{"id":4831,"date":"2016-05-17T00:13:49","date_gmt":"2016-05-17T04:13:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/?p=4831"},"modified":"2016-05-17T00:13:49","modified_gmt":"2016-05-17T04:13:49","slug":"peacock-courtship-is-all-in-the-shake-of-a-tail-feather","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/peacock-courtship-is-all-in-the-shake-of-a-tail-feather\/","title":{"rendered":"Peacock courtship is all in the shake of a tail feather <img src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/canada_flag_icon_small.gif\">"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_4829\" style=\"width: 730px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4829\" class=\"size-full wp-image-4829\" src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/image05.jpg\" alt=\"A male peacock courting a female. (Image credit: Roslyn Dakin PLOS ONE e0152759)\" width=\"720\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/image05.jpg 720w, http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/image05-300x166.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-4829\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A male peacock courting a female. (Image credit: Roslyn Dakin PLOS ONE e0152759)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>It takes more than flashing that beautiful tail to get a mate in the peacock world, according to new research. Researchers noticed the way the peacocks raise and vibrate their tail feathers makes it appear as if the eyespots hover motionless against an iridescent background. The research team captured 14 peacocks on video to analyze for the study. Males with longer trains shook their feathers at a faster rate. The researchers believe this shows that longer feathers require more muscle power to shake. This could signal to the females the muscle power of potential mates, because the peacocks with the largest and fastest vibrating tail feathers were the most successful at attracting and mating peahens.<\/p>\n<p><b>Authors:<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Roslyn Dakin, Owen McCrossan, James F. Hare, Robert Montgomerie, Suzanne Amador Kane<\/p>\n<p><strong>Corresponding author:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Roslyn Dakin, Department of Zoology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Biomechanics of the Peacock\u2019s Display: How Feather Structure and Resonance Influence Multimodal Signaling\" href=\"http:\/\/journals.plos.org\/plosone\/article?id=10.1371\/journal.pone.0152759\" target=\"_blank\">Original paper<\/a>, published on April 27, 2016 in PLOS One.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It takes more than flashing that beautiful tail to get a mate in the peacock world, according to new research. Researchers noticed the way the peacocks raise and vibrate their tail feathers makes it appear as if the eyespots hover motionless against an iridescent background. The research team captured 14 peacocks on video to analyze [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4829,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[2567,2568,2566],"class_list":["post-4831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-paper-of-interest","tag-biomechanics","tag-pavo-cristatus","tag-peacocks"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/image05.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4DqbN-1fV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4831"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4923,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4831\/revisions\/4923"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}