One summer morning, in the middle of the mountains of the Malay Peninsula, a loud cry of "whoop-hoo Looking at the sound of the song, a large bird two meters long appeared from the darkness, walked into the forest clearing he had chosen, and began his courtship routine.
It was a male, big-eyed pheasant (great argus, Argusianus argus). From the outside, the large-eyed pheasant with its feathers folded up resembles a dull male peacock, which is gray-brown overall, with two tail feathers with long, pointed tips. Unlike the peacock, its wings are very slender and wide, wrapped around the sides of the torso, covered with fine stripes of spots, and there is a hint of order in the chaos, as if there is some amazing beauty wrapped in it. Above the reddish-brown chest and neck, the big-eyed pheasant has a bald head, and the bare blue skin is covered with sparse, black and white feathers, forming a "Mohican" hairstyle that looks strange and funny.
The big , dull "chicken" with the blue head. Image: Francesco Veronesi / Wikimedia Commons
But the big-eyed pheasant does not heed the aesthetic judgments of Homo sapiens. It trembled and exploded its feathers, and jumped into the "courtship field" with trembling spirits. The loud cry spread again from the top of the hill into the dense jungle, and it began to carefully clean up the field it had occupied for several months: first it opened its wide and long wings and fanned it vigorously, taking off into the air, and the gusts of wind swept the fallen leaves to the edge of the field; then, it paced unhurriedly along the edge of the field, sometimes pecking at the dead branches on the ground, throwing its head into the distance, sometimes stretching its neck and jumping up, pulling unsightly branches from the bushes, and occasionally rubbing its beak on the small saplings in the field. Day after day, the male big-eyed pheasant occupies a bare ground of tens of square meters of territory, which is most suitable for displaying his "dance floor".
< h1 class= "pgc-h-center-line" > soul dancer</h1>
After cleaning up, the time is already about 10 a.m. There was still silence all around, and no female "bird of interest" appeared. The big-eyed pheasant was not discouraged and danced the courtship dance alone. It raised its upper body feathers and showed off; then bowed its head, its tail raised flat, circling in circles around the field, each step heavily on the ground, like a warrior stomping his feet in the Maori war dance. After a few tens of seconds, it turned and jumped up, flapped its wings, and ran out of the courtship field.
The pheasant belongs to the pheasant family, which includes peacocks, white plovers (xián), red-bellied golden pheasants, yellow-bellied horned pheasants and other colorful "pheasants", whose colorful feathers are often the evolutionary results of female sexual selection of males, and are the male courtship costumes. The big-eyed pheasant's courtship is unique among the chicken-shaped orders, not only with its beautiful appearance, but also with a dazzling courtship dance.
Many birds have their own unique courtship displays: drifting albatrosses after a long reunion will spread their wings and sing long songs and kisses, warty-nosed swans will swim side by side and cross their necks, crested (pì) partners like to perform water ballet together, and various birds of paradise show their costumed dance steps with exaggerated feathers, not to mention the soul street dance "space step" of various wēng face-changing souls. But the amazing dance steps of our protagonist, the male big-eyed pheasant, are far from climaxing.
Tsubasa's stunt "Flying on Water". Image: BBC Life
The "soul dance" of various birds of paradise. Image: BBC Earth
A dance performed by three petite harriers. Image: BBC Earth
Perhaps it was a lucky day when a female, big-eyed pheasant, left her solitary territory to visit the male. The latter hurried into the "dance floor" and began a new round of elaborate show-offs, stomping hard in front of the female. Then, the male mops the ground with a long tail, his wings face the "person he wants", hisses in his mouth, and quickly circles; occasionally stops suddenly, the tail cocks, rhythmically nods his head, pecks at the fragments of branches and leaves on the ground, and throws them at each other intentionally or unintentionally; or he puts away his feathers and trots all the way, shrinks his head and opens his mouth, and puffs up the blue skin of his throat.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-center-line" > secret fear patient warning! </h1>
Finally, the male big-eyed pheasant revealed his killer skills to dominate the bird world. Its feet supported its body one after the other, and it fell to the ground, two long tail feathers towering high, and its wide and long wings suddenly opened like an umbrella blown over by the wind, revealing all its feathers like a ballerina curtain: from the shoulders to the tip of the wings, the outermost primary feathers supported the ground, covered with dense spots; the middle secondary feathers and the inner third-level feathers were from short to long, and there were 12 to 24 realistic huge eye spots arranged on the pale yellow background.
The big-eyed pheasant is covered with gorgeous eye-spotted feathers. Image: Jeremy Johnson / Wikimedia Commons
These eye spots, though grown on flat feathers, have perfect color transitions, as if they were three-dimensional balls floating outside the feathers (Tomoko Misobiosa: I don't know anything). At this time, the female half of her body was surrounded by inverted funnel-shaped flight feathers, and hundreds of golden "big eyes" were shining brightly and filling her vision. In the middle of this dreamlike picture, the male big-eyed pheasant is looking at the reaction of his lover with one eye through the gap between his wings. After a few seconds, it lifted its upper body slightly and trembled slightly, causing all its "eyes" to tremble with it, and then leaned down to open it with full force, and so on.
Sister, look at me! Image: Mel Cutler/youtube
Throughout the dance, the female bird has been walking and stopping in the performance field. Perhaps in the face of this surreal charm, it sometimes stops and holds its head high, looking at the male's huge lupine and towering tail feathers, and sometimes actively runs to the male, forcing the arrogant latter to temporarily retreat. Two birds will inadvertently peck back and forth at the same leaf, as if to determine each other's intentions. If all goes well, the female will lay two eggs during this mating season, which will be carefully cared for.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-center-line" > the aestheticism of nature</h1>
The realistic eye spots on the flight feathers of male large-eyed pheasants have long been famous. In the twelfth edition of The Natural System in 1766, Linnaeus named the pheasant "Argus", which was taken from the Hundred-Eyed Giant in Greek mythology. These visual effects, which are comparable to naked-eye 3D feather patterns, have also attracted evolutionary biologists to discuss the mechanism of their generation. In the book "The Origin and Sexual Selection of Mankind", Darwin mentioned with great interest the beautiful flight feathers of the big-eyed pheasant, and in his understanding, these feathers with realistic eye spots proved that there is a choice for "beauty" in evolution, which is related to the success of the courtship reproduction of male large-eyed pheasants, and is not directly related to its ability to survive, and is a product of a very typical sexual selection mechanism.
Painting showing the courtship of the big-eyed pheasant. Image: Wikimedia Commons
However, the big-eyed pheasant is only reclusive in the rainforests of the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra and Borneo, so their loud and distinctive chirping and elaborate courtship dances were not known until the 20th century. In 1922, the ornithologist William Bibby wrote about his investigation of the big-eyed pheasant in the wild in his book The Study of Pheasants; and it was not until sixty years later that the ornithologist G. Bibby wrote about his investigation of the big-eyed pheasant. W. H. Davidson witnessed a large-eyed pheasant courtship in the presence of a female during a 191-day, 700-hour field observation, and published a research paper based on the observation records of captive individuals.
The courtship dance of the big-eyed pheasant is stunning. More interestingly, Davidson also explores the possible origins of various actions when describing the details of various actions. For example, pecking and throwing debris on the ground during cleaning and display may come from the exaggeration of foraging behavior, or even from the feeding behavior of caring for young birds. In the long history of evolution, the big-eyed pheasant has created its own unique dance posture and "costume" by "local materials", which are similar to our various human dances.
Unique eye spots on the feathers of the pheasant macrobrachia. Image: Stefano Bolognini / Wikimedia Commons
Schrödinger believed that the essence of life was to expend energy and build orderly systems. Perhaps because of this, the vast majority of "beauty" we love is complex and regular. By analogy, when a female, surrounded by three hundred golden "eyes", happens to see the real gaze on the male's blue face through the gap, her inner feelings can presumably be defined as "aesthetic", right?
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