Photos and clips of a proud-looking pigeon with its chest puffed out like a cartoon character and impressively long legs have been getting a lot of attention online.

The “chad pigeon” went viral after a UK pigeon breeder shared a clip of their impressive-looking bird on TikTok, where it quickly went viral. Million of people around the world have seen the footage and still can’t believe it’s a real animal. Some are convinced that it is the work of an AI-powered digital tool, while others claim that the video was digitally altered for views. However, the bird in the video is just a really impressive specimen of a rare pigeon breed called “English Pouter”. A simple Google search reveals that there is nothing too special about this particular bird, and that the extremely puffed-out chest and long legs are breed-specific traits.

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The Budapest Short Faced Tumbler is a rare pigeon breed famous for its odd, almost alien-like appearance, with bulging eyes, a minuscule beak, and a triangular head.

When the Poltl brothers, a family of pigeon racing enthusiasts from Budapest, set out to create a new pigeon breed in the early 1900s, they used selective breeding to obtain a high-flying bird with unmatched endurance. They managed to achieve their goal, as the Budapest Short Faced Tumbler could fly for up to 5 hours without breaks, and cover a distance of around 800 kilometers. Endurance was its middle name, but those who saw it for the first time cared less about its flying capabilities and more about its unique look. The small face and beak, in contrast with bulging, frog-like eyes, intrigued or freaked people out, but it also made them pay attention.

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Although there are plenty of flightless bird species on Earth, the Parlor Roller pigeon is believed to be the only one selectively bred by humans until it lost its capacity to take to the skies and developed a completely new and bizarre means of getting around – backflips.

Seeing a parlor roller pigeon roll on the ground, you would think it was having some sort of seizure, but in reality, the birds are rolling on the ground because it comes naturally to them. No one knows exactly how or when the breed was created, but experts and enthusiasts speculate that its origins can be traced back to mid-19th century Scotland when someone probably encountered a specimen with a slight tendency to roll on the ground and decided it was worth emphasizing via selective breeding. It is believed that over years of selective breeding, pigeons that rolled over long distances were obtained.

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Xavier Bouget, an 80-year-old pensioner from France’s Brittany region, and Blanchon, a majestic white pigeon, have been best friends for two years, ever since the Frenchman rescued the bird from becoming a cat’s lunch.

Xavier first met his unlikely companion two years ago, while walking to his house in the town of Gommenec’h. He noticed this small, almost featherless pigeon chick fall out of its nest, in a desperate attempt to escape a hungry cat. He didn’t think to help it at first, but when he got home and mentioned it to his wife, Marie-Françoise, she asked him why he didn’t pick it up. So he went back to get the small pigeon chick, which had miraculously managed to escape the purring predator until his return. Xavier came home with the frail bird in his bird, not knowing that it would soon become his best and closest friend.

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A UK student who left his apartment window open before going away for five months found his home covered in bird droppings after it was taken over by pigeons.

20-year-old Oluwageorge Johnson had to leave his rented apartment in Nottingham in a hurry back in March, after his parents turned up to take him home, because of Covid-19. He forgot a window open, and after seeing no activity for several days, pigeons decided to make the apartment their home. No one disturbed the birds for over five months, until a few days ago when accommodation workers heard some strange sounds coming from the flat and went in to investigate. They found the whole place covered in bird droppings, eggs in the kitchen sink and pigeon feathers everywhere.

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Frillback pigeons are one of the most coveted breeds among pigeon fanciers, prized both for its relatively calm temperament and for their unique frills or curls.

Believed to have originated somewhere in Asia Minor, the frillback pigeon is the result of many years of selective breeding. Its distinctive features are the frill or curls on the wing shield feathers, as well as at the end of the foot feathers or muffs. Slightly larger than other pigeon breeds, with long tail and wing feathers, are considered some of the most elegant of fancy pigeon breeds and are very popular at pigeon beauty contests.

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It’s not every day that you see pigeons with cowboy hats on their tiny heads walking or flying around. Unless you live in Las Vegas, where cowboy-hat-wearing pigeons are actually a a thing these days.

It all started on December 5, when a Las Vegas resident named Bobby Lee noticed two funny-looking birds pecking the ground near a dumpster. The pigeons drew his attention because they were wearing these tiny cowboy hats – one red and one grey – so he whipped out his smartphone and started filming them, later uploading the video to Facebook, where it quickly went viral. The next day, everyone was talking about Las Vegas’ cowboy-hat-wearing pigeons, and Lee was getting phone calls from agencies trying to license his video.

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The Nossa Senhora da Consolação church, in downtown Sao Paolo, Brazil, used to have a serious pigeon problem. The pesky birds would fly through the place during sermons, poop on  the benches and leave feathers everywhere, but ever since they had these colored circle panels installed in the windows and doorways, no pigeon gets close anymore.

Regular parishioners at Nossa Senhora da Consolação describe the pigeon situation as a “real hell”. Dozens of birds had made the place of worship their home, flying in and out whenever they pleased, making a lot noise during mass and dropping stones and bits of plaster on people. Every morning, the floor and wooden benches had to be cleaned of bird droppings, and at one point it all became too much to bear. The church wanted to find a humane way of driving the pigeons away, but they never imagined hypnosis would be the answer.

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A DIY master from Tokyo, Japan, recently conquered the internet with a very unusual project. She set out to turn a pair of cheap high-heel shoes into realistic-looking pigeons to see if they would allow her to get closer to the real birds in a local park without them flying away. Did it work? Read on and find out.

47-year old Keiko Ohata creates all kinds of wondrous things and posts photos of them on Japanese DIY-themed community website, Nifty. She has shared dozens of interesting creations with her followers over the last 11 years, but it was her latest idea that attracted the attention of some of the world’s largest art blogs and news sites. Well, sort of, as all the articles I’ve seen got her name all wrong and linked to a Russian site as the original source, instead of her Nifty profile. Hopefully, they’ll make the necessary corrections, as Keiko deserves all the credit for this amazing pair of pigeon shoes.

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Jacobins aren’t your average, everyday pigeons that flock on your terrace and mess it up with droppings. Take one look at them and you’ll know they are a cut above the rest. How can they not be, with a royal hood of feathers that covers them from the neck up, almost entirely hiding their pretty little heads. I like to think of them as pigeons-in-parkas, which is really high fashion as far as birds are concerned.

Jacobins are one of the oldest domestic pigeon breeds in the world – an excellent exhibition breed with relatively unknown origins. Some believe that that the original breed came from India, while others think they’re natives of Cyprus. They arrived in Europe around the 16th century, where they were put through four stages of development, by breeders, until they evolved into their current state.

Although they have been bred for centuries, Jacobin pigeons have undergone remarkable changes in the past 80 years. They started off rather small, which was popular back in the day. But the current breed of Jacobins are slender and of medium size, with long flight feathers, long legs and slim tails. The most remarkable feature, the ‘rosette’, makes up the hood that completely covers the top and sides of their tiny head. In fact, the bird’s face is only visible from the front. The bigger the hood, the higher the quality of the specimen. And they always maintain an upright posture, adding to their ‘royal airs’.

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Some artists are willing to do anything for their masterpieces, including risking their freedom. American Duke Riley is one such artist. He walks the fine line between legal and illegal in his new project called “Trading with the Enemy” which involves smuggling cigars from Cuba to Key West using pigeons specially trained for this shady task.

For “Trading with the Enemy,” Riley, who makes a living as a tattoo artist, started off by training 50 birds. Some were taught to carry cigars from Cuba to their destination – which, if you don’t already know by now, is illegal, and some were given special cameras to document their trip back and forth over the boarder. The spying equipment was engineered by Riley himself who worked for several years to make them as light as possible so the pigeon’s wouldn’t even notice them. According to the New York Times, the artist’s concept was a commentary on “the long history of pirating on the southern border.” Riley also wanted to dismiss the government’s very expensive high-tech spying gear by using homing pigeons instead of drones. “I wanted to subvert this billions-of-dollars high-tech system with things that were being used in ancient Sumeria. A lot of the work I do seeks to create some sense of possibility or empowerment, in a humorous and romanticized way, using the simplest means possible,” Riley says.

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