![]() Eyespots are heavier, having densely intermeshed barbules with microhooks, 3 enabling eyespot feather barbs to cling together as a single motion-resistant mass. 2 No wonder she’s mesmerized.īut how can the eyespots stay relatively still when the whole tail is shaken vigorously? Scanning electron microscopy revealed that the eyespot feather structure is different. ![]() No wonder she’s mesmerizedįrom the peahen’s perspective (typically 1 metre directly in front), the researchers say “the eyespots would appear to be almost stationary” relative to the stunning dynamic iridescence shimmering from the rest of the tail. While feather barbs in the background, even near the eyespots, moved laterally by up to 9.6 mm, the eyespots themselves had a maximum side-to-side movement of just 1.7 mm. 2 The behaviour of the eyespots during tail-shaking is remarkable-not their movement as such, but their apparent non-movement. 1 When the train is rattled, the vibration of the tail feathers creates a “dynamic iridescent background” around each eyespot. When the peacock vibrates his tail, it seems those ‘eyes’ can hypnotize the one he is trying to woo. The peacock sustains this for more than 25 minutes at a time. Researchers using high-speed video found that the tail vibrates at an average frequency of around 26 beats per second. It now appears the allure is indeed in the motion, not (as had once been thought) the size of the male’s feathery train, or the number of its colourful eyespots. ![]() There’s something about the way a peacock shakes his fan of spectacularly elaborate tail feathers that attracts a peahen’s admiring gaze. ![]()
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