Darwin’s pidgeons at the Museum of Natural History, Oxford and Natural History Museum, London

Charles Darwin developed his theory of evolution by observation but also by breeding pigeons. He artificially selected relevant features and deliberately crossed birds with chosen characteristic in order to generate different offspring which gave him valuable evidence for his theory of evolution by natural selection. Darwin donated all his pigeon specimens to the Natural History Museum in London. While the Oxford Museum shows stuffed alive like taxidermy birds for the purpose of display more clearly its forms and features (see above) the London museum employs somewhat more scientific in approach for the purpose of taxonomic classification – the birds are dead and  labelled (see below samples from Cadogan gallery).