It all started when I was reading a random article on Wikipedia.
It was an article describing a desert in India. On the section about the fauna, there were a picture of a peacock. I was surprised, I didn’t know peacock were native to India. I don’t even know much about peacock except that the male have those gigantic tails. So, I clicked on the link, and started learning a little about peafowls. Here are the things I’ve learned.
- Peacocks are basically chickens
Well, not really. But they are from the same sub-family, so they are closely related. Peacocks actually refers to the males, just like how male chickens are called cocks. Following that logic, the female ones are called peahens and in general they are called peafowls. So, when we refer to both males and females, we should actually say peafowls. It’s like chickens/fowls but you add the word “pea”! (Maybe this is obvious to an native English speaker, but since in my language there is no differentiation between peacocks and peahens, when I learned the word peacock, I just assumed that both males and females were called this. So, this was quite a revelation for me)
Why is it the word “pea”? Well apparently, the word “pea” comes from an old English word “pea” which comes from the Latin word “pavo”. Pavo means peacock. That’s where the word came from, according to google.
2. Peacocks can fly
This was surprising. I thought that because of the heavy tails they have they wouldn’t be able to fly. But no, they can. At least as well as a chicken. They can’t fly like how an eagle fly, but they can use their wing to glide and to fly up tall trees. There are youtube compilations showing peacocks and peahens flying.
3. There are several species of peafowls
This isn’t that surprising I guess. The two species that people are probably familiar with and associate with peacocks are the Indian peafowl and the green peafowl. They look like, well, peafowls. The difference is that the Indian peacock is blue (not the tail but the body) and the green peafowl is green. Both of them are really beautiful and I honestly am more taken by the beautiful color of their bodies compared to their tails.
The Indian peafowl lives in the Indian sub-continent and the green peafowl lives in south-east Asia.
But those are not the only two peafowls, because there is also one in Africa, called the Congo peafowl. The Congo peafowl is from Congo and the male is really more like a blue and green chicken rather than a peacock. It also has a different genus name, while the Indian and green peafowl are called Pavo, the Congo peafowl is called Afropavo.
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It was really interesting how little I knew about the peafowls and it was amazing how the internet gave me so much information in such a short time. And now, knowing that peacocks are basically chicken (and probably edible despite being blue and green), I wonder how they taste… Would they taste like chicken?