THEY CAN FAKE IT

These birds arent just nice to look at, theyre also clever, according to one recent study. When peafowl mate with peahens, they give out a loud copulatory call. Canadian researchers Roslyn Dakin and Robert Montgomerie discovered that the birds can fake this call to attract more females. As the BBCs Ella Davies put it, By pretending they are mating when they are not, the birds could convince females they are more sexually active and therefore genetically fitter than their rivals. In fact, one third of the calls heard by researchers were fake, and the birds that made them scored the most hookups. Sneaky, sneaky.