Indian Peafowl (Pavo cristatus): Facts & Species Wiki

Field
notes

The best-known feature of the Indian Peafowl (Pavo cristatus) is not its tail. The long train behind a male is made of tail coverts, the feathers that cover the base of the tail. Its color comes from structure: the cortex of each colored barbule contains a two-dimensional photonic crystal, and varying the crystal’s spacing, its lattice constant, produces the different colors.

Big Train, Long Life

Adults weigh 2.7 to 6 kilograms and measure 0.86 to 2.12 meters long, and males are the larger sex. Animal Diversity Web says it can live up to 25 years in the wild. Its range includes India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka; it is most common in deciduous, open forest, and it needs a lot of water to drink.

A Fan That Rattles

When a peacock displays, he props up the train with his shorter, stiffer tail feathers and spreads it into a wide fan. Around 30 to 40 of the eyespots, or ocelli, around the outer edges are not round but V-shaped. In the train-rattling display he stridulates, rubbing those tail feathers against the train 25.6 times a second, on average. Each train feather is up to 1.5 meters long and weighs under 2 grams, yet endures hundreds of hours of display every breeding season, which spans two to three months.

Low Notes Train-rattling makes a broadband, pulsating sound with very low-frequency components, at 20 hertz and below. Peafowl have been shown to perceive playbacks of those components.

Killer of Snakes, Target of Tigers

Indian Peafowl are omnivores. Termites are their food of choice, and they also eat other insects, worms, lizards, frogs and snakes, including young cobras, plus tree and flower buds, petals, grain, and grass and bamboo shoots.

Tigers, leopards, jungle cats, mongooses and stray dogs are among their predators. Because peafowl are so effective at running away and disappearing into shrubbery, predators usually take them down with a surprise attack. If a predator grabs the train, the long feathers pull out easily, and the peacock can fly away. Tigers can stretch up to three meters and a male’s train can be over a meter long, so a peacock needs to roost at least five meters off the ground to be secure.

Peafowl are always alert, and both sexes have up to six alarm calls, the type depending on the threat. The alarm is loud, and it also alerts other wildlife in the area.

Published September 6, 2026Updated September 24, 2026

Traits

Bird Forest Omnivore Display Iridescent Diurnal

Intel
& FAQ

01Are peacock feathers colored by pigment or by physics?

By structure. The outer layer, or cortex, of each colored barbule holds a photonic crystal, and simulations show it has a partial photonic bandgap: light at frequencies inside that band is strongly reflected. Cutting the number of periods in the crystal brings additional colors, causing mixed coloration.

Source: Zi et al. 2003

02Why do peacocks shake their trains?

To court females. In the train-rattling display a peacock vibrates the iridescent feathers of his train, and laboratory measurements show that arrays of tail and train feathers have a broad resonant peak at the frequencies he uses. The feathers move just as expected for feathers shaking near resonance, which indicates that peacocks drive the vibration energetically efficiently.

Source: Dakin et al. 2016

03Do peacocks really kill and eat cobras?

They eat young cobras. The species' name in Sanskrit means "killer of snakes" because of it, and that habit has made the birds invaluable and often revered.

Source: Animal Diversity Web, University of Michigan

04Why is a peacock so colorful but a peahen so plain?

Each sex needs something different. The Indian peacock has a bright blue head and neck, and he needs his bright feathers to attract a mate. The Indian peahen is a drab, mottled brown by comparison, and she needs to blend in with the bushes so predators cannot see her while she incubates her eggs.

Source: San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance