Pavo (bird)

Peafowl
Indian blue peacock
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Galliformes
Family:	Phasianidae
Genus:	Pavo Linnaeus, 1758
Species
Pavo cristatus Pavo muticus

Green peacock

The Asiatic peafowl is a kind of bird. They are the genus Pavo from the Phasianidae family. They originate from Southeast Asia.

• Genus Pavo
  • Blue peafowl or Indian peafowl (Pavo cristatus): originally from India, and Pakistan. In Pakistan, it is the provincial/regional bird of the province of the Punjab
  • Green peafowl (Pavo muticus): was very widespread in southeast Asia, including northern Myanmar and southern China, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, peninsular Malaysia and the islands of Java. Habitat destruction and hunting have reduced its range.

The male is called a peacock, the female a peahen.

The males are very colorful, and they have very long train feathers (or tail feathers), which they can move up like a fan. Females are less colorful, and do not have the long train-feathers. Both the male and the female have a little "crown" of feathers on their head. Males show their train feathers to court a female peafowl, or to scare other animals away by making them afraid.

Peafowl are omnivorous and eat plant parts, flower petals, seeds, insects, and small vertebrates, like reptiles and amphibians.

• 
  A male green peafowl fanning his train feathers.
• 
  A female blue peafowl.
• 
  A blue peacock courting a blue peahen.

Peacock in the Woods - 1907, painting by Abbott Handerson Thayer. Thayer suggested that the function of the ornate tail was camouflage