S3E2: Pervasive Captivity with Nicolas Delon

"Like weeds in the cracks of pavement, pigeons represent chaotic, untamed nature in spaces designated for humans. Pigeons have become particularly despised urban trespassers, partly because they in all their animality are so public. It is almost as if they taunt us with their seeming ‘unnatural’ predilection for stone and concrete. Conditioned by the genes of their cliff-dwelling and ground-feeding ancestors, and by selective breeding, they do not even retreat to sewers, trees, or parks to defecate, mate, and live as do so many other animals. Further, these birds may evoke discomfort or even nausea by scavenging humanity’s refuse. Their metaphorical ‘pollution’ of city streets becomes crystallised through their link to humanity’s literal pollution - trash. Part of our aversion to pigeons, then, stems then from cultural insecurities about proximity to dirt and impurity. Pigeons have lived and scavenged in cities for centuries. But over time an increasing number of urban spaces have been redefined as off-limits to them, often marked by plastic spikes and by the words ‘Do Not Feed the Pigeons’. Columba livia is now a ‘homeless’ species, surviving in the urban interstices of our societies occasional generosity and its refuse. As if their link to their human analogues was not clear enough, public discourse and the media are filled with references to pigeons as ‘bums’ and ‘squatters’" - Colin Jerolmack, The Global Pigeon (2013).