{"id":327914,"date":"2025-12-02T15:42:54","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T15:42:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/aerospace\/for-some-male-pheasants-love-really-is-blind-their-elaborate-feathers-that-impress-females-also-obstruct-their-vision\/"},"modified":"2025-12-02T15:42:54","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T15:42:54","slug":"for-some-male-pheasants-love-really-is-blind-their-elaborate-feathers-that-impress-females-also-obstruct-their-vision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=327914","title":{"rendered":"For Some Male Pheasants, Love Really Is Blind. Their Elaborate Feathers That Impress Females Also Obstruct Their Vision"},"content":{"rendered":"


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The adornments on the heads of male Lady Amherst\u2019s and golden pheasants partially block their sight, according to new research, marking the first known sex-based differences in field of vision within bird species<\/h2>\n
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Sara Hashemi<\/a><\/p>\n

– Daily Correspondent<\/span><\/p>\n

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A male golden pheasant (Chrysolophus pictus)\u00a0<\/em>with its vision-obscuring head feathers.\u00a0
\n Kolderal via Getty Images<\/span>
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These male pheasants\u2019 looks could literally kill\u2014them.<\/p>\n

To attract mates, male Lady Amherst\u2019s<\/a> and golden pheasants<\/a> don elaborate hoods of feathers that resemble slicked-back wigs and wrap around their necks. While female pheasants of those species dig the plumage, the ornamentation restricts the males\u2019 field of vision\u2014giving them blind spots that could be lethal in the wild.<\/p>\n

\u201cLooking this good comes with a cost,\u201d Steve Portugal<\/a>, a study co-author and biologist at the University of Oxford in England, tells Jack Tamisiea at the\u00a0New York Times<\/em><\/a>. \u201cThis amazing hairdo cuts out a large portion of their vision.\u201d<\/p>\n

The study, published in the journal\u00a0Biology Letters<\/em><\/a>\u00a0<\/em>last week, provides the first evidence of sex-based differences in visual range within birds of the same species.<\/p>\n

Portugal and his colleagues suspected that Lady Amherst\u2019s pheasants (Chrysolophus amherstiae<\/em>) and golden pheasants (Chrysolophus pictus<\/em>) had sex-based differences in sight because of their past work studying why some birds were more likely to crash into human-made structures, such as wind turbines, per the Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So, for the new study, the researchers visited two private bird collections in France and England and tested the vision of four Lady Amherst\u2019s pheasants and three golden pheasants. They also examined two silver pheasants and two green pheasants, which do not have such elaborate decorations, for comparison.<\/p>\n

The team placed each bird in a foam cradle, which kept their heads still, and peered into the animals\u2019 eyes with an ophthalmoscope, an instrument also used by doctors to examine human eyes. Shining a light in each inner eye and determining where it bounces off the retina\u2014where special cells convert light into signals for the brain\u2014allowed the researchers to map out where each bird\u2019s individual eyes can see, where both eyes\u2019 vision overlaps and the blind region where neither eye can see.<\/p>\n

The maps revealed that the fabulous feathers sported by male golden and Lady Amherst\u2019s pheasants primarily compromise the birds\u2019 ability to see above them, just as the bill of a baseball cap might block your line of sight, per\u00a0Science<\/em><\/a>\u2019s Soumya Sagar. Across the seven studied birds of the two species, males saw about 41 percent less than females, from the top to the bottom of their field of view, the team found. The comparator silver and green pheasants didn\u2019t show differences in vision between the sexes.<\/p>\n

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Fun fact: Fading feathers<\/h4>\n

Wild golden pheasants, native to China, spend most of their time on the forest floor. If they hang out in the sunshine for too long, their colorful feathers are prone to bleaching<\/a>, according to reports from field zoologists.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Portugal explains to the Times<\/em>\u00a0that the visual impairment is particularly disadvantageous for pheasants, which spend a lot of time looking at the ground while foraging. They have a huge blind spot if a predator sneaks up on them. And their attention-grabbing appearances don\u2019t help. \u201cIf you\u2019re a male golden pheasant, you may as well have confetti and a feather boa on,\u201d Portugal says to the outlet.<\/p>\n

The study authors also note that the male pheasants of these species molt their head feathers in September and October, likely widening their field of vision for a while. So, the animals also mark the first known instance of a bird\u2019s visual range changing on an annual basis.<\/p>\n

Scott Edwards<\/a>, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard University who wasn\u2019t involved in the research, tells Science<\/em> that the work is \u201ca really important observation.\u201d He adds that how the head ornamentation affects pheasants in the wild remains unclear, since the research was done with birds in captivity. \u201cBut I think recording all this sort of natural history stuff is very important.\u201d<\/p>\n

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