Frillback Profile
There’s something very unsettling about the show animal breeding community that ultimately stems from a lack of respect for the animal and a somewhat obsessive hunt for novel phenotypes and a point scale system that doesn’t include a single category for health or wellbeing.
One such example is a pigeon with feathers so curly it prefers to walk. It’s called the frillback, but it looks a lot like a Trafalgar pigeon that’s been dipped in tar and pencil sharpenings.
Frillback Facts Overview
| Habitat: | Domestic |
| Location: | Worldwide, originating in Asia |
| Lifespan: | 5-7 years |
| Size: | Not specified, larger than other coloured breeds. |
| Weight: | Up to 450g (1lb) |
| Colour: | Varied |
| Diet: | Seeds/show-standard feed |
| Predators: | Salivating pigeon fanciers |
| Top Speed: | Faster than a chicken, slower than a wild pigeon |
| No. of Species: | 1 |
| Conservation Status: | Not Listed, domestic |
Wild pigeons come in all kinds of stunning shapes and colours, but the Frillback is what happens when humans try to improve upon nature’s beauty standard.
This morose abomination sits glumly on the judge’s table looking like the best of a bad bunch, and has been in-bred so much it lives half as long and flies half as fast as its wild ancestor, the rock dove.
This is a remnant from a time when humans had no concept of non-human personhood, so perhaps its origins can be excused, but now that we do, its perpetuation surely shouldn’t be.
Interesting Frillback Facts
1. They’re rock doves
The Frillback pigeon is a domestic breed, so it’s not a different species than its ancestral roots, which in this case is the rock pigeon, or rock dove (don’t worry about the difference, pigeons and doves are taxonomically the same thing).
Most domestic pigeons descend from this bird, as are most feral populations of pigeons. While some were domesticated for practical use, like the carrier pigeon, others have been bred for centuries just to look fancy.
2. They’re fancy
There’s a large group of people who unironically call themselves pigeon fanciers. This is only arguably less ominous than it sounds and refers not to any romantic attraction to their birds (though this cannot be ruled out) but to the practice of domestic breeding “ornamental”, or fancy animals.
The concept of an ornamental animal is already grotesque enough, but the reality of it can also be alarming. Fancy pigeons are selectively bred to look all kinds of ways, with little to no regard for their health or well-being.
They are ranked only by appearance or behaviour and the breeding process itself creates a huge amount of “waste animals” that are either sick or discarded on the path to some wealthy idiot’s ideal toy to be paraded about in shows for other wealthy idiots to judge.
There are around 800-1000 so-called fancy pigeons, all, by definition, domesticated from the rock dove, Columba livia. Many have escaped and formed feral pigeon colonies all over the world.
3. They can fly
It’s commonly said that the frillback can fly just fine but prefers to walk. This is of course a contradiction and a glaring case of cognitive dissonance that’s become characteristic of the so-called fancy breeding community.
But the frillback can fly. It’s still a pigeon and therefore strong and fast for a bird, but having curly feathers means that flight is a lot harder for it, hence the ambulatory preference.
4. They don’t live as long
At first glance, the Frillback pigeon has a similar lifespan to its ancestral wild breed, at around six years. But this is how long a rock dove lives in the wild, and considering the Frillback’s captive lifestyle, a better comparison would be to the captive longevity of the rock dove.
Rock doves kept in captivity can live to 15 years or more, making the Frillback’s maximum of about 7 less than half the longevity of the bird it originates from.
5. There are grizzles
Frillbacks come in a variety of “acceptable” colours. Some are pure white, others pure black. Grizzles are a mix, named for the predominant colour, so there are red grizzles, with a brick colouration, punctuated with whites and lighter colours.
Likewise, there are yellow, blue and silver grizzles. But the powers that write the arbitrary rules for how this poor animal must look make it very clear that if it’s a silver grizzle, there should be no red, rust or blue on the feathers at all.
Somewhat ironically, the breed standard for this pigeon regarded for its deformed feathers lists deformity of any kind as a reason to disqualify one from competition.
But the winning characteristics are equally subjective.
6. There’s no set size requirements
The pure and glorious frillback can’t be too small. But it can’t be too big, either. What this means exactly is not clear, but it should be “Slightly larger than most German Toy breeds”. Presumably meaning it can be smaller than some German toy breeds, but doesn’t have to be.
The rest of the rules are just as ambiguous:
“The head should be large, but in proportion to the size of the body”, large in relation to what, then, isn’t clear.
“BODY – Generally boaty in appearance”, though the type of boat is not specified.
“NECK – Seemingly short, protrudes entirely from the shoulder”, the latter being the traditional definition of a neck.
All in all, this is a fanciful industry filled with whimsical people, and while there’s nothing inherently wrong with being a mere embarrassment to the human species, when it causes suffering, there’s not a lot left to redeem it.
7. They should be banned
Ornamental breeding is far from just the simple issue of disrespect. Captive animals don’t know they’re being disrespected and don’t suffer from looking goofy in the way that a human child would, so their egos aren’t in need of protection.
What they do suffer from, though, is the neglect inherent – even necessary – in the system that selectively breeds, over and over again, animals with poor genes, deformities, or otherwise low quality of life, just to reach the goal of something that looks a certain way, or follows a certain standard invented by people who have no concern for the suffering of the subjects involved.
Whether it’s called fancy, toy, ornamental, or otherwise, the use of animals as objects is inherently cruel and causes widespread suffering and further problems.
While the top ten examples may win their owners Best in Show, the collateral damage of the thousands of failed experiments is not suitably represented.
This applies just as much to the “failed” dogs and cats that fill up the shelters as it does to the bullshit fluffy bird breeds that are so deformed they can no longer fly comfortably. There is no excuse in a compassionate, developed society for the continuation of this practice. 1 2
Frillback Fact-File Summary
Scientific Classification
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Columbiformes |
| Family: | Columbidae |
| Genus: | Columba |
| Species: | livia |
Fact Sources & References
- David J Menor-Campos (2024), “Ethical Concerns about Fashionable Dog Breeding”, NIH.
- EPSTEIN, R (1981), “Self-Awareness” in the Pigeon”, Sci-Hub.