pigeons Ash Red Ratio In Ferral Pigeons
By Arif Mumtaz

December 2009

I am neither a scientist nor a geneticist, I am just a curious, albeit serious pigeon breeder and I would like to understand as much as I can about my hobby to produce better quality offspring. I love biology and genetics and I thought about going back to school to get another degree in biology to become a geneticist, but the number of chemistry classes I would have to take scares me. I never liked chemistry for some reason, but I love experimenting, questioning, and researching.

I am from Turkey and pigeon culture in Turkey is very unique as many of the breeds originated from the Ottoman Turks and Middle East. We feed feral pigeons on the streets of cities for good luck. It is a custom in Turkish culture to feed the wild pigeons usually near by a mosque to do a good deed. Turkish people don't harm pigeons. If you ever travel to Turkey, especially to Istanbul, you will see them everywhere and you will have a chance to feed them if you choose. The picture on the left is taken in Istanbul, Turkey.

I have travelled to many cities in the USA, Canada, Central and South America, and Europe. Being a pigeon breeder, I have always noticed and observed the pigeons on the streets, on buildings and while they are in flight.

Even if you haven't traveled much, just look around at any flock of pigeons you see around where you live. What do you notice? Most of the pigeons you see are either blue bar (wild type) or blue checker birds right? Some of them might have white flights, few are spread blacks and maybe one or two ash red colors. So, how do we explain that?

Why don’t we see a lot more ash red colors than blue/black pigeons in the wild if ash red is dominant to wild type?

We know that ash red was the first mutation from wild type and we can scientifically prove that the ash red is dominant to blue/black. So, after so many years of random breeding among wild pigeons, why don't we see more ash red than blue/black out there? Why is there only one or two ash red in a flock of feral pigeons? I could only think of one possible answer to this question. I know that pigeon predators like hawks and falcons prefer reds and yellows and go for the light-colored pigeons first, but is that the answer to the question? According to a 1991 study by James B. Armstrong, Department of Zoology and Wildlife Science and Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station, Funchess Hall, Auburn University, AL, there is not much of a correlation between pigeon colors and vulnerability to raptor attacks.

“Previous discussions with racing pigeon fanciers suggested a possible correlation between pigeon color and vulnerability to raptor attack. However, 235 of the respondents (64%) indicated that any color pigeon was likely to be taken. The second most frequent choice was blue or ash red (24%, n = 87). While 264 of the respondents (72%) indicated that any age bird could be taken, there did appear to be a bias toward young birds from those respondents who observed a difference (17 % young birds vs. 10% old birds). Nationwide, 52% of the 367 respondents (n = 191) indicated Cooper's hawks were the raptor most often responsible for pigeon attacks (Table 2). Red-tailed hawks (Buteo jamaicensis) were the next highest (19%, n = 71).”

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When Darwin was studying pigeons, and wrote his The Origin of Species, he devoted the whole first chapter to the domestication of pigeons. He discovered that if the different fancy breeds are mated, the offspring would eventually lose their distinctive traits and resemble the rock dove. Darwin called this phenomenon “reversion”. According to Darwin there was no other reasonable explanation for the profusion of fancy pigeons, and he was right. Many pigeon breeders, who have been around pigeons for long time, experience a reversion even in a certain pigeon breed, where two distinct colors and patterns are bred and their offspring show the markings and the color of an ordinary rock dove. Could the reversion be one of the reasons why the ash red ratio is low in feral pigeons?

Frank Mosca, one of the foremost authorities in pigeon genetics and a scientist, responded to this question, and he suggested number of possibilities. His first thought was “The Hardy Weinberg Equation” - In 1908, G.H. Hardy and W. Weinberg independently suggested a scheme whereby evolution could be viewed as changes in frequency of alleles in a population of organisms. Hardy and Weinberg also argued that if certain conditions were met, the population's alleles and genotype frequencies will remain constant from generation to generation. According to Frank Mosca, “It's a basic in biology and it's expressed by the Hardy-Weinberg law. Alleles (alternatives such as brown, wild-type, ash-red) exist in equilibrium in the gene pool of the population. Dominant mutations do not take over, nor do recessive ones vanish. They reach equilibrium and tend to stay in the same proportions. I'm not going to get into the math of it, but it's a fact. Gene frequency in a population normally changes only as a result of selection. This selection can be environmental, predatory, human, etc. If there is preferential selection of one allele or the other, then the frequency changes and you get, e.g., more reds.

Alleles (mutations) do not just wipe out each other. It's always selection that is the key. With N. American feral flocks it appears that wild-type pigment (blue/black) has an overall advantage for some reason or is neutral. My Feral Pigeons book was swiped one day so I can't check the reference, but I remember reading in there that there was a very, very specific distinction between wild-type (barred) birds and where and how long they nested as opposed to T-patterns and checks. Again, it's all about selection. Evolution is driven by it. It's not a random event. Those mutations that allow the organism to survive and leave more young are preferentially accumulated within the gene pool; those that don't are preferentially removed (along with the animal bearing them). Since all populations are under some sort of selection pressure, the Hardy-Weinberg equation is most often used as a baseline to calculate gene change frequencies”.

I argued and asked Frank Mosca, why “The Hardy Weinberg Equation” only applies to ferals but not to domestic pigeons where ash red take over a domestic coop in couple of years. I also asked him what is causing evolution to create a dominant mutation like ash red in pigeons to its wild type, but then eliminate it by natural selection.

His response was as follows: “All ferals are under intense selection pressure. The sad fact though is that there is almost no documentation of it because to most people human commensals aren't worth the time to study. Somehow, someway, ash-red seems to be under negative selection pressure in most city environments. It could be that reds don't shed their feathers as easily when a predator grabs them (I've seen that documented sometime in the past, but don't ask me where or when).

It could be that ash-reds birds in the nest don't grow or thrive as well on the food amounts available to ferals. It could be that they have more flight damage due to fraying than do wild-type (blue/black) birds and are thus at a competitive disadvantage in flying to food sources or surviving in winter or raining conditions than are wild-type birds. I'd love to see you put together a serious study project and work on this - when I tried some thirty years ago in grad school, I was laughed out of my thesis advisor's office - it seemed that "no one gives a damn" about ferals. Since at the time, I didn't have the ability to fund my own research even to the tune of about $600, I never got around to doing it.

As for your second question - there is absolutely nothing causing evolution to "create" ash-red. It just happened. It was almost assuredly promulgated under human control rather than under natural control. There may well always have been and apparently is still continuing intense selection naturally against ash and only human love of it kept it going”.

Like Frank Mosca, I also believe that the ash red mutation’s survival chances are low in the wild and they would not have breed in to domestic pigeons if humans did not recognize this odd color mutation and kept inbreeding them to their flocks. We have other dominant colors and patterns like almond, and grizzle also, but we don’t see them in the wild as much or take over a flock either. Sometimes we can see grizzle and pie ball markings in ferals, but I haven’t seen any, almond, lace, toy stencil, opal, indigo yellow, etc in ferals. I think humans played a big roll on inbreeding the odd birds and perfecting their color and pattern for the last 4 to 5 thousand years. I believe that mutations from blue are not meant to survive for their selection of traits. Only the strongest and the fitted would survive. This is why we have all the odd color mutations and different talents in domestic pigeons and not on common Columbia Livia.

Take albinism as an example, which is a recessive gene allele in living things. If we keep inbreeding two albino human beings, we can now make and homozygous albino humans and we can than create an albino family. The problem is that, this would create a family of albino people with eye problems and a lot of other health problems to enjoy life as non albino people. The nature would try not to allow this, unless we purposely keep inbreeding two albino people. I think the ash red mutation and any other odd mutations in pigeons is the same way. The only reason they exist in domestic pigeons is because humans spare them kept inbreeding them, they would not have survived otherwise. Something in the wild is preventing ash reds to take over because nature does not select them even though it is a dominant mutation.

The only mystery is what is the cause of this? What is preventing ash reds, almonds, or any other dominant genes to take over the feral flocks? So far we only know that mating two almond pigeons create eye problems and it is not recommended to mate almond pigeons together. Do pigeons think ash red’s survival chances are low for some reason and therefore they choose not to breed with odd mutations like ash red in the wild? Why would two albino people would start a family and have their offspring suffer the way they do?

Please understand that I just use albinism in humans as an example and I did not mean any disrespect to people with albinism.

I think selection of traits as Darwin once described has a lot to do with odd mutations like ash reds to exist in the wild.