Indian Peafowl

The Indian peafowl (Pavo cristatus) is a large pheasant of South Asia. The male, the peacock, has a spectacular train of long feathers with iridescent eyespots that it fans in courtship. It is the national bird of India.

🧬 Field Guide Specimen: Open Indian Peafowl in the CRV Science Field Guide to log the specimen, see its place among the Reptilia lineages in the Cladogram Explorer, and test your recall in the Red List conservation game.

Charles Darwin wrote that the sight of a peacock's feather made him feel sick, because the extravagant tail seemed hard to explain by natural selection. He proposed sexual selection: females choose males with showy traits. Studies found that females prefer males with more eyespots.

The blues and greens of the eyespots are structural colors, produced by tiny crystal-like arrays of melanin rods in the feather barbules that reflect specific wavelengths. See Ruby-throated Hummingbird.

The train is shed and regrown each year. It can hinder escape from predators, and the male's display is a classic example of a handicap signal.

• Greater Bird-of-paradise — another sexually selected display
• Wild Turkey — another large galliform