PEACOCK FEATHER DYNAMICS explained,
according to articles in ScienceDaily 27 April 2016, ABC News 28 Apr 2016 and
PLoS ONE doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0152759, published online 27 April 2016.
The feathers of a peacock tail train consist of many loose barbs with a dark
coloured “eyespot” near the end. When peacocks fan out their tail feathers they
also vibrate them, producing an iridescent shimmering effect. This behaviour is
called “train rattling” and usually precedes mating. A group of scientists led
by Roslyn Dakin from the University of British Columbia, Canada, have studied
the physics of train rattling to see how this effect is produced. They found the
peacock vibrates the feathers at an average of 25 beats per second, producing a
pulsating low frequency sound that is in the best range for the female birds to
hear. The vibrations shake the loose barbs on the feathers, forming the
iridescent shimmer, but the eyespots appear to stay still with their pattern
undisturbed. The researchers also studied the eyespots barbs with a scanning
electron microscope to see why they appeared to stay still. They found they are
bound together by hooks in the same way as the barbs in flight feathers. This
means the vibrations do not disrupt their pattern while the loose barbs around
them are moving independently from one another. Suzanne Kane, one of the
research team, commented: “Charles Darwin observed that peacocks vibrate their
feathers during courtship, but it took this multidisciplinary team of scientists
to characterize the dynamics of this behaviour”.
Links: ABC, ScienceDaily
ED. COM. Charles Darwin
invented the concept of “sexual selection” to explain the elaborate feathers of
male birds. He claimed that male birds developed bright colours and elaborately
shaped feathers because the females were more attracted to them. However, like
natural selection, sexual selection only explains why a characteristic works
once it exists. It does not explain how it came to exist in the first place.
Peahens may respond to the sound produced by the train rattling, and to the
sight of eyespots and shimmer, but that cannot, and never did, produce any genes
that controlled the formation of such feathers, with all their colours and
microscopic structures, nor will viewing by keen females ever connect up the
appropriate nerve cells to produce the muscle contractions which produce the
vibrations at the right frequency that turn on the females to mate. So, let’s
say it again Sam … the fact that it took a multidisciplinary team of intelligent
scientists, using high tech equipment to work out the structure and dynamics of
peacock feathers is good evidence that feathers were designed and made by a more
highly intelligent Creator, who just happened to make the whole bird, and not
just pretty feathers. (Ref. ornithology, Pavo, feathers, colour) Creation
Research. |
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