“Only the males are called peacocks; females are called peahens, and babies are called peachicks. Together they are called peafowl!”
Indian peafowl forage for seeds, fruit, insects, and small animals in open woodland and farmland across South Asia. During courtship, the male lifts and vibrates an iridescent train of elongated upper-tail feathers while females inspect the display.
By An Nguyen · Published · Updated
Measured against the 176 species profiled on this site. Each figure is converted to one unit system from the published range on the page, so the ranks are computed, not quoted.
| Measure | This species | Rank here | Exceeds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Body mass | 6 kg | #109 of 176#11 of 28 Aves | 38% |
| Body length | 2.25 m | #42 of 176#2 of 28 Aves | 77% |
| Top speed | 16.1 km/h | #69 of 75#15 of 16 Aves | 8% |
| Lifespan in the wild | 20 yr | #66 of 169#15 of 28 Aves | 59% |
Closest in body mass
Ranks use the upper end of each published adult range, so they compare typical large adults rather than records, and metrics with no published number are left out rather than estimated. The full table is downloadable from the species dataset, and any two species can be put side by side in the comparison tool.
Browse photographs of peacock across habitat, behavior, anatomy, and life stages.
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Core article
A closer look at habitat, diet, behavior, reproduction, and conservation.
The peacock is the male of the Indian peafowl (Pavo cristatus), famous for the long train of iridescent blue-green feathers it fans in courtship. A ground-foraging bird of the forests and shrublands of the Indian subcontinent — capable of short bursts of flight — it has featured in human art and symbolism for millennia. That extravagant train is a product of sexual selection: an ornament that boosts mating success at a real cost to camouflage and mobility.
Peafowl show pronounced sexual dimorphism. Males (peacocks) are larger and vividly colored, 100 to 225 centimeters long counting the train and 3 to 6 kilograms, while females (peahens) are smaller in mottled brown and grey that camouflages them on the nest. The male's train is the defining feature — and, contrary to belief, it isn't the tail feathers but greatly elongated upper tail coverts, over 150 of them, each ending in an eyespot (ocellus). Its shimmering blues, greens, and golds come not from pigment but from microscopic crystal-like structures in the feather barbules that reflect light (structural color). Both sexes wear a head crest, and strong legs carry sharp metatarsal spurs — pronounced in males — used in combat. Despite the bulk, peacocks fly in short bursts around 10 mph to escape predators and reach roosts. The train is a textbook case of Fisherian runaway selection, in which peahens consistently favoured the most elaborate, symmetrical, brightly-eyed displays. Peafowl belong to the pheasant family Phasianidae, and the genus Pavo also holds the green peafowl.
The Indian peafowl is native to the Indian subcontinent — India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh — and is highly adaptable, thriving in tropical forest, dense shrubland, and open grassland, favouring places with water, open ground to forage, and tall trees to roost in. Dense forest undergrowth hides nesting peahens while adjacent clearings serve as leks for the males' displays. Prized for its beauty, the bird has been widely introduced, and feral populations now live across North America, Europe, Australia, and Africa, colonizing farmland, parks, and semi-urban land wherever there is shelter and food.
Peafowl are opportunistic omnivores that forage on the ground through the day, scratching leaf litter and soil with clawed feet. The plant side of the diet is seeds, grains, fallen berries, and tender shoots, but they take a lot of animal protein too — beetles, ants, crickets, centipedes, spiders — and readily hunt small vertebrates like frogs and lizards. In rural India they are valued pest-controllers that kill small snakes, including young cobras, dispatched with the beak and talons and swallowed whole.
Outside breeding, peafowl gather in small, loose flocks, often segregated by sex, and are alert birds that give loud warning calls carrying through the forest to alert other animals too. The famous behavior is the male's courtship display: he raises the train into a shimmering hemispherical fan and "shivers" it, vibrating the feathers to produce a rustling sound, while the peahen judges him on train size, the density of the eyespots, and the vigor of the display. Males are aggressively territorial in the breeding season, defending display grounds with posturing, leaping, and spur strikes. Because they are so vulnerable to ground predators at night, peafowl fly up to roost in tall trees at dusk.
Peafowl are polygynous — a successful male mates with several females and plays no part in nesting. The peahen alone incubates and rears the young, building a shallow ground scrape hidden in dense, thorny cover and laying 4 to 8 buff eggs that she incubates about 28 days, relying on camouflage to stay hidden. The chicks (peachicks) are precocial, mobile and downy within hours and following her to forage, and she guides them to food and shelters them under her wings; within weeks they can flutter up to low branches to roost. Wild peafowl live an estimated 15 to 20 years if they survive the vulnerable early stages.
The Indian peafowl is Least Concern with a stable trend, helped by its adaptability to human landscapes and its cultural and religious status in India, where it is the national bird and legally protected. Local threats remain — predation by big cats, wild dogs, and jackals, plus habitat fragmentation, deforestation, feral dogs, and agricultural expansion. Historically peafowl were hunted for meat and feathers, but because males shed their long train each year after breeding, feathers can now be collected sustainably without harming the birds.
Kingdom
Animalia
Phylum
Chordata
Class
Order
Galliformes
Family
Phasianidae
Genus
Pavo
Species
P. cristatus
Only the males are called peacocks; females are called peahens, and babies are called peachicks. Together they are called peafowl!
A male peacock's train contains over 150 feathers, each decorated with beautiful eye-like spots called ocelli.
To attract a female, the peacock shakes his giant fan of feathers, which makes a rustling sound like wind through leaves.
Despite their huge tails, peacocks are capable of flight—they fly up into tall trees to sleep at night to stay safe from predators.
Peacocks are famous in India for eating small snakes, even venomous young cobras, making them welcome protectors in villages.
Their tail feathers shed naturally every year after the breeding season, so no birds are harmed to collect their feathers.
Select a question to reveal the answer.
Male peacocks spread their tail feathers into a large fan to impress female peahens during the breeding season. The peahen chooses a mate based on the size and beauty of his display.
Yes, peacocks can fly! Although they spend most of their time walking on the ground, they can fly short distances to escape danger or roost in tall branches at night.
The word peacock technically refers to the male. Females are called peahens, and both together are peafowl.
Male peacocks fan their colorful trains to attract females and display their health and strength.
Peafowl are omnivores that eat seeds, fruit, insects, small reptiles, and other small animals.
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