Why do Peacocks stand out?

Yes, they do stand out because of their beauty and the evolution of feathers. Peacocks are known for their brightly colored, beautiful, and visual treat to our eyes. They look stunning when are train rattling. Peacocks (males) are the ones that have long colorful tails and not peahens (females). This was the saying of Darwin when spoke about the beauty of peacocks.

The sight of a feather in a peacock’s tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick – Charles Darwin

It didn’t make me sick but intrigued. Before moving to the evolution of long dazzling feathers, let’s talk about the feathers. An Adult male has around 200 long feathers and 165 – 170 eyespots. These feathers end with wing-shaped tails or fishtails (nearly 30 and not all). The eyespots are made up of multicolored branched strands called barbs. These barbs are made up of filaments tightly packed called barbules which are made up of crystal cells that reflect and vibrate in a pattern to attract the peahen. The geometry of the peacock tail doesn’t appear to be a natural selection to me rather than an engineer who did all calculations and designed this beautifully.

This long tail has been seen only in male peacocks as they seemed to be evolved for mating. The peacock produces loud noise to signal the peahen about their presence. As they approach, they courtship their long tails. They also rattle their long and short tails (Front and Back). They do train rattling in such a way that the eyespots don’t move or shake glittering their beautiful colors. The strands vibrate like a guitar and produce some vibrations as well. As Darwin pointed out that they are the secondary sexual characteristics that are evolved to attract. Peacocks spend so much energy to have them, shed their features at the end of mating, and regrow. The major disadvantage of having such a long magnificent tail might attract predators.

Peahen’s cognitive behavior and how they select their mate still seem mysterious (It’s hard to predict even now). Some studies have been done on how they look at the tails while peacock trains rattle. Peahen looks at the eyespot rarely and they are more focused on the lower wings while some don’t give a shit about it. I wonder why peahen doesn’t have such long tails. Don’t they want to impress peacocks?

Some studies reported that peahen prefers peacocks with long tails who manage their energy to maintain their features. Others opt for the normal way based on availability. It does appear like human behavior where energy is exploited in the name of fitness wealth, fame, etc to impress the opposite gender. While others don’t spend too much of their energy and select their mates based on availability.

Yeah, this blog is all about the peacocks. Most of the studies stated that “further work is needed to determine whether females use variation in those audiovisual features to discriminate among males, and what benefits they might gain by such discrimination–or whether Darwin was right and it is all just noise”. I speculate that it’s not going to be easy to understand (lol).

The feature might have evolved out of sexual selection or by randomness (constant mutation). If, it’s the latter then, how can be that precise in the arrangement of eyespots, color patterns, and vibrations?

I am not here to argue that a god or creator is sitting with an iPad, designing and making all the miracles. All of these works appear to be logical reasons to believe in the existence of a creator. However, it amuses me with the question, why randomness is not chaotic, and messy but beautiful?

This is all similar to how gravity and electromagnetic force are working so that the earth and the universe are not collapsing. Or should I just believe that is how nature works?

Cheers!

PS: Peacock is the national bird of India (1963) because it has religious and mythological connections with Indian traditions and culture.

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