Peacock| Knowledge About Peacock| About Peacock| NaturWild


Peacock is a common name for three bird species in the genera Pavo and Afropavo of the family Phasianidae, the pheasants and their allies. Male peafowl are referred to as peacocks, and female peafowl are referred to as peahens, even though peafowl of either sex are often referred to colloquially as "peacocks".

The two Asiatic species are the blue or Indian peafowl originally of the Indian subcontinent, and the green peafowl of Southeast Asia; the one African species is the Congo peafowl, native only to the Congo Basin. Male peafowl are known for their piercing calls and their extravagant plumage. The latter is especially prominent in the Asiatic species, which have an eye-spotted "tail" or "train" of covert feathers, which they display as part of a courtship ritual.

The functions of the elaborate iridescent colouration and large "train" of peacocks have been the subject of extensive scientific debate. Charles Darwin suggested that they served to attract females, and the showy features of the males had evolved by sexual selection. More recently, Amotz Zahavi proposed in his handicap theory that these features acted as honest signals of the males' fitness since less fit males would be disadvantaged by the difficulty of surviving with such large and conspicuous structures.

The Indian peacock has iridescent blue and green plumage, mostly metallic blue and green, but the green peacock has green and bronze body feathers. In both species, females are a little smaller than males in terms of weight and wingspan, but males are significantly longer due to the "tail", also known as a "train". The peacock train consists not of tail quill feathers, but highly elongated upper tail coverts. These feathers are marked with eyespots, best seen when a peacock fans his tail. Both sexes of all species have a crest atop the head. The Indian peahen has a mixture of dull grey, brown, and green in her plumage. The female also displays her plumage to ward off female competition or signal danger to her young.

Green peafowl differs from Indian peafowl in that the male has green and gold plumage and black wings with a sheen of blue. Unlike Indian peafowl, the green peahen is similar to the male but has shorter upper tail coverts, a more coppery neck, and overall less iridescence.

The Congo peacock male does not display his covert feathers but uses his actual tail feathers during courtship displays. These feathers are much shorter than those of the Indian and green species, and the ocelli are much less pronounced. Females of the Indian and African species are dull grey and/or brown.

Chicks of both sexes in all the species are cryptically coloured. They vary between yellow and tawny, usually with patches of darker brown or light tan and "dirty white" ivory.

Colour and pattern variations

Hybrids between Indian peafowl and Green peafowl are called Spaldings after the first person to successfully hybridise them, Mrs Keith Spalding. Unlike many hybrids, Spalding are fertile and generally benefit from hybrid vigour; Spalding with a high-green phenotype do much better in cold temperatures than the cold-intolerant green peafowl while still looking like their green parents. Plumage varies between individual Spalding, with some looking far more like green peafowl and some looking far more like blue peafowl, though most visually carry traits of both.

In addition to the wild-type "blue" colouration, several hundred variations in colour and pattern are recognised as separate morphs of the Indian Blue among peafowl breeders. Pattern variations include solid-wing/black shoulder (the black and brown stripes on the wing are instead one solid colour), pied, white-eye (the ocelli in a male's eye feathers have white spots instead of black), and silver pied (a mostly white bird with small patches of colour). Colour variations include white, purple, Buford bronze, opal, midnight, charcoal, jade, and taupe, as well as the sex-linked colours purple, cameo, peach, and Sonja's Violeta. Additional colour and pattern variations are first approved by the United Peafowl Association to become officially recognised as a morph among breeders. Alternately coloured peafowl are born differently coloured than wild-type peafowl, and though each colour is recognisable at hatch, their peachick plumage does not necessarily match their adult plumage.

Occasionally, peafowl appears with white plumage. Although albino peafowl does exist, this is quite rare, and almost all white peafowl is not albinos; they have a genetic condition called leucism, which causes pigment cells to fail to migrate from the neural crest during development. Leucistic peafowl can produce pigment but not deposit the pigment to their feathers, resulting in their blue-grey eye colour and the complete lack of colouration in their plumage. Pied peafowl are affected by partial leucism, where only some pigment cells fail to migrate, resulting in birds that have colour but also have patches absent of all colour; they, too, have blue-grey eyes. By contrast, true albino peafowl would have a complete lack of melanin, resulting in irises that look red or pink. Leucistic peachicks are born yellow and become fully white as they mature.



Iridescence

As with many birds, vibrant iridescent plumage colours are not primarily pigments, but structural colouration. Optical interference Bragg reflections, based on regular, periodic nanostructures of the barbules (fibre-like components) of the feathers, produce the peacock's colours. Slight changes to the spacing of these barbules result in different colours. Brown feathers are a mixture of red and blue: one colour is created by the periodic structure and the other is created by a Fabry–Pérot interference peak from reflections from the outer and inner boundaries. Such structural colouration causes the iridescence of the peacock's hues. Interference effects depend on a light angle rather than actual pigments. Most commonly, during a courtship display, the visiting female peahen will stop directly in front of the male peacock - thus providing her with the ability to assess the male at 90° to the surface of the feather. Then, the male will turn and display his feathers about 45° to the right of the sun’s azimuth which allows the sunlight to accentuate the iridescence of his train. If the female chooses to interact with the male, he will then turn to face her and shiver his train so as to begin the mating process.

Evolution and sexual selection

Charles Darwin suggested in On the Origin of Species that the peafowl's plumage had evolved through sexual selection. He expanded upon this in his second book, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex.

The sexual struggle is of two kinds; in the one, it is between individuals of the same sex, generally the males, in order to drive away or kill their rivals, the females remaining passive; whilst in the other, the struggle is likewise between the individuals of the same sex, in order to excite or charm those of the opposite sex, generally, the females, which no longer remain passive, but select the more agreeable partners.

Sexual selection is the ability of male and female organisms to exert selective forces on each other with regard to mating activity. The strongest driver of sexual selection is gamete size. In general, eggs are bigger than sperm, and females produce fewer gametes than males. This leads to eggs being a bigger investment, so females being choosy about the traits that will be passed on to their offspring by males. The peahen's reproductive success and the likelihood of survival of her chicks are partly dependent on the genotype of the mate. Females generally have more to lose when mating with an inferior male due to their gametes being more costly than the males.

Female choice

Multiple hypotheses attempt to explain the evolution of female choice. Some of these suggest direct benefits to females, such as protection, shelter, or nuptial gifts that sway the female's choice of mate. Another hypothesis is that females choose mates with good genes. Males with more exaggerated secondary sexual characteristics, such as bigger, brighter peacock trains, tend to have better genes in the peahen's eyes. These better genes directly benefit her offspring, as well as her fitness and reproductive success. Runaway selection also seeks to clarify the evolution of the peacock's train. In runaway sexual selection, linked genes in males and females code for sexually dimorphic traits in males, and preference for those traits in females. The close spatial association of alleles for loci involved in the train in males, and for preference for more exuberant trains in females, on the chromosome (linkage disequilibrium) causes a positive feedback loop that exaggerates both the male traits and the female preferences. Another hypothesis is sensory bias, in which females have a preference for a trait in a nonmating context that becomes transferred to mating. Multiple causalities for the evolution of female choice is also possible.

Work concerning female behaviour in many species of animals has sought to confirm Darwin's basic idea of female preference for males with certain characteristics as a major force in the evolution of species. Females have often been shown to distinguish small differences between potential mates, and to prefer mating with individuals bearing the most exaggerated characters. In some cases, those males have been shown to be more healthy and vigorous, suggesting that the ornaments serve as markers indicating the males' abilities to survive, and thus their genetic qualities.

The peacock's train and iridescent plumage are perhaps the best-known examples of traits believed to have arisen through sexual selection, though with some controversy. Male peafowl erects their trains to form a shimmering fan in their display to females. Marion Petrie tested whether or not these displays signalled a male's genetic quality by studying a feral population of peafowl in Whipsnade Wildlife Park in southern England. The number of eyespots in the train predicted a male's mating success. She was able to manipulate this success by cutting the eyespots off some of the males' tails: females lost interest in pruned males and became attracted to untrimmed ones. Males with fewer eyespots, thus with lower mating success, suffered from greater predation. She allowed females to mate with males with differing numbers of eyespots and reared the offspring in a communal incubator to control for differences in maternal care. Chicks fathered by more ornamented males weighed more than those fathered by less ornamented males, an attribute generally associated with a better survival rate in birds. These chicks were released into the park and recaptured one year later. Those with heavily ornamented feathers were better able to avoid predators and survive in natural conditions. Thus, Petrie's work has shown correlations between tail ornamentation, mating success, and increased survival ability in both the ornamented males and their offspring.

Furthermore, peafowl and their sexual characteristics have been used in the discussion of the causes for sexual traits. Amotz Zahavi used the excessive tail plumes of male peafowls as evidence for his "handicap principle". Since these trains are likely to be deleterious to an individual's survival (as their brilliance makes them more visible to predators and their length hinders escape from danger), Zahavi argued that only the fittest males could survive the handicap of a large train. Thus, a brilliant train serves as an honest indicator for females that these highly ornamented males are good at surviving for other reasons, so are preferable mates. This theory may be contrasted with Ronald Fisher's theory (and Darwin's hypothesis) that male sexual traits are the result of initially arbitrary aesthetic selection by females.

In contrast to Petrie's findings, a seven-year Japanese study of free-ranging peafowl concluded that female peafowl does not select mates solely on the basis of their trains. Mariko Takahashi found no evidence that peahens preferred peacocks with more elaborate trains (such as with more eyespots), a more symmetrical arrangement, or a greater length. Takahashi determined that the peacock's train was not the universal target of female mate choice, showed little variance across male populations, and did not correlate with the male physiological condition. Adeline Loyau and her colleagues responded that alternative and possibly central explanations for these results had been overlooked. They concluded that the female choice might indeed vary in different ecological conditions.

Food courtship theory

Merle Jacobs' food-courtship theory states that peahens are attracted to peacocks for the resemblance of their eyespots to blueberries.

Natural selection

It has been suggested that a peacock's train, loud call, and fearless behaviour have been formed by natural selection (not sexual selection), and served as an aposematic display to intimidate predators and rivals.

Plumage colours as attractants

A peacock's copulation success rate depends on the colours of his eyespots (ocelli) and the angle at which they are displayed. The angle at which the ocelli are displayed during courtship is more important in a peahen's choice of males than train size or the number of ocelli. Peahens pay careful attention to the different parts of a peacock's train during his display. The lower train is usually evaluated during close-up courtship, while the upper train is more of a long-distance attraction signal. Actions such as train rattling and wing shaking also kept the peahens' attention.

Redundant signal hypothesis

Although an intricate display catches a peahen's attention, the redundant signal hypothesis also plays a crucial role in keeping this attention on the peacock's display. The redundant signal hypothesis explains that whilst each signal that a male project is about the same quality, the addition of multiple signals enhances the reliability of that mate. This idea also suggests that the success of multiple signalling is not only due to the repetitiveness of the signal but also of multiple receivers of the signal. In the peacock species, males congregate a communal display during the breeding season and the peahens observe. Peacocks first defend their territory through intra-sexual behaviour, defending their areas from intruders. They fight for areas within the congregation to display a strong front for the peahens. Central positions are usually taken by older, dominant males, which influences mating success. Certain morphological and behavioural traits come into play during inter and intra-sexual selection, which include train length for territory acquisition and visual and vocal displays involved in mate choice by peahens.

Vocalisation

In courtship, vocalisation stands to be a primary way for peacocks to attract peahens. Some studies suggest that the intricacy of the "song" produced by displaying peacocks proved to be impressive to peafowl. Singing in peacocks usually occurs just before, just after, or sometimes during copulation. 

Plumage change



Mature the peahen has been recorded as suddenly growing typically male peacock plumage and making male calls. While initially, gynandromorphism was suspected, researchers have suggested that changes in mature birds are due to a lack of estrogen from old or damaged ovaries, and that male plumage and calls are the default unless hormonally suppressed.

Behaviour

Peafowl are forest birds that nest on the ground, but roost in trees. They are terrestrial feeders. All species of peafowl are believed to be polygamous. In common with other members of the Galliformes, the males possess metatarsal spurs or "thorns" on their legs used during intraspecific territorial fights with some other members of their kind.

Diet

Peafowl are omnivores and eat mostly plants, flower petals, seed heads, insects and other arthropods, reptiles, and amphibians. Wild peafowl looks for their food scratching around in leaf litter either early in the morning or at dusk. They retreat to the shade and security of the woods for the hottest portion of the day. These birds are not picky and will eat almost anything they can fit in their beak and digest. They actively hunt insects like ants, crickets and termites; millipedes; and other arthropods and small mammals. Indian peafowl also eats small snakes.

Domesticated peafowl may also eat bread and cracked grain such as oats and corn, cheese, cooked rice and sometimes cat food. It has been noticed by keepers that peafowl enjoy protein-rich food including larvae that infest granaries, different kinds of meat and fruit, as well as vegetables including dark leafy greens, broccoli, carrots, beans, beets, and peas.