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This article will examine why there are white peacocks, and ask the question if they are a different species or is it a genetic issue.
Origins
Sometimes we use the term peacock to label all these birds including the female, however this is incorrect. The male is the peacock, the female is a peahen and together they are peafowl.
For centuries man has admired peafowl and traded them throughout the world. The two most familiar originate from India and Indonesia, they are the Indian blue and the Java Green. There is a third, the Congo peafowl, only discovered in 1936.
The pictures below are of the three species.
Congo peacock and peahen
Indian blue peacock
Indian blue peahen
Java Green Peacock
Java Green peahen
As you can see from the pictures above it is the male, the peacock, who has the beautiful tail of feathers. They display these feathers to attract a mate, as do most other species of males birds. When they fan out their feathers in front of a female they start to do a little shake, you can hear the rustle of the feathers, this is perhaps another way of gaining the female’s attention.
Although the male Congo peacock does not have the same length in their feathers, or the eyespots, it is still very colourful, especially compared to the female. They also use them in the same way to attract females and do a little dance while shaking them.
It never seems to get less magnificent seeing the peacocks display, possibly due to the coloring or the pattern of the eyespots. However, even more stunning when those feathers are white, as there is something quite angelic.
So this begs the question of how or why there are white peacocks?, especially if the main two species are so colorful. Some would think maybe they are albino. However to be an albino they would have to have pink eyes as described in the definition below.
“of a person or an animal born with no pigment (= colour) in the hair or skin, which are white, or in the eyes, which are pink”, (Oxford Dictionary, 2022)
Therefore animals or people with albinism are unable to produce the pigments of melanin. This production of melanin pigments determine the colour of the hair, skin and iris. So someone with albinism would have white haired and pink eyes.
White peafowl
When we look at white peafowl, as in the picture above, you can notice the eyes are dark, and not pink, so this means they are not albinos.
So if they are not albinos, what are they?
In general you can have an albino peafowl, however these are very rare. So the ones we do see are more likely to be white due to something called leucism, defined as,
“having reduced pigmentation in the skin but normally coloured eyes,” (Collins dictionary, 2022).
There was a survey conducted which was reported on by the British trust for ornithology, they found that out of a 100 birds, 82 of them were leucistic and only three were albinistic.
Leucism is an issue with genetics. It is, in peafowl more likely to be a genetic variant of the Indian blue peacock. It is total or partial loss of melanins; this lack of pigment causes the feathers to be white. This is a hereditary condition which can be passed from adults to the young.
if you are lucky enough to come into contact with one of these angelic looking birds, if check the eye colour then you will know for sure if albino or leucistic peacock
In summary
I hope this article has helped you understand why there are white peacocks. We have seen the difference between them being either albino or leucistic.
Also I hope you have enjoyed reading about the origins of the peafowl and identifying the different types.
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/albino_1?q=albino
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/leucistic