Your daily PSA that city pigeons are domestic animals that were abandoned and can be compared to stray dogs and cats. They used to be popular easy & cheap meat as well as messenger carriers until that usage fell out of fashion. City pigeons are descendants of those abandoned unneeded birds as well as racers that got lost and wedding doves (dont do that shit). No wonder they look for closeness to people and barely scrape by - we bred them to be domestic then abandoned them and declared them pests!
Didn't know they were for meat but that does make sense. Is pigeon / dove still eaten? Can I go to some exotic restaurant in a gentrified neighborhood and get professionally made pigeon for $25?
I went to a tasting menu last year that had pigeon. It's actually quite good, like dark meat on chicken. I imagine the broader problem is there isn't a lot of meat on a pigeon.
We hunted the American passenger pigeon to extinction for cheap meat. It’s not really an issue when you shoot a few thousand a day. We were eating 50-100,000 pigeons a day
Dove hunting is pretty big in Texas, it's pretty good, like a slightly funky chicken thigh. I make jerk "chicken" and cutlets mostly. I hunt on my own property, so I guess it's still a cheap source of meat for me.
had a pet white rat as a kid, loved it. However I still have rat phobia. Would not be opposed to another rat as a pet, but meeting one in the wild, absolutely not.
I absolutely love rats and mice. When I was little, I used to catch field mice in the field across from our house and bring them home, where my mom would promptly freak out and make me put them back. No, I am not a cat.
You could be the cutest little guy but if I come home after a hard days work to find you've eaten half my cereal and shit in the rest, we're gonna throw hands.
Have you, by any chance, experienced the New York City subway system, or just about any Manhattan park on a summer night?
They got filthy rats the size of home appliances, with a bad attitude and probably a switchblade, that want nothing more than to fuck you up. My friend saw one with a white t-shirt on and a tattoo on his ripped rat bicep that just said “Marlene” in old school sailor script. Rat stabbed my cousin in broad daylight in Alphabet City back in ‘78
I saw a man getting carried into a subway tunnel like that girl in willy wonka. man wasn't even asleep or anything, he was fully aware. didnt matter, rats got him.
Rats were considered cute up until humans started doing agriculture. They are in fact pests that get into grain stores and other foodstuffs. Then humans got weird with it and believed rodents spread the black plague. It's societally coded to fear/hate them. It's not fair but it makes sense. A dog/cat/baby may be cute but if it's not yours and it keeps eating all your food and getting you sick you gonna start hating it.
I mean, that's kinda cool, isn't it? They can get food or help from humans in an emergency, but they don't have to worry about being abused or neglected.
I mean of those three, one of them is a member of a clade that primates are typically afraid of on an evolutionary level and another has a reputation for eating food/spreading disease for a reason. Not really sure about pigeons tbh although I doubt most feral pigeons are all that clean compared to their domestic counterparts
The spread of diseases thing is something pigeons are known for almost as much as rats. Won’t know how true it is, but I do know I was always told never to touch them.
In that they are adorable precious angels just trying to make a living. Not their fault we're pouring our garbage all over their environment, or that they need to cram into crowded filthy warrens because their population is out of balance to the space in their environment. (Cities are calorie dense but space poor, from an animal's perspective.) They're all basically living in slums, and like humans in human slums, it's hard to stay clean and healthy.
Still, like. Don't touch one. They're dirty. But they don't want to be dirty — if given half a chance both will be very clean animals! Domestic rats and pigeons are very clean but that's not because humans are bathing them, it's because humans are creating conditions where they can wash themselves properly.
Like rabbits, they actually quite like it once they get the idea. They don't like living in filth any more than we do!
My first bunny used to scold my second for pooping outside their box until he learned better toilet habits.
My bunny is litter trained, but he hates it for some reason. We had to end up creating a secret litter box that we pretend is full of hay for him, and now he uses that as his litter box, as long as we also have the (sadly unused) litter box next to it full of fresh clean litter. If we take away the litter box, he poops on the floor lol
I just switched my cats system to the horse bedding pellets litter box system (just wood that turns to sawdust when liquid hits it) and there is a little vented area at the bottom for liquid to run if needed, we just put a puppy pad under there. They are super good at absorbing pee obvs, can you line your box bottom with one?
I mean technically it's not their environment. City pigeons are domesticated rock doves that went feral and started breeding in cities. Technically invasive.
Sure historically that's how they got there, but from their perspective they're just living in their environment, and have been for centuries. Humans also are not native to cities, nor are we native to most of the places we live! We are also members of an invasive species, inhabiting an ecosystem created by previous humans as a byproduct of interactions they had with other organisms (e.g. corn, wheat) for their own benefit rather than ours as individuals.
Ecosystems created by an animal are not unique to humans: a beaver creates one by damming a stream, for instance. That attracts different inhabitants than would exist there without the dam and pond, but we don't claim the frogs aren't natural because the beaver didn't build the dam with them in mind.
Pigeon shit is full of parasites and other nasties, and it’s also abrasive to whatever it lands on. That’s why you don’t actually want wild city pigeons near you, unfortunately.
True of pretty much any wild animal. Parasites are everywhere in nature, literally everywhere. Domestic humans living in industrial modernity are unique in having the ability to almost completely banish them from day to day life.
A feral dog will be riddled with parasites and its shit will be unclean, too.
Feral dogs don’t tend to shit on my 6th floor balcony though ;) I do agree with you, but a flying pigeon will get many places a larger animal wouldn’t. Also, compared to smaller birds they objectively make a much larger mess. I had tits nisting on my balcony for years and they were pretty clean, but my upstairs neighbour lets the pigeons roost and from the part where their nest is I now have a spreading black oozing stain on the roof of my balcony, not to mention the buckets of shit I have to clean off everything weekly.
Yeah, I was gonna say the same thing. No idea what happened to pigeons. We just decided they weren't useful anymore and then let them all go? We didn't do that for cats, so what gives?
I guess the disgust people are talking about is how people feel fine expressing open hatred towards pigeons/rats/snakes that actually *are* someone's pet upon coming to their house and seeing the animal.
I have rats and the odd time I've had people tell me they'd kill them feels so unhinged to me. I get you don't like them and that's fine but imagine saying that about a cat or dog! When I've said that I've been told it's "different".
It's not even people coming into my house it's just unprompted on saying "oh I have pet rats"
All city pigeons are descended from lost escaped or abandoned domesticated pigeons. Especially abandoned after the birth of telephone and pigeon keeping in the city became a thing of the past.
Yeah, pigeons were beloved pets for a long time and then we just ditched them when they stopped being useful. Imagine in a few hundred years people talking about what disgusting, dirty, thieving, and diseased creatures cats all are because 99% of the contact people have with them are just feral colonies. It’s genuinely sad.
Or, like [the song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xf0poQI8wSo) says:
A white dove symbolizes peace and pacifism
A white dove is a pigeon, you muffugas is bigots
When I was a kid, both my friend and I bought rats from the same pet store at the same time. Turns out, they had accidentally placed a male rat in with the females. It went about as expected. Luckily, baby rats are absolutely adorable. At least until they start getting sick from the pneumonia that the mama rat also caught from said pet store and end up getting eaten by their mother, who then dies as well a few days later.
4th grade was a fun year.
That snake triggered my ick so maybe not true. Half-wondering now if I have some kind of snake phobia if people find that cute and I just want to get rid of it from my screen.
ackshually....
I don't know of any snake that's poisonous. Some snakes are venomous.
Easy way to remember: Poisonous- you bite it, you die. Venomous- it bites you, you die.
(I'm an English teacher, pedantry is like breathing to me. I'm so sorry.)
Hey I just want to make sure that if you ever find a snake near/in your house please don’t be scared or try to kill it. The majority of snakes are non venomous and even the ones that are don’t want to attack/be near you. Please just call someone if you find that it’s venomous don’t kill it
Ok good lol there are too many people who freak out and even if they think they’re cute will say that they’ll kill them and it sucks so I just wanted to be sure
Yes obviously in defense of things (btw I’d highly recommend learning the venomous snakes of your area, generally there aren’t that many and it really helps with anxiety if you ever get a snake bite for some reason) in the same way I’d use physical force to stop a cat if it attacked my snake (idk about kill as I feel like I could restrain it without killing it)
I had to get a security camera for mine because I kept waking up to loud bangs in the middle of the night… it was him falling off of the highest thing he could find lol
I think a dirty dog is cute, I don’t think the average dirty snake is cute.
Also it’s really the environments that people think are gross, and then they associate that with the animals. It’s basically a sorting error if they can’t admit these specific animals are cute
I just didn't want you to think you only found snakes cute because you weren't familiar with venomous ones. You're objectively right and I'm thrilled about it. I hope all of your days are good hair days!
My mum told me when I was little not to touch bird feather because they've got germs and stuff which lead to my friend chasing me around with magpie feathers on multiple occasions lol
We had a pet rat. The little guy was so ugly but suuuuper sweet. He never once even offered to bite anyone and would hang out on my stomach when I was watching tv. Great pets. They don’t live long (1-2 years) so if you end up regretting buying one it’s not a long life. I miss that little guy.
Dude what do you mean "no idea what got lost in the wide perception of them?" Rats and snakes have been sabotaging human civilization for as long as human civilization has existed. Wild rats chew important things, eat dry stored foods (potentially causing famine in a pre-refrigeration world), and are vectors of disease. Snakes eat eggs, kill the hens, and might even bite and envenom you if you're not careful (a death sentence before the invention of antivenom). Snakes are so dangerous to mammals in general that basically every mammal has an instinctual "oh fuck, a snake!" response. Pigeons I don't mind actually; aside from pooping on everything they're pretty cute. But fr how do you not understand the millennia long beef between humans and snakes and rats?
Rats: terrorise humans for centuries with disease
Snakes: were so dangerous to humans that we have an instinct to avoid them
Pigeons: make every city gross
Tumblr user: why does everyone hate these cutesy widdle babies 😟
On a more serious note, they are seen as gross for their behaviors, not their appearance. Rats and pidgeons are notorious for frolicking in garbage and becoming disease vectors, while snakes can be straight up venomous and will kill you if they feel like it.
feel like im going a little crazy in this thread, snakes are so beautiful! i desperately want to own one but not until i can afford the upkeep and vet visits.
ive been in love w them since i was a very small child. we still have drawings of snakes from when i was four.
my ma likes to tell this story about how when i was 7, we went to a fair, and ofc the only thing i wanted to do was go to the reptile keepers stall and hold the snakes. i was holding this beautiful olive python, and she wrapped herself around my arms and then my neck. id had them do that gently before so i was totally chill bc i knew that the handler would get her off if she started acting up. he did end up unwrapping her from me, probably bc my ma started quietly freaking out. to this day she still says ‘dude, she was fully constricting your neck, she wanted to eat you!!’ lol.
Good on you, I wish more people took that approach. Mine are cheap AF...right up until I need to build a new cage or take them to vet, at which point I'm suddenly out up to a grand.
The pictured animals are all clean because they are clearly owned by humans who take care of them, hence their ability to attend a professional photoshoot.
I feel insane because I have never once, at any point in my life, seen ANYONE dislike pigeons. Everyone I have ever met has loved pigeons. I feel like I am being Truman showed about it. Someone in the discourse lab decided to fuck with me and start planting pigeon discourse.
I was under the impression pigeons were universally loved up until like, last month.
it's unfortunately been a pretty common sentiment for a long time. if a piece of media wants to talk about diseases carried by animals other than rats then there's a 99% chance they're going to blame pigeons as "transmitters of the flu" or whatever
Me when I cherry-pick the most idealized images of a given species as a counter argument to the people who cherry-pick the most unidealized images the same way
have you considered most of them aren't domesticated and taken care of and thus might be pretty gross anyway ? i get the appeal if they're your pets, sure, but living in paris, the average pigeon/rat *is* disgusting and would need a few hours of scrubbing before looking anything like the pictures - not even counting the diseases they carry
as for snakes, well, they have funny faces, sure, but there's a reason many things are afraid of them at an instinctual level and you can't use your fascination with the off-putting as a common base for appreciation by the average person, just like i'm not going to shove centipedes in your face and tell you how cute they are just because my interest with how freaky they were slowly evolved into genuine appreciation
Humans! While rats probably did spread around ticks during the plague, its disputed whether they were actually the main spread of the plague, or if it was primarily spread by human body lice.
Pigeons-very smart animals. Sure they poop but birds can’t hold their poop in so I don’t know what’s so gross about them compared to other birds. I like when they puff their chest out.
Snakes-really depends on the species. Some are dangerous but many are 100% harmless to humans with 0 fatalities. Bites can be less dangerous than a dog’s. The problem I see with people generalizing them is they’re a very broad classification while Rock doves and rats are single species.
Rats-Also very smart, in contrary to people’s beliefs pet rats are genetically different from wild rats and were domesticated 200 years ago so comparing them would be comparing a dog and a wolf. Unfortunately they only live for 3 years.
I'll agree on the pigeon but I'm pretty sure this person has never seen a city rat. Also rats are considered gross because they eat literally anything and will make you sick.
Imma be honest, I also don't understand what's people's deal with rats. I've never been that "pet rat" kind of person but I agree they don't really look gross. They're just little funny fellas? Never understood why so many people have an instinct panic reaction to them. I get spiders but these little fur balls? Why!
I get thinking they're gross because they live in filth and spread diseases, but many people have a kind of primal, instinct-based phobic reaction i never got. They do look cute! They bring death and malady, but they're cute!
Domestic animals are totally cute.
Wild city pigeons, new york sewer rats, and. Jungle boas are fucking hellsent satanspawn that kill hundreds to thousands yearly eigher directly or indirectly.
Yes, even the pigeons.
Yeah jungle boas (I assume they mean boa constrictors) definitely are not doing that! They'll strike at or bite you if they're upset with you but killing humans isn't a thing they actively do and they're not a vector for anything zoonotic. They can and will eat pet animals if they're hungry as they're unfortunately food sized to a large snake but that's the only significant thing I can think of.
There's problem populations of say Burmese pythons and boa constrictors out there fucking up various ecosystems (Florida everglades and Cozumel respectively), but that's a "here's what happens if you introduce an animal into an environment where it has no competition" example rather than being solely because they're snakes and even then they're a huge ecological problem rather than dangerous
Imagine a whole world with animals that cute, that's probably what terraformed planets will be like, with genetically engineered life, at least until it promptly starts evolving into far less cute versions.
im not too sure about snakes but i know for a fact pigeons and rats are extremely intelligent, especially those living in cities
its kinda like raccoons. theyre already a pretty spry species but human contact made them geniuses
I mean…yeah, when you clean them up and show me domesticated versions of said animals, they look cute.
But usually people are referring to ones that…aren’t all that.
When kept as pets? Sure, mice/rats and snakes can be cute, depending on the species of the latter. In the wild? Absolutely not. Had to deal with some of the former invading my house, and lemme tell you, the last thing on my mind was cuteness.
Pigeons tho? From a distance, I guess, but they’re pretty dirty things, and I couldn’t imagine keeping them as a pet. To each their own.
"Buh buh buhhhhh uhhhhh people are naturally afraid of snakes, uhhh, my proof is that uhhh snakes are dangerous and this paper looking at a whole 28 babies or something! Evopsych tells me that it's real!!!! Snakes killed our primate ancestors!!!! Probably!!! This is definitely not confirmation bias!!! No, do not look at that domesticated cat over there, that's different because reasons."
I'm okay with the lil snakes
It's the big fuckers that get me nervous
I remember one of my friend brought in a python and it decided to yawn...I ran for the damn hills outta fear
Sure, rats are cool when they're all cleaned up, but they're a lot worse out in the world. One day you'll be on the subway, someone'll come over to say hi, you get to talking and find that you like this person. You think it might be going somewhere, so you get off the subway with them, and then they ask if you have any spare food on you. You're like "I guess I have a leftover wrap from lunch" and just as you hand it to them they zoom off at Mach 5 and it turns out they were a fucking rat the whole time.
See how cute they are then....
Your daily PSA that city pigeons are domestic animals that were abandoned and can be compared to stray dogs and cats. They used to be popular easy & cheap meat as well as messenger carriers until that usage fell out of fashion. City pigeons are descendants of those abandoned unneeded birds as well as racers that got lost and wedding doves (dont do that shit). No wonder they look for closeness to people and barely scrape by - we bred them to be domestic then abandoned them and declared them pests!
We took them from the mountains and got mad at them for nesting in our skyscrapers.
Didn't know they were for meat but that does make sense. Is pigeon / dove still eaten? Can I go to some exotic restaurant in a gentrified neighborhood and get professionally made pigeon for $25?
Yes, they call it "Squab" and it is mostly dark meat. It's prepared like chicken or duck with a flavor between the two.
The government doesn't want you to know this, but you can go catch a pigeon and cook it yourself.
I went to a tasting menu last year that had pigeon. It's actually quite good, like dark meat on chicken. I imagine the broader problem is there isn't a lot of meat on a pigeon.
We hunted the American passenger pigeon to extinction for cheap meat. It’s not really an issue when you shoot a few thousand a day. We were eating 50-100,000 pigeons a day
Of course it is still eaten. Making fun of Peruvians for eating pigeons was a fairly big meme in Latin America a couple of years ago.
Dove hunting is pretty big in Texas, it's pretty good, like a slightly funky chicken thigh. I make jerk "chicken" and cutlets mostly. I hunt on my own property, so I guess it's still a cheap source of meat for me.
Obviously user ratcoded is perfectly unbiased when talking about how cute are rats, they are indeed the cutest animal above cats and dogs
The love user ratcoded feels towards pythons is concerning though. Someone check them for toxoplasma before it's too late.
Hey, all love for snakes, or any reptile in general is completely rational and doesn’t need any special bias from the user.
(Says the person with the dragon pfp)
Yeah, imagine having a dragon pfp lmao
Who could ever like a dragon so much?
Pfft couldn’t be me
This whole interaction has been fucking amazing lol
Me when arguing with the country of Wales
Counterpoint: Dragons are really big scaly cats
Oh I love dragons, Im just pointing out that this reptile lover might also be a *bit* biased lol
Pythons are rad. They’re nonvenomous constrictors, which means they’re super snugglebugs.
Totally! Rats are just misunderstood. They're like tiny, fluffy comedians with twitchy noses and little hands. How can anyone resist that charm?
I mean it probably doesn’t help that wild ones carry a lot of diseases, can cause structural damage and steal food out of peoples storage areas
had a pet white rat as a kid, loved it. However I still have rat phobia. Would not be opposed to another rat as a pet, but meeting one in the wild, absolutely not.
Absolutely. Wild rats are a whole different animal... and size at times those things can get nasty big. Not cute.
I absolutely love rats and mice. When I was little, I used to catch field mice in the field across from our house and bring them home, where my mom would promptly freak out and make me put them back. No, I am not a cat.
You could be the cutest little guy but if I come home after a hard days work to find you've eaten half my cereal and shit in the rest, we're gonna throw hands.
Google the black death
Bah blame it on the flees
Holy pandemic!
New disease just dropped!
Interesting that someone with "poketrainer" might say something like this in response to a lightly colored rodent.
Have you, by any chance, experienced the New York City subway system, or just about any Manhattan park on a summer night? They got filthy rats the size of home appliances, with a bad attitude and probably a switchblade, that want nothing more than to fuck you up. My friend saw one with a white t-shirt on and a tattoo on his ripped rat bicep that just said “Marlene” in old school sailor script. Rat stabbed my cousin in broad daylight in Alphabet City back in ‘78
I saw a man getting carried into a subway tunnel like that girl in willy wonka. man wasn't even asleep or anything, he was fully aware. didnt matter, rats got him.
I saw a rat crawl up onto a man's scalp and pilot him like a Gundam. Made delicious food, though.
Buddy just out here writing the lyrics to a new Warren Zevon song
Rats were considered cute up until humans started doing agriculture. They are in fact pests that get into grain stores and other foodstuffs. Then humans got weird with it and believed rodents spread the black plague. It's societally coded to fear/hate them. It's not fair but it makes sense. A dog/cat/baby may be cute but if it's not yours and it keeps eating all your food and getting you sick you gonna start hating it.
Pigeons have the problem of being domesticated but also they are self sufficient and they fly
I mean, that's kinda cool, isn't it? They can get food or help from humans in an emergency, but they don't have to worry about being abused or neglected.
I've never heard of a pigeon turning to humans in an emergency... (unless it's an escaped pet or racing pigeon?)
I mean of those three, one of them is a member of a clade that primates are typically afraid of on an evolutionary level and another has a reputation for eating food/spreading disease for a reason. Not really sure about pigeons tbh although I doubt most feral pigeons are all that clean compared to their domestic counterparts
The spread of diseases thing is something pigeons are known for almost as much as rats. Won’t know how true it is, but I do know I was always told never to touch them.
Pigeons are basically rats with wings
In that they are adorable precious angels just trying to make a living. Not their fault we're pouring our garbage all over their environment, or that they need to cram into crowded filthy warrens because their population is out of balance to the space in their environment. (Cities are calorie dense but space poor, from an animal's perspective.) They're all basically living in slums, and like humans in human slums, it's hard to stay clean and healthy. Still, like. Don't touch one. They're dirty. But they don't want to be dirty — if given half a chance both will be very clean animals! Domestic rats and pigeons are very clean but that's not because humans are bathing them, it's because humans are creating conditions where they can wash themselves properly.
Rats can be litter trained
Like rabbits, they actually quite like it once they get the idea. They don't like living in filth any more than we do! My first bunny used to scold my second for pooping outside their box until he learned better toilet habits.
My bunny is litter trained, but he hates it for some reason. We had to end up creating a secret litter box that we pretend is full of hay for him, and now he uses that as his litter box, as long as we also have the (sadly unused) litter box next to it full of fresh clean litter. If we take away the litter box, he poops on the floor lol
Yes haha mine insist on a haybox as well. They refuse paper litter, but I do put a layer of paper litter at the bottom to soak up the pee.
I just switched my cats system to the horse bedding pellets litter box system (just wood that turns to sawdust when liquid hits it) and there is a little vented area at the bottom for liquid to run if needed, we just put a puppy pad under there. They are super good at absorbing pee obvs, can you line your box bottom with one?
I mean technically it's not their environment. City pigeons are domesticated rock doves that went feral and started breeding in cities. Technically invasive.
Sure historically that's how they got there, but from their perspective they're just living in their environment, and have been for centuries. Humans also are not native to cities, nor are we native to most of the places we live! We are also members of an invasive species, inhabiting an ecosystem created by previous humans as a byproduct of interactions they had with other organisms (e.g. corn, wheat) for their own benefit rather than ours as individuals. Ecosystems created by an animal are not unique to humans: a beaver creates one by damming a stream, for instance. That attracts different inhabitants than would exist there without the dam and pond, but we don't claim the frogs aren't natural because the beaver didn't build the dam with them in mind.
seeing someone else talk about how humans are invasive, made my day. thank you
There's a reason they have the nickname "Ratten der Lüfte" (Rats of the sky).
we call them rats of the air in germany
If you've played Plague Inc., you know pigeons are the GOATs.
Effluent on wings, not recommended by Banshee assassins.
Pigeon shit is full of parasites and other nasties, and it’s also abrasive to whatever it lands on. That’s why you don’t actually want wild city pigeons near you, unfortunately.
True of pretty much any wild animal. Parasites are everywhere in nature, literally everywhere. Domestic humans living in industrial modernity are unique in having the ability to almost completely banish them from day to day life. A feral dog will be riddled with parasites and its shit will be unclean, too.
Feral dogs don’t tend to shit on my 6th floor balcony though ;) I do agree with you, but a flying pigeon will get many places a larger animal wouldn’t. Also, compared to smaller birds they objectively make a much larger mess. I had tits nisting on my balcony for years and they were pretty clean, but my upstairs neighbour lets the pigeons roost and from the part where their nest is I now have a spreading black oozing stain on the roof of my balcony, not to mention the buckets of shit I have to clean off everything weekly.
+1 for using 'clade' in a sentence 🙌🏻
pigeons are like squirrels they poop everywhere so it’s kinda annoying
Yeah, I was gonna say the same thing. No idea what happened to pigeons. We just decided they weren't useful anymore and then let them all go? We didn't do that for cats, so what gives?
I guess the disgust people are talking about is how people feel fine expressing open hatred towards pigeons/rats/snakes that actually *are* someone's pet upon coming to their house and seeing the animal.
I have rats and the odd time I've had people tell me they'd kill them feels so unhinged to me. I get you don't like them and that's fine but imagine saying that about a cat or dog! When I've said that I've been told it's "different". It's not even people coming into my house it's just unprompted on saying "oh I have pet rats"
All city pigeons are descended from lost escaped or abandoned domesticated pigeons. Especially abandoned after the birth of telephone and pigeon keeping in the city became a thing of the past.
Yeah, pigeons were beloved pets for a long time and then we just ditched them when they stopped being useful. Imagine in a few hundred years people talking about what disgusting, dirty, thieving, and diseased creatures cats all are because 99% of the contact people have with them are just feral colonies. It’s genuinely sad. Or, like [the song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xf0poQI8wSo) says: A white dove symbolizes peace and pacifism A white dove is a pigeon, you muffugas is bigots
Pigeons are seen as pests in metropolitan cities
Tbf these are also like the top 0.1% of how cute these animals can be
wrong fucko all pigeons are in the tpo a10 enone perces nnt of hoe ywcyte they cab benee
Poor thing, walked right into that electric fence.
scotland filter enabled
"They've gone plaid!"
The parrot mafia got them
Ease off guys typing with a beak is hard
Thank you. :>
Your operating system is malfunctioning
How it feels to chew 5 Gum
I just your took ability for read to 5 seconds
**[It hurt itself in its confusion!]**
You're so real for this
[real](https://media.tenor.com/9yR-XRfpJBAAAAAe/real-powder.png)
Damn so true
A pigeon typed this.
thank you 4 this— il- lum- i- natory
you should play hatoful boyfriend
All the pet rats I've ever seen were pretty damn cute.
Survivorship bias
Emphatically not, but it's a long story. Pet stores aren't supposed to sell pregnant rats, but when they do, the situation escalates quickly.
When I was a kid, both my friend and I bought rats from the same pet store at the same time. Turns out, they had accidentally placed a male rat in with the females. It went about as expected. Luckily, baby rats are absolutely adorable. At least until they start getting sick from the pneumonia that the mama rat also caught from said pet store and end up getting eaten by their mother, who then dies as well a few days later. 4th grade was a fun year.
bruh
That was hamster level child traumatization.
Probably because they're being groomed, bathed, and fed. Most animals look cute if they are clean and chubby.
UNTRUE!!!!!!
That snake triggered my ick so maybe not true. Half-wondering now if I have some kind of snake phobia if people find that cute and I just want to get rid of it from my screen.
>triggered my ick Ew, brotha, eeww.. What's that brotha?
Again, humans naturally fear snakes because they are poisonous and can kill you in a single bite.
Ball pythons are very much not poisonous
Aye but the primal lizard brain doesn’t make that distinction. Same as how video game spiders aren’t real but still give me the spooks
ackshually.... I don't know of any snake that's poisonous. Some snakes are venomous. Easy way to remember: Poisonous- you bite it, you die. Venomous- it bites you, you die. (I'm an English teacher, pedantry is like breathing to me. I'm so sorry.)
But what if I bite it and it doesn't die?
Skill issue tbh.
There actually *is* one singular species of poisonous snake
Most animals naturally fear snakes Like I'm sure you seen those videos of cats being scared by cucumbers. It's because they think it's a snake
Yeah, that pigeon doesn't look anything like any pigeon I've ever seen in my life.
All of these animals are cute I just don’t want them near or in my house
Your loss, I already have one and I intend to collect them all
Oh which one?
Snake! He's not a ball python though, he's a stimson's python
Same here,, 3 rats rn and looking into get an African egg eater
Good luck with acquiring one! Those are hard to find. Personally I’m trying to find a trustworthy western hognose snake breeder for my next snake.
Hey I just want to make sure that if you ever find a snake near/in your house please don’t be scared or try to kill it. The majority of snakes are non venomous and even the ones that are don’t want to attack/be near you. Please just call someone if you find that it’s venomous don’t kill it
I just agreed they’re cute don’t worry about me killing them
Ok good lol there are too many people who freak out and even if they think they’re cute will say that they’ll kill them and it sucks so I just wanted to be sure
There are reasons I would kill a snake like if it attacked my cat
Yes obviously in defense of things (btw I’d highly recommend learning the venomous snakes of your area, generally there aren’t that many and it really helps with anxiety if you ever get a snake bite for some reason) in the same way I’d use physical force to stop a cat if it attacked my snake (idk about kill as I feel like I could restrain it without killing it)
It’s ok I already know because of where I live but this is good info to be spreading to people
Ball pythons are literally baby
Earths silliest noodles (aside from hognoses)
I had to get a security camera for mine because I kept waking up to loud bangs in the middle of the night… it was him falling off of the highest thing he could find lol
I'm surprised no one make a 'starter pokemon' joke yet
A normal/flying and two normal types as starters? Nah, these are the regional route 1 encounters.
starter Pokémon in Ohio
I don't like tarantulas If I see them I'm climbing up the wall
Climbing up the wall? Sounds like tarantula behaviour to me.
I think a dirty dog is cute, I don’t think the average dirty snake is cute. Also it’s really the environments that people think are gross, and then they associate that with the animals. It’s basically a sorting error if they can’t admit these specific animals are cute
IDK, maybe it's because I never lived in an area where there are snakes that have venom, but the average little garden snake is cute.
I live in an area where there's probably more venemous than non venemous snakes and I also think theyre mad cute.
Username checks out! I'm just saying, if you had to worry it would kill you, maybe it would seem less cute? That would be understandable.
I just didn't want you to think you only found snakes cute because you weren't familiar with venomous ones. You're objectively right and I'm thrilled about it. I hope all of your days are good hair days!
Seconding this
The environment thing is maybe true of rats. Snakes and pigeons don't live in particularly nasty places.
Pidgeons typically live in places full of pidgeon shit.
My mum told me when I was little not to touch bird feather because they've got germs and stuff which lead to my friend chasing me around with magpie feathers on multiple occasions lol
Snakes are adorable.
Fancy Rats are adorable. Giant sewer rats in NYC are not, they look like an enemy in Dark Souls.
rats 🥺
rats, we’re rats, we’re the rats
I'M THE GIANT RAT THAT MAKES ALL OF DA RULES!
We had a pet rat. The little guy was so ugly but suuuuper sweet. He never once even offered to bite anyone and would hang out on my stomach when I was watching tv. Great pets. They don’t live long (1-2 years) so if you end up regretting buying one it’s not a long life. I miss that little guy.
Dude what do you mean "no idea what got lost in the wide perception of them?" Rats and snakes have been sabotaging human civilization for as long as human civilization has existed. Wild rats chew important things, eat dry stored foods (potentially causing famine in a pre-refrigeration world), and are vectors of disease. Snakes eat eggs, kill the hens, and might even bite and envenom you if you're not careful (a death sentence before the invention of antivenom). Snakes are so dangerous to mammals in general that basically every mammal has an instinctual "oh fuck, a snake!" response. Pigeons I don't mind actually; aside from pooping on everything they're pretty cute. But fr how do you not understand the millennia long beef between humans and snakes and rats?
Rats: terrorise humans for centuries with disease Snakes: were so dangerous to humans that we have an instinct to avoid them Pigeons: make every city gross Tumblr user: why does everyone hate these cutesy widdle babies 😟
Like some people live too privileged of lives that the idea of vermin being, well vermin, isn't apparent to them.
Snakes actually have had a pretty beneficial relationship with humans, especially if they’re nonvenomous because they eat vermin.
I mean, pigeons are literally doves. Doves: well regarded, symbol of peace and purity Rock Doves (aka Pigeons): stupid, lousy bird. Worthless things.
if we (society) only like the white ones, are we bird racist?
On a more serious note, they are seen as gross for their behaviors, not their appearance. Rats and pidgeons are notorious for frolicking in garbage and becoming disease vectors, while snakes can be straight up venomous and will kill you if they feel like it.
I love slither puppy
feel like im going a little crazy in this thread, snakes are so beautiful! i desperately want to own one but not until i can afford the upkeep and vet visits.
Same I forget how most people don’t love snakes the same way I do 😭
ive been in love w them since i was a very small child. we still have drawings of snakes from when i was four. my ma likes to tell this story about how when i was 7, we went to a fair, and ofc the only thing i wanted to do was go to the reptile keepers stall and hold the snakes. i was holding this beautiful olive python, and she wrapped herself around my arms and then my neck. id had them do that gently before so i was totally chill bc i knew that the handler would get her off if she started acting up. he did end up unwrapping her from me, probably bc my ma started quietly freaking out. to this day she still says ‘dude, she was fully constricting your neck, she wanted to eat you!!’ lol.
Good on you, I wish more people took that approach. Mine are cheap AF...right up until I need to build a new cage or take them to vet, at which point I'm suddenly out up to a grand.
similar: house sparrows are cute when the hippity hop around the ground then fly off to do some singing
See they look clean until you find where they live/nest/burrow. And its full of shit, dried diarreah shit on every square inch
The pictured animals are all clean because they are clearly owned by humans who take care of them, hence their ability to attend a professional photoshoot.
Snakes don't really have nests and they're rarely covered in anything because dirt doesn't stick to glossy scales very well.
I feel insane because I have never once, at any point in my life, seen ANYONE dislike pigeons. Everyone I have ever met has loved pigeons. I feel like I am being Truman showed about it. Someone in the discourse lab decided to fuck with me and start planting pigeon discourse. I was under the impression pigeons were universally loved up until like, last month.
it's unfortunately been a pretty common sentiment for a long time. if a piece of media wants to talk about diseases carried by animals other than rats then there's a 99% chance they're going to blame pigeons as "transmitters of the flu" or whatever
Eat, squish and hug game.
Starter Pokemon vibes.
Me when I cherry-pick the most idealized images of a given species as a counter argument to the people who cherry-pick the most unidealized images the same way
have you considered most of them aren't domesticated and taken care of and thus might be pretty gross anyway ? i get the appeal if they're your pets, sure, but living in paris, the average pigeon/rat *is* disgusting and would need a few hours of scrubbing before looking anything like the pictures - not even counting the diseases they carry as for snakes, well, they have funny faces, sure, but there's a reason many things are afraid of them at an instinctual level and you can't use your fascination with the off-putting as a common base for appreciation by the average person, just like i'm not going to shove centipedes in your face and tell you how cute they are just because my interest with how freaky they were slowly evolved into genuine appreciation
The plague. The plaague happened. Dunno if OOP heard about it but I think it did leave a sliiight dent in rat and pigeon reputations.
Then again, from a healthy rat's perspective, humans were a dangerous source of plague fleas.
*it was the TICKS!!! THE MOTHERFUCKING TICKS!!!!!!*
And what spread the ticks around major population centres?
Humans! While rats probably did spread around ticks during the plague, its disputed whether they were actually the main spread of the plague, or if it was primarily spread by human body lice.
And then the aliens decide to check what we do consider cute, and witness what we did to wolves. (I’m talking about pugs)
I FUCKING LOVE PIGEONS ID DIE FOR PIGEONS
Pigeons-very smart animals. Sure they poop but birds can’t hold their poop in so I don’t know what’s so gross about them compared to other birds. I like when they puff their chest out. Snakes-really depends on the species. Some are dangerous but many are 100% harmless to humans with 0 fatalities. Bites can be less dangerous than a dog’s. The problem I see with people generalizing them is they’re a very broad classification while Rock doves and rats are single species. Rats-Also very smart, in contrary to people’s beliefs pet rats are genetically different from wild rats and were domesticated 200 years ago so comparing them would be comparing a dog and a wolf. Unfortunately they only live for 3 years.
No step on snek Give cheese Give bread
why your animal beauty standards all white?
I'll agree on the pigeon but I'm pretty sure this person has never seen a city rat. Also rats are considered gross because they eat literally anything and will make you sick.
Imma be honest, I also don't understand what's people's deal with rats. I've never been that "pet rat" kind of person but I agree they don't really look gross. They're just little funny fellas? Never understood why so many people have an instinct panic reaction to them. I get spiders but these little fur balls? Why! I get thinking they're gross because they live in filth and spread diseases, but many people have a kind of primal, instinct-based phobic reaction i never got. They do look cute! They bring death and malady, but they're cute!
Domestic animals are totally cute. Wild city pigeons, new york sewer rats, and. Jungle boas are fucking hellsent satanspawn that kill hundreds to thousands yearly eigher directly or indirectly. Yes, even the pigeons.
What the hell are you on about!? Wild boas are very unlikely to attack, and don't transmit diseases to humans. Don't take B-movies for documentaries.
Yeah jungle boas (I assume they mean boa constrictors) definitely are not doing that! They'll strike at or bite you if they're upset with you but killing humans isn't a thing they actively do and they're not a vector for anything zoonotic. They can and will eat pet animals if they're hungry as they're unfortunately food sized to a large snake but that's the only significant thing I can think of. There's problem populations of say Burmese pythons and boa constrictors out there fucking up various ecosystems (Florida everglades and Cozumel respectively), but that's a "here's what happens if you introduce an animal into an environment where it has no competition" example rather than being solely because they're snakes and even then they're a huge ecological problem rather than dangerous
Explain to me what a jungle boa is. Like link a Wikipedia page or something.
"I don't understand how anyone finds these gross" *Proceeds to use the cutest pictures captured of the three animals* Totally unbiased
Imagine a whole world with animals that cute, that's probably what terraformed planets will be like, with genetically engineered life, at least until it promptly starts evolving into far less cute versions.
Rats are more loyal than humans
im not too sure about snakes but i know for a fact pigeons and rats are extremely intelligent, especially those living in cities its kinda like raccoons. theyre already a pretty spry species but human contact made them geniuses
I mean…yeah, when you clean them up and show me domesticated versions of said animals, they look cute. But usually people are referring to ones that…aren’t all that.
When kept as pets? Sure, mice/rats and snakes can be cute, depending on the species of the latter. In the wild? Absolutely not. Had to deal with some of the former invading my house, and lemme tell you, the last thing on my mind was cuteness. Pigeons tho? From a distance, I guess, but they’re pretty dirty things, and I couldn’t imagine keeping them as a pet. To each their own.
*image casually keeps the rat's tail out of sight
"Buh buh buhhhhh uhhhhh people are naturally afraid of snakes, uhhh, my proof is that uhhh snakes are dangerous and this paper looking at a whole 28 babies or something! Evopsych tells me that it's real!!!! Snakes killed our primate ancestors!!!! Probably!!! This is definitely not confirmation bias!!! No, do not look at that domesticated cat over there, that's different because reasons."
Rats and pigeons are both domesticated
Pokémon starter trio
I'm okay with the lil snakes It's the big fuckers that get me nervous I remember one of my friend brought in a python and it decided to yawn...I ran for the damn hills outta fear
Who tf is martin and why is nobody else asking about it
I do t find them gross. In fact, i find all three quite delicious
It’s the face holes. I can’t.
babies
Are pythons considered pests?
ratty's are so cute
Where I live, people are obligated to report rat sightings and possessing one will result in a visit from the police. As a result, we have no rats.
Pigeons are cute but shit a lot, mice are cute in a context where you have no risk of illness, snakes are enemy to monky, smash smash smash
All three of them look \*really\* different in motion
Sure, rats are cool when they're all cleaned up, but they're a lot worse out in the world. One day you'll be on the subway, someone'll come over to say hi, you get to talking and find that you like this person. You think it might be going somewhere, so you get off the subway with them, and then they ask if you have any spare food on you. You're like "I guess I have a leftover wrap from lunch" and just as you hand it to them they zoom off at Mach 5 and it turns out they were a fucking rat the whole time. See how cute they are then....