“They were domesticated before the dawn of recorded writing,” she says, from a species called the rock dove. “We know Genghis ...

Picasso, Elvis Presley, Walt Disney and Charles Darwin all owned pigeons as pets. Over the years, the birds have fallen on hard times and are often seen more as a nuisance than a domesticated animal.

But their large presence in U.S. cities points back to our dependence on pigeons in a different time − such as when they were first domesticated for food, and used to carry messages before ...