Indian Peafowl, a white mutation Peacock

PD Photo: Indian Peafowl (Peacock), white mutation, photographed at Jardin des Plantes, Paris.

The photo shows a white mutant Indian Peafowl (Peacock) maintained by inbreeding in many parks worldwide such as this one at the Jardin des Plantes, the main botanical garden in France.

The Indian Peafowl or Blue Peafowl (Pavo cristatus) is a large brightly coloured pheasant native to South Asia, but introduced in many other parts of the world. The commonly used name for the bird is peacock for the male and peahen for the female bird. The Latin genus name Pavo and the Anglo-Saxon Pawe, from which the word Peacock is derived, are echoic in their origin and based on the usual call of the bird. The earliest usage of the word in written English is from around 1300 and the spelling variants include pecok, pokok, pokokke, poocok, pekok, pecokk, peacocke, peocock, pyckock, poucock, pocok, etc. The Greek word for Peacock was taos and was related to the Persian ‘tavus’, as in Takht-i-Tâvus for the famous Peacock Throne. The Hebrew words tuk/ tukkiyim have been derived from the Tamil word tokei but sometimes traced to the Egyptian word tekh.