The peacock - a symbol of Deepavali, the festival of lights!

Birds are awesome - and this extra awesome bird celebrates the triumph of goodness over evil!!!

Happy Deepavali!

To celebrate, I’ve compiled a couple of fun facts about a bird that’s featured heavily in Deepavali motifs - as well as fun facts about the holiday itself!

Image credit: Mashable India

I live in Singapore, and I grew up calling the holiday Deepavali. Apparently, it is known by a couple of different names (especially if you are from a different region in India) such as Diwali or Divali. For today’s article, I am calling it Deepavali.

Nonethless, it is an awesome holiday and is known as a festival of lights. It’s one of the major festivals celebrated by Hindus, Jains, and Sikhs, and the festival usually lasts five days! Deepavali symbolises the spiritual "victory of light over darkness, good over evil, and knowledge over ignorance".

The bejewelled Indian Peafowl - truly fit for Indian royalty!

We all know the Peacock by name, and you can probably conjure up images of this brightly coloured blue, ground-dwelling bird with its amazing green tail.

Image credit: Vivek Tiwari. The male peacock has a metallic blue neck and head. They are most well-known for their amazing long tail that is made up of elongated upper tail coverts. Nearly all of these covert-feathers end with an elaborate eye-spot. There are over 200 of these covert-feathers, but in reality, their actual tail has only 20 feathers!

In Indian mythology, it is believed that peacocks once had incredibly dull and boring tail feathers. However, in a battle between the asura Ravana and Lord Indra, the bird opened its feathers for Indra to hide behind and wage a war. Indra defeated the asura Ravana and in gratitude, he bestowed the peacock with brilliant, iridescent long tail feathers - a thank-you gift!

Image credit: National Audubon Society. These iridescent eye-like patterns near the tips of the feathers are called an eyespots or ocelluses!

And so, to this day, the peacock is considered a sacred animal in India. In 1963, it was declared the national bird of India because of its rich religious and legendary involvement in Indian traditions.

There’s actually more to the Peacock than meets the eye

I’m not just talking about the brilliant ‘eyes’ on each tail feather.

I’m talking about the fact that the Peacock is actually one of three bird species in the Peafowl family!! And that there are two whole other peacock species that go pretty much totally ignored!

There’s the Indian Peafowl, which we probably know, as well as the Indonesian Peafowl (which is green) and lastly, the Congo Peafowl, native only to the Congo Basin in Central Africa!

Image credit: The Animal Facts. A Congo Peafowl - it is also known as the African Peafowl or mbulu by the Bakôngo people of Central Africa.

Peafowl are a type of large, heavy, ground-dwelling bird. And peacock (emphasis on the cock) is the name for the the male bird, while peahen is for the female bird. Although, I think most people will just go ahead and call both gender peacocks, since the name is so ubiquitous!

Male Indian and Indonesian Peafowls are known for their amazing, long tails. The Congo Peafowls don’t seem to have these long tails, though.

Image credit: Blue Creek Aviaries. This is an Indonesian Peafowl, also known as a Green Peafowl. Not only are they different in colour, the Indonesian Peafowl has a taller ‘crown’ on their head compared to their Indian cousins!

The male birds are known to fan out these ginormous tails and use them as a display, as part of a courtship ritual.

Why do Peacocks show their tails off?

There are two main schools of thought.

Number #1, the tails are used to attract females, and so over the course of generations of sexual selection, only males with the showiest tails have been able to breed. Charles Darwin himself believed in this theory!

Number #2, more recently, Israeli biologist Amotz Zahavi theorised that these features acted as honest signals of the males' fitness, since less-fit males would be disadvantaged by the difficulty of surviving with such large and conspicuous structures. Indeed, Peacocks are large birds and are weighed down by their tail feathers, and can only fly for short distance - usually less than 1.5km, or 1 mile.

Image credit: World Birds. Beauty comes at a price for these male birds!

I think both these theories could be true. Females must know that a well-kept, bejewelled tail means that the male bird is smart and strong. A well-kept tail is a sort of ‘shorthand’ for a powerful male.

In humans, I think the equivalent would be… women going for men with great physiques! Obviously!! (Time to head to the gym, lads)

More about the Indian Peafowl

Here are a few more fun facts about this bird before we wrap up today’s article.

• The Indian Peacock is also revered in Greek mythology. It is believed that the goddess Hera had a faithful servant named Argus, who had hundreds of eyes all over his body (thus making him a perfect sentry). But when Hermes killed her watchful servant, Hera took Argus's many eyes and placed them on the tail of the beautiful peacock to honour his memory.

• How did the Indian Peacock get from India all over to Greece and other parts of the world? It turns out early seafarers were so enamoured by their brilliance, they decided to bring the peafowl to their homelands in other parts of the western world.

• Traders in the year 1000 B.C. introduced the birds to present-day Syria and the Egyptian pharaohs.

• Alexander the Great, a king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon, imported more of the birds into his Mediterranean domains!

• Peafowl were a status symbol through Roman times and the Middle Ages, ensuring their establishment and survival throughout Europe.

I hope you enjoyed learning about Peafowls today! I’ve included two photos of the Indonesian Peafowl and Indian Peafowl below. See if you can tell which is which!

What is the story behind Deepavali?

In a nutshell, this is one of the main stories in Hindu mythology. Deepavali is the day Lord Rama, his wife Sita Devi and brother Lakshmana return to their homeland after 14 years in exile. The villagers lit a path for Rama, who had defeated the demon king Ravana.

To commemorate the Festival of Lights, celebrations will include good food (obviouly!!! Indian food is the best), fireworks, colored sand, and special candles and lamps. Hindus interpret the Deepavali story based upon where they live, though, so it’s different in every region.

That’s all for today’s article!

To all my friends and readers who celebrate Deepavali, I want to wish you a wonderful day and I hope you have the best time celebrating with your family!

What did you think of today’s article? Let me known! <3