Tesla’s Pigeons: A Selection from Nicholas A. Christakis’s Blueprint (2020)

“Nikola Tesla arranged his living quarters specifically to attract pigeons; he had little bird beds scattered across his desk, birdseed by the windowsill, and a window always left ajar. At one point, bird traffic through his apartment in the Hotel St. Regis in New York City became such a nuisance that the management told him he had to stop his pigeon feeding or leave. Tesla chose the latter.

Although Tesla lived a life of celibacy and near solitude, his interactions with pigeons filled an emotional gap and a craving for connection, as he explained in a 1929 interview: ‘Sometimes I feel that by not marrying I made too great a sacrifice to my work, so I have decided to lavish all the affection of a man no longer young on the feathery tribe. I am satisfied if anything I do will live for posterity. But to care for those homeless, hungry, or sick birds is the delight of my life. It is my only means of playing.’

Tesla poignantly described his misery when his favorite bird died: ‘Something went out of my life. I knew my life’s work was finished.’ And he died a few months later, at age eighty-six. Tesla’s grief and the fact that he may have experienced an increased risk of death after the death of his pet is consistent with the phenomenon of ‘dying of a broken heart’ widely seen in human couples (and in some animal species too). Human attachments—even to pets—are so fundamental and beneficial that they can improve people’s health or, when lost, sometimes cause their deaths.”—Nicholas A. Christakis, Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society (2020)