Those who need help in sexing peafowl

[AnimalsRmyLife]

It's the foot. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/2011-07-11-hyeres-7.jpg

-Kathy

Exactly! That's what I thought too. Looked like a foot to me.

 

[DylansMom]

Nice big picture, definitely the foot. That is a darned interesting hen, I hope it's not shopped.

 

[Birdrain92]

Now I see that it's a foot. My Laptop didn't want to zoom in so it was small when I first looked at it making it look like 3 legs. I don't think there should be a barring in the middle of the blue neck and the shadow on the side of the neck where there is light around it too. It might not be Photoshopped but it looks like

 

[Rosa moschata]

As far as I know, it is not photoshopped. It was posted in a facebook group about peafowl and relatives to illustrate behavior, and then someone asked about all the blue color on a hen. The poster responded that the hen descended from a male hybrid which resulted from a Congo X India Blue breeding, which then bred among a flock of India Blues. Previously, the same poster alluded to a Congo X India Blue hybrid displaying atavistic traits believed to be indicative of a common ancestor's trait of reduced dimorphism. Think of it like this -- ancestral peahens likely displayed more color. Mutations leading to heightened dimorphism occurred independently as the lines diverged, in effect "turning off" male color in females. When those two lines came together again via a hybrid, the mutations "didn't line up" and in effect cancelled each other out, resulting in decreased dimorphism (i.e. more color in the hens). Such an effect can also be seen in Spauldings. Remember that hens of the various Greens look much like cocks, except for the cocks' trains. Spaulding hens typically show more color than India Blue hens. It's just that in this case, the additional color remained blue because males of both species display blue. Unfortunately, that poster does not come to BYC anymore, so I can only speculate on anything beyond the little he said about these birds. I'm assuming that because of the Congo peafowl's rarity, keeping quiet about hybrids between them and the India Blues was an effort to prevent that species from being sought to make a new bunch of hybrids -- especially since he's from a conservation mindset, and hybrids are not viewed in a positive light in that perspective. In any case, the rarity, high cost, specialized conditions and infrequent reproduction in Congo peafowl make for a very unlikely case that people will be scrambling to use them to make hybrids -- which would sell for far less than pure birds, anyway.

 

[Dany12]

" It was posted in a facebook "
Christopher can you put a link ?

Probably the hybrid between Indian Blue and congo peacock give sterile birds they are not cousins like blue and green!

 

[Rosa moschata]

It is a closed invitation-only group, so anything I'd share would be unviewable unless you're a member of the group. While inter-generic hybrids are more likely to result in sterility, sometimes males are partially fertile, as per Haldane's Rule. A reverse example would be in the breeding of Bengal cats -- because domesticated cats and leopard cats belong to different genera, first-generation hybrid males are sterile, but females are fertile. By breeding through the fertile females for a few generations, male fertility is restored. I said "reverse example" because in mammals, males are the ones with two different sex-chromosomes (X and Y), whereas in birds, it's females (Z and W).

 

[Dany12]

I find an other picture of this bird !





grrr ... grrr... I want to know everything about that bird !

I send a message to Thomas !

An other place :
https://www.flickr.com/photos/digitalart/1479269951/in/pool-phasianidae
The name of 'the artist ' is not ... a good signe !
Same park ... same bird .... an other photograph.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/996120...ix7-cCjxRu-cCjn9w-cCjvrA-cCjdHN-cCjsSL-cPfZ2b

 

[Dany12]

I received the reply from Thomas:
" Non. La photo n'a pas été trafiquée. " = No. the picture has not been re-colored

 

[zazouse]

That is awesome, i was begining to think i was wrong when other photos popped up of her , could he give you any more info on her or was he just a photographer?

 

[Dany12]

Christopher, there are no picture to share of this hybrid Afropavo Congo X P. cristatus ?
Afropavo are very rare in captivity ... only in a few Zoo and maybe 1 or 2 breeders in Belgium or Holland.
Hybrids are even rarer!