic and the driest deserts.
Man and Bird: The Relationship
Fossil records of the pigeon family date back as far as the Miocene Period.
The extinct Dodo was part of the Columbidae family, its closest living relative is the Nicobar pigeon.
No one knows for sure how pigeons’ relationship with man first started, but it is safe to say that it was the cause of their global expansion.
It might be that early man saw pigeons as easy prey and therefore a food resource.
Later, they may have been captured and bred as a secure food source, given their rapid rate of reproduction.
After that, they became domesticated and bred also for their beauty.
On the other hand, being both intelligent and curious, pigeons may have approached man first.
Around any human settlement, there are food scraps or debris, especially when man stopped the hunter/gatherer lifestyle in favor of cultivation, the start of civilization as we know it today.
The first adventurous pigeons may have recognized an opportunity and seized it, thus starting a relationship that continues until today.
It can be conjectured that as new settlements, villages, towns and cities were established the pigeons followed along.
Historical Record
Historical records show that pigeons were kept since ancient times.
It is known that people in Mesopotamia, meaning ‘the land between two rivers’, the rivers being the Tigris and Euphrates, which stretched from modern-day Iraq to Syria and is often called the cradle of civilization, kept pigeons.
Again, this may be as a cheap food source or just for their appearance.
During this period when the great civilizations flourished there and died, feral pigeons nested and roosted on their buildings.
Pigeons were also kept in ancient Egypt, and they are still widely raised there today (see Egypt’s pigeon towers).
Many ancient religions used pigeons to represent the divine, including the Christian religion.
Population density, war, and famine are sure to have helped the expansion of pigeons, both east and west, as mankind spread to new lands.
Pigeon Uses
Pigeons were useful to man, not only as a source of food but in other ways.
Once man recognized the navigational and homing skills of pigeons, they were used as a communication method.
Nobody knows which peoples actually started using pigeons to send and receive messages, but the ancient Greeks certainly did, and the practice was picked up by the Romans.
They have been used in war and for business communications.
Pigeons were used this way on a large scale until around the end of the Second World War, and some armies kept pigeon units for years afterwards.
Reuters, the international news agency, famously used pigeons in 1850 to carry stock prices between Aachen and Brussels, filling a gap in the telegraph line.
Pigeons Have Faced Extinction Several Times
Within pigeon lore, the Passenger Pigeon of North America was probably the best-known extinction, which was caused by mankind.
In the early 1800s there were probably billions of them, but numbers crashed within a few decades, and the last known bird, Martha, died in a zoo in 1914.
Many settlers saw them as a ready source of food.
Farmers and smallholders saw them as pests and a threat to their crops.
They became the target of commercial pigeon hunters who shipped them from rural lands to the cities to be eaten in homes and restaurants.
The organized and wholesale slaughter of these pigeons only stopped when it became unprofitable to hunt them due to their reduced numbers.
Several other pigeons and doves, including the Dodo, have also died out, mostly on islands after people arrived and brought hunting, habitat loss and introduced predators.
Although we tend to think of pigeons as never-ending flocks, many species are rare or threatened, especially on islands.
Others, such as the Green Imperial Pigeon (opens in new tab), which ranges from India to the Philippines, are still widespread but have become scarce in places because of hunting and forest loss.
Pigeon Cross Breeding
Crossbreeding for centuries has produced a variety of colored plumages and breeds.
Enthusiasm for these birds hasn’t waned over the centuries.
In the UK, a large pigeon show is held in Blackpool every January and draws many thousands of visitors, and the royal family has kept racing pigeons at Sandringham since 1886.
Different breeds have been bred for their different attributes such as coloration, feathers, vocalizations, and flying skills.
Examples of Pigeon Crossbreeding
The Indian fantail pigeon is an Asian variety, thought to have originally developed in and around the Indian sub-continent, although western sub-varieties can be found.
It is bred because of its tail feathers that open in a fan-like display. There are also silky or lace fantails, that are genetic mutations.
The Danish Suabian (opens in new tab) is bred for its distinct colouration.
Another is the African Owl pigeon.
This breed originally comes from Tunisia, in North Africa. Typically short and stout, it has a ‘frill’ of chest feathers and a very short beak that gives it an owl-like appearance.
The English Pouter (opens in new tab) is named so because it can inflate its crop or pout.
Tumblers and rollers are bred for their acrobatic abilities such as rolling or backflip somersaults while flying.
Originally?
Pigeons have developed into the forms in which we know them today and are scattered throughout the world.
Because domestication happened so long ago, nobody can say exactly where the first domestic pigeons came from.
Was there a single source that subdivided and migrated?
Or did they develop independently in different locations at the same time?
Last updated 24 October 2026 · Facts