Male peafowl or peacocks are omnivores (they eat both plats and meat) and are not finicky eaters in the slightest. These birds consume a number of different things including anything from seeds, berries, grains and parts of plants to small reptiles, insects and even mammals. These items are considered a part of a peacocks natural diet and when in lush environments they have no trouble finding a plateful amount of plants from day to day. Furthermore because peacocks can both see and hear well, they use these senses in particular to spot and catch their prey fast and efficiently. Another way peacocks are infamous for gathering food is though mooching and scavenging. Because peacocks are omnivores it seems that farms are the perfect place to scavenge where they easily remember food locations they can come back to. Finally, peacocks in captivity have a different diet consisting of mainly of grains, various fruits, boiled egg, nuts, vitamins, bird mashes and food pellets that are developed to provide the peacocks with a balanced and plentiful diet that they would have otherwise received in their natural environment. Although peacocks find food both on the ground as well as up in trees, a majority of their time is spent on ground level and therefore consume most of what the ground has to offer.
Sources: eHow
I thought your comment about Peacocks being famous for their mooching and scavenging hunts was really interesting. Does this mean that they mooch off each other or off of other animals nearby? Is this mooching behavior well-tolerated by other peacocks/animals or do they ever get defensive/territorial about their food?
ReplyDeleteI wonder if peacocks are group or solitary foragers. I would guess that they are group foragers and if so it would be interesting to use Templeton and Giraldeau's study (1996) with peacocks instead of starlings to see if peacocks use public information to acquire knowledge about patches of food.
ReplyDeleteWhat do Peacock eat?
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