The latter is especially prominent in the Asiatic species, which have an eye-spotted "tail" or "train" of covert feathers, which they display as part of a courtship ritual.

The functions of the elaborate iridescent coloration and large "train" of peacocks have been the subject of extensive scientific debate.

Charles Darwin suggested that they served to attract females, and the showy features of the males had evolved by sexual selection.

Unlike Indian peafowl, the green peahen is similar to the male, but has shorter upper tail coverts, a more coppery neck, and overall less iridescence.

They vary between yellow and tawny, usually with patches of darker brown or light tan and "dirty white" ivory.

[3] Research has suggested that changes in mature birds are due to a lack of estrogen from old or damaged ovaries, and that male plumage and calls are the default unless hormonally suppressed.

Optical interference Bragg reflections, based on regular, periodic nanostructures of the barbules (fiber-like components) of the feathers, produce the peacock's colors.

If the female chooses to interact with the male, he will then turn to face her and shiver his train so as to begin the mating process.

[7] Charles Darwin suggested in The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex that peafowl plumage may have evolved through sexual selection: Many female progenitors of the peacock must, during a long line of descent, have appreciated this superiority; for they have unconsciously, by the continued preference for the most beautiful males, rendered the peacock the most splendid of living birds.

[8][9] This hypothesis is designed to explain Takahashi's observations that in Japan, neither reproductive success nor physical condition correlate with the train's length, symmetry or number of eyespots.

Males with more exaggerated secondary sexual characteristics, such as bigger, brighter peacock trains, tend to have better genes[example needed] in the peahen's eyes.

The peacock's train and iridescent plumage are perhaps the best-known examples of traits believed to have arisen through sexual selection, though with some controversy.

Marion Petrie tested whether or not these displays signalled a male's genetic quality by studying a feral population of peafowl in Whipsnade Wildlife Park in southern England.

Thus, a brilliant train serves as an honest indicator for females that these highly ornamented males are good at surviving for other reasons, so are preferable mates.

[19] This theory may be contrasted with Ronald Fisher's hypothesis that male sexual traits are the result of initially arbitrary aesthetic selection by females.

Mariko Takahashi found no evidence that peahens preferred peacocks with more elaborate trains (such as with more eyespots), a more symmetrical arrangement, or a greater length.

Certain morphological and behavioural traits come in to play during inter and intra-sexual selection, which include train length for territory acquisition and visual and vocal displays involved in mate choice by peahens.

[24] Peafowl are omnivores and mostly eat plants, flower petals, seed heads, insects and other arthropods, reptiles, and amphibians.

[26] Domesticated peafowl may also eat bread and cracked grain such as oats and corn, cheese, cooked rice and sometimes cat food.

The peacock displays the divine shape of Omkara when it spreads its magnificent plumes into a full-blown circular form.

Peacocks are seen supporting the throne of Amitabha, the ruby red sunset coloured archetypal Buddha of Infinite Light.

Images of the peacock are also found drawn around the sanctuary of Lalish and on other Yazidi shrines and holy sites, homes, as well as religious, social, cultural and academic centres.

[49] One myth states that Hera's servant, the hundred-eyed Argus Panoptes, was instructed to guard the woman-turned-cow, Io.

According to Ovid, to commemorate her faithful watchman, Hera had the hundred eyes of Argus preserved forever, in the peacock's tail.

[55] The peacock can also symbolise the cosmos if one interprets its tail with its many "eyes" as the vault of heaven dotted by the sun, moon, and stars.

[57] The symbolic association of peacock feathers with the wings of angels led to the belief that the waving of such liturgical fans resulted in an automated emission of prayers.

Pattern variations include solid-wing/black shoulder (the black and brown stripes on the wing are instead one solid colour), pied, white-eye (the ocelli in a male's eye feathers have white spots instead of black), and silver pied (a mostly white bird with small patches of colour).

Additional colour and pattern variations are first approved by the United Peafowl Association to become officially recognised as a morph among breeders.

Others had doubts about its taxonomic status, but the English naturalist and biologist Charles Darwin (1809–1882) presented firm evidence for it being a variety under domestication, which treatment is now well established and accepted.

Stuff it with what you like, as truffles, mushrooms, livers of fowls, bacon, salt, spice, thyme, crumbs of bread, and a bay-leaf.