This episode is presented by eBay.

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Then when you're buying, you can discover loads of hidden gems. There's so many items where you think I would have never found that anywhere else. Then when you're selling, it's so simple and most

importantly, free. It's free, Rob. When it's this easy to sell for free and there's great deals

on things you love. You can't help but say when it's eBay. It excludes vehicles and business

sellers.

Welcome to Science Talk, the weekly podcast of Scientific American for the seven days starting August 13th, 2008. I'm Steve Murski. It's been called a rat with wings, but the pigeon,

which is actually a kind of dove, has a rich history and probably a very fertile future.

Journalist Courtney Humphreys became so fascinated with the ubiquitous bird that she wound up writing

the new book Super Dove, How the Pigeon Took Manhattan and the World.

We spoke in Manhattan in the Scientific American Library.

Courtney, good to talk to you today.

Thanks, Steve. It's good to be here.

So let me just quote from your book,

Pigeons were a fact I had taken for granted.

And the rest of the book really kind of springs from that.

And pigeons, we all take pigeons for granted,

really. But it's fascinating. How are they doing what they do? Why are they so successful in our

modern urban environments? Yes, well, pigeons have actually a very long, complicated history with

people, and there are a few reasons

why they do so well in cities and why they're found very abundantly in cities all over the

world. Some of that is just sort of a happy accident. Pigeons, their original environment is living

...