It hasn’t even started filming yet but Mike Tyson’s pigeon racing show on Animal Planet is now taking fire from, not surprisingly, PETA. We at 10,000 Birds first brought up the show here, which led to some interesting comments, and then Nate weighed in against it here. The piece about PETA’s objections mentions the “101 Dalmatians Syndrome” which is what happens when a pet is featured in the media; kids see them, harass their parents, get the pet, get bored, and the next thing you know, shelters are full of them! Will we see hordes of abandoned racing pigeons in the near future?
Corey is a New Yorker who lived most of his life in upstate New York but has lived in Queens since 2008. He's only been birding since 2005 but has garnered a respectable life list by birding whenever he wasn't working as a union representative or spending time with his family. He lives in Forest Hills with Daisy and Desmond Shearwater. His bird photographs have appeared on the Today Show, in Birding, Living Bird Magazine, Bird Watcher's Digest, and many other fine publications. He is also the author of the American Birding Association Field Guide to the Birds of New York.
Well, if that’s the case, we’ll see spiralling Peregrine populations: first spiralling up as a result of the increased food and then spiralling down as a result of what Nate described.
Thanks for the link!
I didn’t touch on this in my post, but I’m disappointed in the press that PETA’s overly anthropomorphic and, frankly, useless complaints are getting the lion’s share of the media in response to the show. But PETA is good at nothing so much as justifying it’s own existence.
In any case, there’s definitely enough to not like about this project specifically and pigeon groups generally without getting into whether the birds are mistreated.