New bird species.

It isn't often that one sees the potential of a new species. Imaged here is the prototype for a tail less bird. It is a pigeon. Take a close look. The bird with the white wing tips in the foreground lacks a complete tail section. Surprisingly the bird flies very well.

The critter deals with braking by turning its wings down like the flaps on an airplane. Pigeons normally use their tails to brake and adjust speed in coming into land and hold their wings still. This one can't do that so it functions like a small aircraft.

Loss of the tail seems to be a genetic mutation not an amputation. It gives this bird, a hen, some interesting advantages from a flight perspective. It would be interesting to see if this bird does take a mate and reproduce if the genetic anomaly will take hold in its progeny.

Such a flight structure would give it another significant advantage which is to avoid the reintroduction of the Peregrine Falcons and becoming its food.

If you will look on the small of its back which in this case is the tail end of the bird you will see a white patch. This patch is another genetic adaptation to the predation of peregrines. It has been demonstrated that birds with this particular coloration feature survives predation better because the peregrine has problems hunting birds with the white spot in that location.

What this means in the course of species adaptations is that the urban pigeons do adapt rather swiftly to their environments. They have an average life span of 4 years so the generational adaptations are swift. One adaptation could be to be tailless.

However, the genetic mutation may have impaired its reproductive organs. It should not have but might. We will see in a couple of years.