Peacocks don’t have to be killed for their feathers. Luckily, they shed their train every year after mating season, so the feathers can be gathered and sold without the birds coming to any harm. The average lifespan of a peacock in the wild is about 20 years.

A peacock’s tail feathers can reach up to six feet in length and make up about 60 percent of its body length. Despite these odd proportions, the bird flies just fine, if not very far.

There are all-white peafowl. Thanks to selective breeding, it’s common for captive peafowl to buck the iridescent trend for all white feathers. This is called leucism, and it’s due to a genetic mutation that causes loss of pigmentation. These peafowl are often mistaken for being albino, but instead of having red eyes, animals with leucism retain their normal eye colour.

Peacocks were a delicacy in medieval times. The birds were plucked, roasted and then re-dressed in their feathers to appear in their original live state on the dinner table. The birds may have looked beautiful, but they reportedly tasted terrible. “The meat was tough and coarse, and was criticised by physicians for being difficult to digest and for generating bad humours,” writes Melitta Weiss Adamson in her book Food in Medieval Times.

Published in Dawn, Young World, December 9th, 2017