Bird Podcast

This episode is about the peacock, not because it is the national bird of India, which it is. But because it gave rise to the second most important work in evolutionary biology. I speak of course of Charles Darwin’s theory of sexual selection. Darwin has referred to the Peacock just three times in his magnum opus, the origin of species. But the bird gave him so much grief. In 1860, a year after he published the origin of species, Darwin wrote to his friend, the botanist, Asa Gray, and said that “the sight of the feather in a peacocks tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick.” It took him 11 years to come up, with the ‘theory of sexual selection’ to explain the beauty of a peacock’s tail, and other ‘seemingly useless’ male ornaments.  Darwin’s theory was that the male peacock’s spectacular feathers and fan-like tail evolved to attract peahens. Suitable mates. The more attractive the peacock is, the more its chances of mating and therefore passing on the genes to the next generation. There are all kinds of st