Pigeons are a species of bird found abundantly in densely populated areas crowded with human activity. Several think of them as dirty and riddled with disease, despite them being quite articulate and clean. 

Despite being a generally harmless bird, the public eye seems to believe the opposite, deeming them with the title, “Rats with wings,” So, why are these animals viewed so harshly? 

To put it bluntly, many have developed a distaste for them due to their sheer abundance in city life. Sociologist Colin Jerolmack has linked it to “feces, noise, links to disease” though, the CDC have only linked two deaths due to getting ill from a pigeon, and claim that the ways that the birds interact with people very rarely get humans sick. 

Jerolmack has theorized, the reason for so many people’s unwarranted hatred for pigeons is due to a feeling of invasion.

Matt Soniac, a journalist who interviewed Jerolmack concluded, “By upsetting our imaginative geography, pigeons show us that cities are not as subdued and scrubbed of nature as we think they should be.” he continues, “because authorities and experts have connected the birds to disease, pigeons don’t just invade our space—they potentially pollute it. Marked as an epidemiological threat despite actually being poor vectors of disease, pigeons have also become a health menace in people’s minds.”

In short, the majority of what people perceive pigeons is mostly untrue, pigeons are just misunderstood. 

So, if pigeons aren’t necessarily bad, how are they supposed to be good? 

Several experiments and general tomfoolery has uncovered a fact. They are painfully intelligent. They are able to recognize patterns, an example being the

 Harvard Pigeon Prank, where an MIT Student had gone to the Football field every day of the summer, spread around birdseed and blew a whistle. Soon enough the birds caught on and would begin to flock whenever the whistle was blown at the stadium. Upon Harvard’s opening game, a referee blew his whistle to signify the start of a game. Consequently, a flock of the birds began to descend from the skies into the field. They’ve also developed abilities of self-recognition, memorizing faces, and letters of the alphabet.

In Summary, pigeons are highly intelligent birds that have gained a negative opinion due to human fear and psyche. They don’t deserve the hate they get from misinformation.