Carneades!

[espigeonage]

Pigeons have been falling ill with Carneades, the bird uplift virus, since October. That is still happening, though there are fewer dead and obviously ailing ones around than at first. It'll keep happening through the winter, at the least. Some of the birds that survive this illness are changing.

Some will have corvid-level intelligence starting around the new year, though this generation won't get smarter than that, and many will be slower to get there if they reach that level at all. Corvids are devastatingly bright animals, not unreasonably compared to dolphins. None of the affected pigeons are there yet, but despite popular belief, pigeons are already pretty smart. They're very social, adaptive animals with ancestors domesticated ten thousand years ago.

Normal pigeons can recognize human faces, read emotions in human expressions and body language, and remember individuals for years. They develop superstitions. They watch each others' behavior and take cues from others on how to behave in unusual situations. They can cooperate for a goal and use tools. Some can learn to recognize themselves in mirrors. Infamously they can learn to distinguish paintings as by Picasso or Monet, Cubist or Impressionist, Van Gogh or Chagall, to a level comparable to human college students. They can tell the music of Bach from that of Stravinsky. In puzzle solving skills they outstrip housecats. They can count a little - don't knock that, it's difficult.

Pigeons grieve, or appear to, when their mates fail to come back. They are legendarily loyal to mates and chicks and can navigate huge and unfamiliar distances to return to them, though there is a "divorce rate" and most of them "move on" pretty easily. Ones without mates may cuddle and preen stuffed animals. They're rather passionate, emotional animals, more prone to rage than you might expect. Pigeons have also been seen to display the ultimate altruism, cooperatively risking themselves for another.

In normal pigeons a lot of that is something that takes time and dedication to teach, or is behavior rarely displayed where humans can see it. But it's becoming more commonly expressed in some of the Carneades survivors. Expect to be watched more by these, though like most birds pigeons can watch quite closely from a distance while not seeming to. More friendliness towards people who've helped them, and clearing out away from people they don't like, aren't unreasonable. Expect, also, more of a tendency to pick up and fly off with brightly colored garbage.