Peafowl
| Peafowl | ||||||||||||
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 An Indian Peacock displaying. | ||||||||||||
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| Species | ||||||||||||
| Indian Peafowl Pavo cristatus Linnaeus Template:StatusSecure | ||||||||||||
| Green Peafowl Pavo muticus Linnaeus Template:StatusVulnerable |
The peafowl are the two species of bird in the genus Pavo of the pheasant family, Phasianidae. They are most notable for the male's extravagant tail, a result of sexual selection, which it displays as part of courtship. The male is called a peacock, the female a peahen.
Plumage
Peacocks and Peahens
The male peacock has a beautiful iridescent blue-green colour. His tail feathers have a series of eyes that are best seen when fanned.
The female plumage is a mixture of dull green and iridescent blue, with the greenish-gray predominating. They lack the long tails of the male.
Color
Many of the brilliant colors of the peacock plumage are due to an optical interference phenomena (Bragg reflection) based on (nearly) periodic nanostructures found in the barbules (fiber-like components) of the feathers. Different colors correspond to different lengthscales of the periodic structures. For brown feathers, a mixture of red and blue is required—one color is created by the periodic structure, while the other is a created by a Fabry-Perot interference peak from reflections off the outermost and innermost boundaries of the periodic structure. Such interference-based structural color is especially important in producing the peacock's iridescent hues (which shimmer and change with viewing angle), since interference effects depend upon the angle of light, unlike chemical pigments.
Courtship
The peacock's rituals include the display of its startling plumage and a loud call, as heard in this video (491KB in MPEG-4 format).
Range
The Indian Peafowl (Pavo cristatus) is native to that country and Sri Lanka. The Green Peafowl (Pavo muticus Linnaeus, 1766) breeds from Myanmar east to Java. The IUCN lists the Green Peafowl as vulnerable to extinction due to hunting and a reduction in extent and quality of habitat. The two species will hybridize.
Reference
- Steven K. Blau (Jan. 2004), “Light as a Feather: Structural Elements Give Peacock Plumes Their Color”, Physics Today 57 (1), 18–20.
- World Birds Taxonomic List
as of 2003-02-21
There is also a Peacock butterfly.