page_title: Human uses of birds
section_title: As pets
hierarchical_section_title: Human uses of birds / Economic uses / As pets
caption_attribution_description: 1 Middle-billed Tumbler 2 German Drum 3 Anatolian Turbit 4 Roman 5 Coburg Lark 6 Antwerp Carrier 7 Strasser 8 Lynx 9 Nun 10 Maltese 11 Carrier 12 Long-billed Tumbler 13 Fantail 14 English Pouter
context_page_description: Human uses of birds have, for thousands of years, included both economic uses such as food, and symbolic uses such as art, music, and religion.
  In terms of economic uses, birds have been hunted for food since Palaeolithic times. They have been captured and bred as poultry to provide meat and eggs since at least the time of ancient Egypt. Some species have been used, too, to help locate or to catch food, as with cormorant fishing and the use of honeyguides. Feathers have long been used for bedding, as well as for quill pens and for fletching arrows.
  Today, many species face habitat loss and other threats caused by humans; bird conservation groups work to protect birds and to influence governments to do so.
  Birds have appeared in the mythologies and religions of many cultures since ancient Sumer. For example, the dove was the symbol of the ancient Mesopotamian goddess Inanna, the Canaanite mother goddess Asherah, and the Greek goddess Aphrodite. Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom, had a little owl as her symbol, and, in ancient India, the peacock represented Mother Earth.
context_section_description: Cagebirds such as canaries, budgerigars, cockatoos, lovebirds, quails, finches, and parrots are popular pets, whether for their song, their behaviour, their colourful plumage, or their ability to mimic speech. Among reasons for their popularity is that they can be kept in homes too small or otherwise unsuitable for dogs or cats. The cagebird trade in some parts of the world threatens certain species with extinction, when birds are illegally captured in the wild. For example, in Indonesia, at least 13 species are close to extinction including the Indonesian national bird, the Javan hawk-eagle, while five subspecies including the scarlet-breasted lorikeet may have become extinct in the wild.
  Pet birds are kept in their millions, as are domestic fowls, bantams, and pigeons. These last had an important effect on evolutionary biology, as Charles Darwin took an especial interest in pigeon fancying, adopted the hobby himself, and made use of the wide variation between breeds as an argument for the power of selection in his 1859 Origin of Species.
caption: Charles Darwin noted that pigeon fanciers had created many kinds of pigeon, such as Tumblers (1, 12), Fantails (13), and Pouters (14) by selective breeding.[47]
exif: {"Image DateTime": "2014:01:26 10:18:11", "Image ExifOffset": "58", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "106", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5782"}