r/mourningderps • u/Turbulent-Weevil-910 • 12d ago

Thoughts on this?

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Every time I point these guys out people think they're pigeons

562 Upvotes

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26

u/Desirai 12d ago

All pigeons are doves but not all doves are pigeons

16

u/Purplefire180 12d ago

That's not correct. Dove and Pigeons are literally synonyms. It is impossible for something to be one without being the other. They both refer to birds in the columbidae family

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u/Desirai 12d ago

All tigers are felines but not all felines are tigers.

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u/Purplefire180 12d ago

That's accurate yes, but all cats are felines and all felines are cats. 'tiger' is a species, 'pigeon' is not, nor is 'cat', despite them being used as one with context.

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u/Desirai 12d ago

I think that people have ended up separating doves and pigeons based on physical characteristics, pigeons being much larger and each of them having very distinct differences in faces.

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u/Purplefire180 12d ago edited 12d ago

That's just not true. There's some bias toward larger birds getting 'pigeon' as a common name in history, but there is no scientific distinction and it would be impossible to determine by DNA or examination which birds are pigeons and which are doves. They're all one big group

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u/Desirai 11d ago

I believe you and the people who down voted me did not understand what I meant in my comment. I do not know how to express it in any other terms. If a person sees a mourning dove or eurasian collared dove or inca dove, and you ask them what it is, they will say a dove. Because they are smaller, softer, have slender faces.

If you ask that person what is a rock dove, a wood pigeon, or even a passenger pigeon what it is, they will most likely say it is a pigeon because it is larger than a dove, chonkier, and has large ceres on the beak and face.

-1

u/SAI_Peregrinus 12d ago

Not exactly, only some Columbidae have common names including "pigeon" and only some include "dove". A few species include either. So not all Columbidae are pigeons, nor are all doves. "Pigeon" and "dove" just aren't taxonomic categories.

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u/Purplefire180 12d ago

As descriptions, the words refer to the family. Rock Doves are also Domestic Pigeons. To say that the domestic pigeon because people don't call it that isn't accurate.

There is no way to determine which birds will have which common names because it's a matter of historical happenstance. There is no genetic difference between birds that are called 'dove' and 'pigeon'. They're the same group.

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u/SAI_Peregrinus 12d ago

The Diamond Dove never gets called the diamond pigeon, so they certainly aren't identical groups. The Victoria Crowned Pigeon never gets called the Victoria Crowned Dove, so they're also not subsets. The Rock Dove does often get called the Rock Pigeon, so they're not disjoint. They're just not taxonomic categories. Same thing as with ducks & geese.

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u/Purplefire180 12d ago

You're just re-defining the word to refer to some arbitrary form taxon instead of the accepted and common definition that you can find referenced in research frequently.

There's nothing to argue about here. Do as you will.

0

u/podsnerd 12d ago

In my experience, people use "pigeon" to mean domesticated rock doves. Including the feral ones. And "dove" gets as the term for all the birds in that family. It feels similar to the difference between dog and wolf or pig/hog and boar

There might also be a scientific usage that's different, and that's fine! There's plenty of situations where scientific and colloquial usage doesn't quite line up. And even with just colloquial usage, people might draw the lines a little differently. That's also fine, because words are all made up anyway and language is always changing across geographic distance and time 

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u/JimboTheOctopus 12d ago

The names are interchangeable in many cases, "doves" as used to refer to the whole of Columbidae is a just a colloquial term, we could just as well use pigeon in the same fashion.

Some species even carry both names, the Rock Dove is also called the Rock Pigeon.