If you’ve ever wanted to know why peacocks have such amazing feathers, why they’re not all called peacocks, and plenty of other neat stuff about peacocks, then perhaps this episode on peacocks is for you.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck. Jerry's here too, And I can't think of anything hilarious to say, so I'm just going to say this is stuff you should know.
That's right. A live show listener request edition because peacocks came to us. Did you get her name? Or can we just say the wonderful young girl at our Atlanta live show?
I really want to say Sarah, but I'm not sure. So, whoever you are, young girl who suggested peacocks at the Atlanta show, right in to tell us your name so we can tell everybody.
Yeah, so this is a great idea. We're talking about peacocks, which is, if you want to look at the word itself, it's English and it is derived from the Latin word pavo, and in Old English that was pronounced pah wah pawa, and that was shortened over the years to poe eventually pocock, then palcock, and I guess peacock. And it's linked a little bit to this old expression proud as a poe, which is, you know how a peacock kind of struts around all prideful, and then eventually it became peacock.
Yeah, and you would think it would have become peacock like in the nineteen fifties or sixties, but no, it became peacock as far back as the thirteen hundreds. Yeah, so that's it for etymology of peacock. But there's a little more about the word peacock, because a lot of you are getting things wrong and you need to be corrected, Yeah, harshly. Sometimes a peacock is specifically the male of the species. Obviously, the p hen is the female. So if you see a brown, kind of drab looking peacock, he's you look at that brown peacock, Well, you just sound like a hay seed. Yeah, it's a p hen and she's not drabbed, she's camouflaged.
That's right. Their little babies cairlled pea chicks. And if you want to talk as we're going to about the the species as a whole, we're going to be saying p fowl. And then we will you know, when we say cock, we're going to mean male. When we say hn, we're going to mean lady. And when we say chick we're going to mean beebe Okay, I think.
We've really laid it out.
There are three main species, speaking of laying this out of the pa fowl. Uh and you have the most common that you if you live in the United States and you've seen one, maybe in a zoo, maybe in a park, or maybe startting around your neighborhood.
Yeah, we have some walking around our area too.
Oh yeah, is it? I mean the same ones from many years ago, because you told the story years ago about the sound of the peacock.
Sorry, no, those were those were Yumi's grandma's peacock. Neighborhood peacocks. Oh okay, And for some reason, the ones that live around me are not a disturbance at all. I mean they make their sounds, but few and it's few and far between. It's not annoying at all. It's kind of cute and it's just a different experience than it was around Jumi's grandma's house.
All right, fair enough. I mean I've talked before about my neighborhood peacocks. I have not seen them in a few years, so I don't know if they're still around. And the house is on my morning dog walk, so I haven't seen those peacocks around in a little while those p fowl, So I'm not sure if they're around, but we used to see them occasionally and it was all great fun. But where I started ten minutes ago saying is if you see one of those in the United States, you're probably almost certainly looking at a blue pfowl or an Indian p fowl.
Yeah, for sure. They are not native to the United States, although they thrive and coastal wormish areas, kind of muggy areas, you could say, too, although also arid areas anyway, California and Florida. Let's just specify that they do really well there. But they're native to India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.
Yes, exactly. They're the most common, little less common, but still more common than The third group is the green p fowl or the Javanese p fowl, so native to Java, Southeast Asia and me and mar And then what's our little third grouping.
The Congo p fowl. That's right, little it's like a little mini turkey. He looks like they look like they're native to the Congo basin in Africa, and the Indian and Javanese p fowl prefer kind of open ish fields. And maybe kind of tree lined streets. That's why they love neighborhoods parks like it replicates their native of habitat. The congo pea fowl prefer to live in the forest itself. Yeah, that's right, So that's that's where they like to live.
No matter which kind of pea fowl you're talking about, they're all going to be omnivores. They eat lots of seeds and berries and you know, plant life and stuff like that, as well as some insects. But they'll also much down on a mouse or a little cute lizard or a snake if they want to. If they're feeling peckish, I guess.
Get a peckish. So they are among the largest flying birds in the world. At Something a lot of people don't realize about p fowl is that they can fly. Apparently, the green pea fowl fowl, yeah I said that right, Yeah, is a pretty strong flyer. The Indian or blue pea fowl is not great. But they can make it to the roof of a two story building. Yeah, pretty fast. If a dog like Mamo barks at them, I can tell you that.
Yeah, I've seen that too.
So they can fly and they are very large too. Blue pea fowl the most common one. They're the biggest of the three. The adult male can measure fifty inches. It's a little over four feet. God knows how many meters we're talking about, let's say one point two. And it's train, so that what you think of as the tail feathers are actually not the tail. They actually protrude out of the back of the pea fowl or the peacock in this case. That can be five to seven feet long. So they are a big, big bird, not big bird size, but there's.
Still a big that's right. And as you'll see, that big beautiful train is a big part of the mating ritual. So when you see that thing fully displayed, when that peacock wants to have a little good time with a p hen, that thing may go five to seven feet in every direction.
It's amazing, very very long.
Arch.
They also use it to defend their territory. I saw a guy laying pavers once, and he was apparently laying pavers on a peacock's territory because the peacock had his train like fully fanned out. Oh really, it was like shaking and staring at the guy like, I'm going to kill you if you don't stop laying pavers right there. Oh wow, the guy just completely ignored him. It was pretty funny to see because that peacock was quite serious.
I bet so. The blue adult male peacock is about a thirteen pounder if you don't count wild turkeys, which are usually put into a different family, although they can be in the pheasant family. They are the largest. The peacock that is is the largest in the pheasant family.
You're not going to take a shot at the family name for the turkeys. No, I wouldn't gun on it, but you can, uh, Millia Gridi Day. Yeah, great, I think I got it. I didn't even practice that one.
Good job.
But those turkeys, did you say they can weigh up to thirty pounds?
I didn't say that about the turkeys, but yeah, they're big.
That's a big turkey. It's like the baby hweie types.
Yeah. I got that turkey family living in living at my camp. There's six or eight of them now, they're just they hang around together. I get them on the camp camp. It's just lovely.
Well, are they used to your presence or because those things run? They have really sharp eyesight, and they scatter quick.
No, no, I mean sadly. All the wonderful camp activity is when I'm not there. Well, I have a feeling that they peer through the woods and they're like other guys are down there again?
Right to leave tomorrow, spending a weekend like standing up against the tree and not moving seeing what happens.
No, I'll do that, though you should.
Buy yourself some nice camouflage clothing first, though it'll help a lot.
I've already got that stuff.
Okay. So I also said that the blue pea hens are sometimes considered drab, and I mean compared to the males. They are not quite as easy on the eyes, right, But they're brown in their drab because the female blue pea hens are responsible for guarding their nests, and even though they spend a lot of time roosting in trees, very often they sleep over night in trees. They build their nests on the ground and little depressions on the ground lined with sticks, and so they have to defend that nest at all times. The easiest way to defend it is to not be seen, so they steer clear of being seen by things like leopards and tigers and mongoose and all that by blending in with the surrounding.
Terrain and momos.
Yeah, Momo doesn't actually want to predate the peacock. She just wants it to know, like, this is Momo's yard. Yeah, peacock, let them know who's boss, right, exactly, Momo's boss.
So the green pea fowl, you know, we're going to talk about a little bit about all of them, even though the blue are the most common, but the green, if it's not mating season, you may not be able to tell them apart. They both have that really nice green neck, that sort of light green here and there, And during mating season is when you're going to see the male's train grow a lot longer. But then they molten they shed those so more or less they look about the same when it's not mating season.
Yeah, and they're both very, very beautiful. They have amazingly beautiful feathers as well. The little congo pea fowl, they're kind of cute, dark blue neck feathers and dark green and black train. Females are also brown, but they they're just not Nothing can beat a blue peacock, Yeah, they just can't. I'm sorry. That's a hill I'll die on if I have to.
Yeah, it's fantastic. And if you have one in your neighborhood and as a pet in captivity, if one of your neighbors does, you may just get used to that sound and get used to seeing them because they could live forty to fifty years when kept his pets. Not suggesting that they be kept his pets. I'm just saying that people do that. They live about ten to twenty five years in the wild.
Yeah. They can also kind of haul pretty. They can run up to ten miles an hour when they need to.
Okay, you got to get a good running start if you want to get off the ground.
I guess with their little like aviator goggles.
Yeah, totally.
Uh you want to take a break, Yeah all right, well we're going.
To do that.
Everybody watch this.
Stop.
So I think it's high time that we talk about what everybody thinks of when they think of peacocks, which is that amazing train of feathers spread out in a fan behind him, and it's correct to see him and this is all part of the mating ritual, right, that's the whole point of the those feathers. Again, the peacocks will use it to try to or off or intimidate trespassers in their territory, but for the most part, the whole thing is to impress the pea hens.
That's right. And when a male wants to impress a p hen, that peacock will prop up those feathers into a big, beautiful fan. Dave likens it. Dave helped us with this to like an inverted umbrella, So it's sort of you know, when you see this sort of pointed back from their butthole area towards and they will shake those feathers, and the shaking isn't just like, hey, look how pretty and iridescent this gorgeous train is. Science has discovered semi recently that those vibrations are in lockstep with the p fowl's head feathers that they used to think were just for show, but now they realize they are. They vibrate at the same intensity, and that they can actually, you know, sort of feel when those tail feathers are vibrating in their direction through their head feathers.
Yeah, they're like receivers.
Isn't that neat super cool?
They resonate at at the same rate the male peacock when he shakes those those feathers that fan, he can shake it at more than twenty five times a second, and that resonance I think it's like twenty five point six hurts to be exact. That just happens to be tuned in almost precisely to the cress feathers on the pea fowl's head. And in addition to the site, apparently p hens have amazing sight, so they're seeing everything that the peacock's showing them, but also they're they're feeling it like they're there. That's transmitting that vibration or resonance is transmitting to their head. So it's quite a like you're not going to turn down a peacock if you're a p hen. They're pretty amazing dudes.
That's right. And before we get emails, I'm sure Josh will admit that when you said it just happens to vibrate the same frequency, that is no accident at all. It's called natural selection. Baby.
Oh yeah, sure, you're.
Cheeky, But I'm sure somebody would write in and say, no, Josh, it didn't just happen to vibrate that way. It's by design.
Intelligent design people.
You mean no, no creationists, no by design as natural selection.
It's very teleological.
I don't even know what that means. What's that mean?
It means that that everything has a purpose. So it was like design to be a certain way.
I love that. See, people, when you don't know a word, it's okay to say I don't know what that means.
It sure is, Chuck, that's a great example. This set.
So and you didn't talk down to me. You told me the definition. Now I'm a little bit smarter because of you.
Yeah, I wasn't like a dummy. Listen up.
Teleological, all right, So we need to cover this part of the mating ritual because the fact of the matter is the peacock loves to get around the block, if you know what I mean. They have a social structure called a lech l e k, which is basically a harem, and the male is gonna mate with several females. But here's the part that's a little maybe not intuitive. Even though the male is mating with many females, the male isn't running the show as far as who he gets to do that with.
Yeah, so he's putting on this huge show not to be like, I'm hypnotizing you, baby, do my bidding. He's doing it because he's like, check me out, don't you like me? Like look at this isn't aren't I amazing? And the female can either be like I've seen better or she could be like, yeah, you're right up my alley. You just happen to be vibrating at my residence, right.
That's telelogical.
So yeah. So one of the ways that a male will make himself seem even more virile than he is, there's something called the hoot dash noise, and just the hoot is the noise part. It's called a hoot dash because right after the male hoots, he dashes toward the female and they start mating. Right, it's actually quite disturbing to see a lot of mating in the animal world is really disturbing.
This saw video too, It's like the dash was very close to the hoot.
Yeah, but that's what the noise is called. So the males realize that like the more hoot dashing or hoot sounds that they make the more females in earshot but not in eyeshot. I guess well here, oh wow, Like Terry really gets it on with a lot of p hens. I'm going to give him a shot next time he comes around, because he must be very virile. Like a third of those hoot dash sounds are faked essentially, that's right.
So when that finally happens, the female p hen will scratch out a little depression in the ground basically and line it with sticks, and that's their little They're going to layford to eggs that are gonna hatch after four weeks, and those little pea chicks are up and around pretty much right out of the gate. It'll take them a couple of weeks to fly. And those boys that are peacocks aren't gonna get those train feathers until their second year. They're like, why don't you just chill for a couple of years and not think about that thing?
Yeah, they are so cute too. Do not rely on the internet for what a baby peacock looks like? Apparently it's been a great example to demonstrate how much AI is just screwing the internet.
Oh really, yeah?
Yeah. If you go on Google image search for baby peacocks, like people think that there's pictures of like a giant or like a miniatureized cute, big eyed peacock, and that that's a baby peacock. They all look like p hens, like little brown p hens. But even if they're peacocks, that's how they start out. So just check it out. Just search the baby peacock for images, and it's a lie. It's a lie for sure.
That's the cutest little iridescent blue baby duckling thing I've ever seen.
Right, but it doesn't exist. That's not real. Hey, don't blame me, blame the AI running the internet.
Yeah, those eyes are suspiciously large and disney like.
So. One other thing about the pea chicks is that they stay with their mom for two to six months, depending on whether they're in captivity in the wild. Moms are much more maternal instinct wise in the wild than they are in captivity, so you know, depends on the situation how long they hang around them. But just watching, have you ever seen a p hen with their little pea chicks following her?
Uh no, I've just seen the turkey version at the camp.
It's very cute. Oh my god, I'll bet baby turkeys are pretty cute too.
Yeah, the following around is just very cute because like mom's up front and there's like six little guys and girls just following it along like I can keep up, I can keep up.
And there's always one straggler that has to like run faster when the group.
Yeah, Barney, love that guy who Barney.
That's a perfect name.
So the dads, as far as blue and green peacocks go, are not around. There are complete absentee dads. But hey, if you're feeling bad for the family unit, just go to the congo because those congo p fowl are monogamous. They don't have those leks. They like one lady and they hang around and feed and raise pea chicks with mommy.
Yeah pretty great.
Huh, yeah, it's great.
So I think we should talk a little bit about natural selection, sexual selection Charles Darwin, kind of what you were alluding to earlier.
Right, Yeah, because Charles Darwin was bringing a little too much of his human baggage to some of this research. It seems pretty clear, don't.
You think, Uh huh for sure?
And how was he doing that?
So Darwin grew up or lived in the Victorian era where women were viewed as passive, submissive. They were just there and had their fingers crossed that a man of adequate dashingness would come along and marry them, right, So that meant that it was the men, the males of the Victorian era human species in England at least, that were responsible for sexual selection. They chose the winners and the losers among women. Well, Darwin was looking around the world of nature basically all the other animals, and was like, that's not really what I'm seeing out there. And in the peacocks in particular, the females are again drab, really camouflaged, while the males have these amazing beautiful displays. That strongly suggests that the males are performing for the females and it's the females who are doing the sexual selecting. Yeah, and he had such a hard time wrestling with this. There's a quote from him that said the sight of a pea feather made him sick, right because he could not give in. And he finally was you know, science got the better of him. And he's like, that's just how it is. I don't like it. But females in the animal kingdom are typically the ones who select sexually and end up are the They're the drivers of natural selection. They choose what passes on to the next generation based on the kind of male mates that they choose.
That's right, And that choosing is based on that flashy display that we're going to talk a little bit more about as far as the colors and stuff go, and that vibration. But if they're science behind that, or is there science behind that? Yes, In nineteen ninety four it seems like it, at least there were some researchers in Britain that found that the bigger peacocks that had more eye spots, you know, they look like eyes. What are they called.
Asily ocelli In the Italian it'd be celli because ce followed by a vowel is a just sound. So let's just go with Italian, say, oh chelly.
Okay. But the more of those they have, and the larger that they are, and the more just big and beautiful they are, it looks like the larger offspring they're going to have that are going to be more likely to survive. So it seems like they are more genetically fit.
Yeah, and those eye spots play a real starring role in this whole sexual selection mating process. Right. So the feathers in and of themselves are pretty amazing, but the eye spots, these little dots with different colors on them that are across like a like, scattered all across the train feathers the fan. They are of a slightly different structure slightly different density than the rest of the feathers surrounding them. So when that train resonates at twenty five point six hurts, they appear to stand still and float against the background of the other feathers that are vibrating at the same frequency, but are just of a slightly different density. And this is so important. These o'celly. The eye spots are so important. The scientists have figured out that other species that also have eye spots aren't. They don't share a common ancestor with peacocks that had eye spots. Chuck. Eye spots evolved separately over different times among different species. They're that important for mating.
That's right, And thanks to our listener Mail in the Ruby Ridge episode, it's called conversion evolution and not co evolution.
Very nice. I say we take a break then, since we're done talking about eye spots, right.
Yeah, we'll finish up with that three right after this.
Oh wait, wait, there was one more thing about eye spots.
Wait stop, the presses Jerry roll tape.
Researchers have figured out for sure the eye spots play a big role, because some poor schmoe of a peacock had his eye spots covered up and they said, go out to ladies night and see what happens, and he got nothing from nobody. Ever will his eye spots were covered up.
Yeah, the copulation The quote is their copulation success declined to almost zero.
Almost. They were just being nice.
They were all right, now are we breaking Yes.
I don't have any other breaking news.
All right, everybody tick five, then we're back stop. All right, we are back to finish up with peacocks, and we're going to talk a little bit about something we did an entire episode on, and that is iridescent h This was a this was many years ago that we didn't up on iridescence. And there's if you want to really deep dive on the science of it, you can go listen to that ep. But what we're looking at in the case of peacock feathers and why they look aridescent and are just so shiny and majestic looking is because of the shape. It's a physical shape of something and not necessarily a color of something, right.
Yeah, the pigments that are in the peacock's tail feathers are melanin, and melanin typically looks brown to us. It's what gives human skin kind of brown cast to it. That is melanin pigment. And it's no different than a peacock's feathers, but the structure is totally different. Like you said, there's a crystalline structure of overlaying barbs that if you look on an electron microscope you can see quite clearly. And those barbs, those crystal barbs of melanin, there's like little gaps between them, and in fact, it creates what's called a partial band gap, which means that electromagnetic waves do not penetrate some area depending on where that light is hitting. To put simply chuck. Depending on which angle, which direction, light hits these melanin rods, the crystalline melanin rods, it's going to reflect or absorb all different kinds of light. And so the same structure can reflect or absorb different kinds of light depending on where the light hits it, which means if you're looking at it one way and you move slightly left, you're looking at a different part of that structure, and it's reflecting different colored light, and that's how iridescence comes along.
That's right, partial band gap, not to be confused with the partial gap band, which is the sad tour. When two out of three of those guys went out on the road.
It wasn't a very good tour, was it.
It wasn't a very good joke. What I couldn't help my Yeah, I mean that's eridesnence in a nutshell. That's basically how it works in across nature. It's just about you know, the structure of the thing, and like, you know, what do we talk about? You talked about fish and butterfly wings mainly. I think on that episode.
It's so neat And yeah, it's just the structure. If you take a bunch of crystals and pile them on top of each other and little weird repeating patterns, they're going to become iridescent. It's gorgeous. Apparently Isaac Newton figured it out all the way back in seventeen oh four. Yeah, based on aggressive Yeah, based on peacock feathers. He said, check these out, man, I know what's going on. You'll just have to find out that's right.
We do need to talk about their yelp because it's a you know, I mean, you used to do a pretty good impression. You want to try it?
Help?
Hell, it always sounds like help.
That's what it sounds like to me. It's uncanny and unnerving.
Yeah, it is. And I always laughed at that years ago until like we got our own neighborhood peacocks, and then I would hear it occasionally and I was like, yeah, Josh's right, or is Josh in that backyard right now? Like it's one of those two things is happening. Yeah, it's pretty shrill. It can get annoying if you live near one. I don't mind it so much because I didn't live a next door to one, but it's usually in the morning and evening during mating season. It can pick up a bit. So I don't know if there were complaints or if these local peacocks just you know, met their natural end. You know. I don't know if they were taken out, or if they were moved to a farm, you know what I'm saying, yeah, or if they just had little peace strokes that's bad.
They were elf struck. So they also they honked too, Like, I can't even do the honk and the goose that's that hoot dash thing sounds kind of like, oh yeah it does.
I'm a little hankish.
Yeah, so they can do that a lot too, And if you put it all together, yeah, it can be very annoying. But I chuck, I cannot figure out what the difference is between Umi's grandma's neighborhood my neighborhood, because I have a completely different opinion of the annoyance level of peacocks. Now I don't understand why, but there's the facts.
Well, maybe you aged into it, I guess.
So I'm older wives or gentler. Yeah, we're peacock loving.
Sure, I think we all get that way. Sure, all right, So let's talk about the history of these things. Jumping back a little bit a few thousand years ago. The ancient Phoenicians were the first folks to say, hey, these things are great, Let's move them around to different places, because these things strutting around a palace is really something to see. So they brought them from India to Syria. They were traded around the Mediterranean at that point, and they did become like a status symbol if you were nobility or royalty, or had a lot of money or lived in a palace, then you probably wanted to some peacock strolling around your property.
Yeah, you might also want to eat them. Bow, I forgot to send you this thing that I found. The Romans ate them, but they specifically liked their tongues. Peacock tongue was a delicacy in ancient Roman times in the Middle Ages.
Wait, where are you going to send me?
This is what I'm about to tell you.
Oh okay, I thought You're gonna send me a peacock tongu in the male Flashow.
Why is this so? In the Middle Ages in Europe, they would actually eat peacock like the whole thing, but they figured out a way to remove the skin so that the feathers all came off too. Then they would roast the bird, and then they would redress it with its feathers to be served at to the lord of the manor by the most beautiful girl at the party. I guess, yeah, And then it would just sit there for a little while. They would carve into it, eat it and have a lot of trouble digesting it because apparently it's really tough. So much so that doctors of the time were like, don't eat peacock. It's really just not good for you.
So they would just stick the feathers back in it in an ornamental way.
The picture I saw, the painting I saw made it look like they did a pretty good job of it. Yeah, yeah, making it look like it was alive again.
Yeah. Interesting. I think even a lot of meat eaters appreciate the animal not looking like its original form when it's on the plate.
Sure right, you don't really want to recognize it?
Yeah? Like it? You know, I love a brainzeno, but I don't like that fish head looking up at me.
Oh no, no, you don't like roly poly fish heads?
Uh no, I don't want to see it. But I'll still dine on a braanzeno. I got a friend whose brother will take that eyeball out and eat it right at the table in front of everybody.
Wrong with that guy.
I mean, supposedly that's the thing to do, you know, use all the animal. But I just I don't want to eat an eyeball.
No to ever tell you. By the time we went to H and F and like we we just went too far. No, so for everybody who doesn't know. H and F is a restaurant in Atlanta, and they're well known for like using all parts of the animal. Yeah, and we went and we were like, if you go further down the menu like gets more and more hardcore. We just kind of tried it one time and we got as far as fried chicken heads or beaks, which had a lot of the head attached still in goodness, like the whole table just kind of it just took a dark turn and everybody stopped talking and it was a bad jam. So I don't recommend the fried chicken beaks at Homan and Finch anymore.
That sounds too much like a mcnoggan. You remember that, No, I think I sent it to you years ago. It was supposedly in the thing a chicken nuggets, but it was a a deep fried little chicken head that got through and they called it the mcnoggan.
That is what HNF sells as a as a dish.
All right. It's been very instructive, for sure.
I know, our poor, our poor live show fan Sarah is like, I know, sorry, I.
Asked for it, Yeah, I said, butthole earlier too. This is going downhill, all right, so back to history in peacocks Lord Krishna in the Hindu tradition, where's peacock feathers is a head dress, and there have been many other examples over the years in Greek mythology and Roman mythology about the peacock. I believe Harrah even had peacocks pulling her chariot.
At ten miles an hour.
Yeah, exactly.
She she was protected by a giant named Argus who had one hundred eyes, and he was killed by Hermes, and so she brought him back as the peacock. That's a great story. Yeah, there's also the cock throne, right.
Yeah, the peacock throne is one of the most expensive things that's ever been made. If it drives at home, I think it was about twice the cost of the taj Maha to build this one throne, which had oh, twenty five hundred pounds of gold, five hundred pounds, not five hundred precious stones, five hundred pounds of precious stones.
Including the Corey Newer diamond, which is one hundred and five carrot diamond. Pretty amazing stuff. They managed. The Mughal Empire in India managed to hang on to the throne for about one hundred years until they were invaded by the Persians, I believe, who were like, we're taking this throne. This is essentially the reason we invaded was to get this throne, and they disassembled it and basically sold it off for parts. Right. Yeah, but if you go onto the Internet and you search peacock throne, you will see photographs of a peacock throne that looks pretty amazing, and you will say, well, how could this have been destroyed back in the seventeenth or eighteenth century? And the reason why is because what you're looking at is the replica that King Ludwig the Second of Bavaria, our friend, the fairy tale King, had constructed for his castle. Nushwe look at that, Nushefinstein. Yeah, which one?
I don't know. I'm just amazed that you brought that around. Nice work, thanks, any Uschefinstein sounds great.
Nuschwinstein. Yeah, any chance I have to bring King Ludwig the Second into the story, I'm going to take it.
Well, you had that shirt made.
That helps ask me about King Ludvig the Second.
Endangered? Yes or no? Indian bluefowl are not endangered. In fact, they're doing really, really well, and you mentioned you know, in places in Florida and even southern California, they can get a little out of hand with their men. They can tear up foliage, and they can poop all over the place, and they can destroy habitats that other birds have. So people sometimes now even are trapping them and giving them vasectomies.
Yeah, there's a town called pine Crest, a suburb of Miami, which is giving peacock's vasectomy. So if you couldn't have guessed, pine Crest is a rather well healed suburb of Miami because a lot of towns can't afford to give peacocks vasectivey.
That green pea fowl, they are under threat though they're listed is endangered because they are from Southeast Asia and a lot of their natural habitat has been done away with thanks to land development and agricultural mowing down of their environment and also farmers who will poison them if they come into their fields.
Yeah, there's only I think ten twenty thousand left of them in the wild. Hopefully someone steps up, because losing any animal to extinction sucks, but losing particularly beautiful ones that their very presence makes the world a better place to live in those are You don't want to lose those.
That's right. And as for the congo p fowl, we don't want to forget about those spellas they are vulnerable, also habitat loss and hunting, and they're about ten thousand of those in the wild.
Man alive.
I know.
Let's see. I'm trying to think if there's anything else. I don't really think we have anything else, do we?
I got nothing else?
Oh? A group of pea fowl? You know? Yeah? What is it? Collective nouns? Isn't that what they're called?
Uh? Yeah, that was another name form something of something.
Yes, I remember what you talking about. I don't remember what it was too, but yeah, in this case, peacocks, A group of peacocks are called a pride, an ostentation, or a party, a peacock party. I like that. I do too, I like all three of them. Well, since Chuck and I agreed that we like the collective nouns for peacocks, then obviously we have just unlocked listener mail.
I'm going to call this Maine and Billboards. Hey, guys, longtime super fan of spreading the stuff. You should know kool aid oh far and wide flavor eight. I think they make any miles our drive to reach anywhere in Maine flyby, So thanks for that. When you ask someone in Maine how far away a destination is, be prepared to often hear about an hour, but that can mean forty five minutes to nearly two hours. Fun fact here though about Maine. During a recent episode on Kadzu, you were talking about how it takes over billboards, and I know you get a lot of listener mail for Maine. I thought you might like to know an exciting factoid. Have you ever been to Maine and marveled at it's natural beauty? Well, part of that is due to something that's missing billboards. Guys. Maine law does not allowed billboards of any kind. They have a very prescriptive law regarding signs not on business property AKA and main vernacular official business directional signs. The rules are very strict and include a special provision that rolling signs like ones attached to vehicles cannot even be used to get around these requirements. And I think it is a thirty dollars license fee to get a sign that can be forty eight inches by twelve inches or seventy two inches by sixteen inches, and you can only use two fonts. They must be white with a single color background. And this is literally just to say, like my pressure washing business is down there or whatever. They say that people may consider billboards to be detrimental to the preservation of scenic resources. And that is a great law. And that's one reason we love Maine. And that is from who is that from? That's from Katrina Peterson.
Thanks Katrina. That is a very sensible, awesome law. I love that. It's one of the worst things to see when you're driving down the highways, to billboards. It is terrible. Great thanks for letting us know that. Hopefully as Main goes, the rest of the world follows. And if you want to be like Katrina and get in touch with this and let us know of a very sensible local law. We love that kind of thing. You can send us an email to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit
The iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.