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Peafowl - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Peafowl
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Peafowl are two Asiatic and one African species of flying bird in the genus Pavo of the pheasant family, Phasianidae, best known for the male's extravagant eye-spotted tail covert feathers, which it displays as part of courtship. The male is called a peacock, the female a peahen, and the offspring pea chicks .[1] The adult female peafowl is grey and/or brown. Peachicks can be between yellow and a tawny colour with darker brown patches or light tan and ivory, also referred to as "dirty white". The term also embraces the Congo Peafowl, which is placed in a separate genus Afropavo. The species are: Indian Peafowl, Pavo cristatus, a resident breeder in South Asia. The peacock is designated as the national bird of India. Green Peafowl, Pavo muticus. Breeds from Burma east to Java. The IUCN lists the Green Peafowl as endangered due to hunting and a reduction in extent and quality of habitat. It is a national symbol in the history of Burma. Congo Peafowl Afropavo congensis. The name for a group of peafowl is a pride or an ostentation.

Peafowl,Peacock.

Male Indian Peacock on display. The elongated upper tail coverts make up the train of the Indian peacock.

Scientific classification Kingdom: Phylum: Class: Order: Family: Subfamily: Genus: Animalia Chordata Aves Galliformes Phasianidae Phasianinae Pavo
Linnaeus, 1758

Contents
1 Plumage 2 Coloration 2.1 Evolution and sexual selection 3 Behaviour 4 Diet 5 Cultural significance 6 Gastronomy 7 References 8 External links

Species Pavo cristatus Pavo muticus

Plumage
The male (peacock) Indian Peafowl has iridescent blue-green or green colored plumage. The peacock tail ("train") is not the tail quill feathers but the highly elongated upper tail covert feathers. The "eyes" are best seen when the peacock fans its tail. Like a cupped hand behind the ear, the erect tail-fan of the male helps direct sound to the
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ears.[citation needed ] Both species have a crest atop the head. The female (peahen) Indian Peafowl has a mixture of dull green, brown, and grey in her plumage. Although she lacks the long upper tail coverts of the male, she has a crest. The female also displays her plumage to ward off female competition or signal danger to her young. The Green Peafowl appears different from the Indian Peafowl. The male has a green and gold plumage as well as an erect crest. The wings are black with a sheen of blue. Unlike the Indian Peafowl, the Green Peahen is similar to the male, only having shorter upper tail coverts and less iridescence.

Coloration
A peacock displaying his plumage

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 (fiber-like components) of the feathers produce the peacock's colors. Slight changes to the spacing 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 a created by a FabryProt interference peak from reflections from the outer and inner boundaries. Such structural colouration causes the iridescence of the peacock's hues since, unlike pigments, interference effects depend on light angle. Colour mutations exist through selective breeding, such as the leucistic White Peafowl and the Black-Shouldered Peafowl.

A peacock feather

Evolution and sexual selection

Charles Darwin first theorized in On the Origin of Species that the peacock's plumage had evolved through sexual selection. This idea was expanded upon 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.[2] Work concerning female behavior 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.[3] Females have often been shown to distinguish small differences among potential mates and to prefer mating with individuals bearing the most exaggerated characters.[4] 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.
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A green peafowl

A leucistic India peafowl

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The peacock is perhaps the best-known example of traits believed to have arisen through sexual selection, though in recent years this theory has become the object of some controversy.[5] It is known that male peafowl erect their trains to form a shimmering fan in their display to females. Marion Petrie tested whether or not these displays signaled a male's genetic quality by studying a feral population of peafowl in Whipsnade Wildlife Park in southern England. She showed that the number of eyespots in the train predicted a male's mating success, and this success could be manipulated by cutting the eyespots off some of the male's tails.[6] Females lost interest in pruned males and became attracted to untrimmed ones. Further testing revealed that males with fewer eyespots, and thus with lower mating success, were more likely to suffer from greater predation.[7] Even more interestingly, she allowed females to mate with males that had variable 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 A peacock in flight, Tamil Nadu, ornamented males, an attribute generally associated with better survival rate India in birds. When these chicks were released into the park and recaptured one year later, those with heavily ornamented fathers were found to be better able to avoid predators and survive in natural conditions.[3] 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.[8] An Indian peacock displaying its Considering that these trains are obviously deleterious to the survival of an plumage individual (due to the more brilliant plumes being highly visible to predators and the longer plumes making escape from danger more difficult), Zahavi argued that only the most fit males could survive the handicap of a large tail. Thus, the brilliant tail of the peacock serves as an indicator for females that highly ornamented males are good at surviving for other reasons, and are, therefore, more preferable mates. This theory may be contrasted with Fisher's theory that male sexual traits, such as the peacock's train, are the result of selection for attractive traits because these traits are considered attractive. However, some disagreement has arisen in recent years concerning whether or not female peafowl do indeed select males with more ornamented trains. In contrast to Petrie's findings, a seven-year Japanese study of free-ranging peafowl came to the conclusion that female peafowl do not select mates solely on the basis of their trains. Mariko Takahashi found no evidence that peahens expressed any preference for peacocks with more elaborate trains (such as trains having more ocelli), a more symmetrical arrangement, or a greater length.[9] Takahashi determined that the peacock's train was not the universal target of female mate choice, showed little variance across male populations, and, based on physiological data collected from this group of peafowl, do not correlate to male physical conditions. Adeline Loyau and her colleagues responded to Takahashi's study by voicing concern that alternative explanations for these results had been overlooked, and that these might be essential for the understanding of the complexity of mate choice.[10] They concluded that female choice might indeed vary in different ecological conditions. It has been also suggested that peacocks' display of colorful and oversize trains with plenty of eyespots, together with their extremely loud call and fearless behavior, have been formed by the forces of natural selection (not sexual selection), and served as an aposematic warning display to intimidate predators and rivals. [11]

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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. However, it has been suggested that peahens entering a green peacock's territory are really his own juvenile or sub-adult young and that green peafowl are really monogamous in the wild.

Diet
Peafowl are omnivorous and eat most plant parts, flower petals, seed heads, insects and other arthropods, reptiles, and amphibians. In common with other members of the Galliformes, males possess metatarsal spurs or "thorns" used primarily during intraspecific fights.

Cultural significance
In Hindu culture, peacock is the mount of the lord Karthikeya, the God of war. A demon king Surapadman was split into two by Karthikeya and the merciful lord converted the two parts as an integral part of himself, one becoming a peacock (his mount) and another a rooster adorning his flag. The peacock displays the divine shape of Omkara when it spreads its magnificent plumes into a full-blown circular form. [12]

Lord Karthikeya with his wives in his peacock mount

Even though the Peafowl is native to India, in Babylonia and Persia the Peacock is seen as a guardian to royalty, and is often seen in engravings upon the thrones of royalty. The monarchy in Iran is referred to as the Peacock Throne. Melek Taus ( Kurdish Taws Melek), the 'Peacock Angel', is the Yazidi name for the central figure of their faith. The Yazidi consider Taws Melek an emanation of God and a benevolent angel who has redeemed himself from his fall and has become a demiurge who created the cosmos from the Cosmic egg. After he repented, he wept for 7,000 years, his tears filling seven jars, which then quenched the fires of hell. In art and sculpture, Taws Melek is depicted as a peacock. However, peacocks are not native to the lands where Taws Melek is worshipped. In 1956, John J. Graham created an abstraction of an eleven-feathered peacock logo for American broadcaster NBC. This brightly hued peacock was adopted due to the increase in colour programming. NBC's first colour broadcasts showed only a still frame of the colourful peacock. The emblem made its first on-air appearance on May 22, 1956.[13] NBC later adopted the slogan "We're proud as a peacock!" The current version of the logo debuted in 1986 and has six feathers (yellow, orange, red, purple, blue, green). A stylized peacock in full display is the logo for the Pakistan Television Corporation. In some cultures the peacock is also a symbol of pride or vanity, due to the way the bird struts and shows off its plumage.

Gastronomy
During the Medieval period, various types of fowl were consumed as food, with the poorer populations (such as serfs) consuming more common birds, such as chicken.[citation needed ] However, the more wealthy gentry were privileged to more exotic foods, such as swan,[citation needed ] and even peafowl was consumed. On a king's table,
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a peacock would be for ostentatious display as much as for culinary consumption.[14]

References
1. ^ "Peacock (bird)" (http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9058859/peacock). Britannica Online Encyclopedia. 2. ^ Darwin, Charles. (1871), The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex John Murray, London. 3. ^ a b Zuk, Marlene. (2002). Sexual Selections: What we can and can't learn about sex from animals. University of California Press; Berkeley, CA. 4. ^ Davies N, Krebs J, and West S. (2012). An Introduction to Behavioral Ecology, 4th Ed. Wiley-Blackwell; Oxford. 5. ^ Male Peacock's Feather Fails to Impress Females: Study". Thaindian News. March 27, 2008. 6. ^ Petrie et al. (1991). Anim. Behav., 41,;323-331. 7. ^ Petrie et al. (1991). Anim . Behav., 44; 585 586. 8. ^ Zahavi, A. (1975). Journal of Theoretical Biology, 53: 205-214. 9. ^ Takahashi M et al. (2008). Anim . Behav., 75: 1209-1219. 10. ^ Loyau A et al. (2008). Anim . Behav., 76; e5-e9. 11. ^ Joseph Jordania Why do People Sing? Music in Human Evolution Logos, 2011. Chapter: Peacock's Tail: Tale of Beauty and Intimidation pg.192-196 12. ^ http://murugan.org/ayyar_1.htm 13. ^ Brown, Les (1977). The New York Times Encyclopedia of Television. Times Books. p. 328. ISBN 0-8129-07213. 14. ^ "Fowl Recipes" (http://www.medieval-recipes.com/medievalrecipes/fowlrecipes.htm). Medieval-Recipes.com. 2010. Retrieved 30 March 2012.

External links
Peafowl Varieties Database (http://database.amyspeacockparadise.com/) Etymology of the word Peacock (http://www.takeourword.com/Issue070.html) United Peafowl Association Knowledge Base (http://www.peafowl.org/ARTICLES/index.htm) Peafowl videos, photos & sounds (http://ibc.lynxeds.com/family/pheasants-partridges-phasianidae) on the Internet Bird Collection. Behavioural Ecologists Elucidated How Peahens Choose Their Mates, And Why (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/08/050814172316.htm), an article at Science Daily. The Peacock Pages: All About Peacocks! (http://www.gamebird.com/peacock.html), an article by Lisa Johnson from the Game Bird and Conservationists' Gazette aspects of the cultural role of peafowl and their place in aviculture. Raising Peacocks (http://www.raisingpeacocks.net/) Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Peafowl&oldid=556494961" Categories: Birds kept as pets Peafowls Pheasants This page was last modified on 23 May 2013 at 22:29. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.
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