Attracting mates

The peacock's tail is perhaps the best-known example of a costly signal or Zahavian "handicap". Let's look at how this signal operates.

Peahens choose mates from a pool of suitors. For simplicity we will assume that these peacock suitors are characteristically unhelpful once mating is completed; they provide sperm but little else by way of resources or parental care. Nonetheless these males vary in quality: some have better genes to offer.

Because the peahens cannot judge a male's genetic quality directly, they instead attend to signals that the males provide: peacocks advertise their quality via bright plumage and a long flamboyant tail. This advertisement is a handicap in the sense that it is energetically costly to produce and maintain, and it is possibly dangerously conspicuous as well.

The cost of producing a long tail varies among males. A weak and sickly male can scarely afford to divert energetic resources from basic upkeep to the production of ornaments, and moreover he would have a hard time escaping from a predator if his flight was hindered by a long tail. A strong and healthy male, by contrast, can readily afford the additional costs of producing bright colors and a long tail, and moreover can usually escape a predator even when his flight is somewhat restricted by the length of his tail.

Because only the high-quality males can afford bright colors and long tails, peahens prefer mates with these characteristics. High quality males, for their part, produce these bright colors and extravegent plumes to ensure that they are chosen as mates by females. Low quality males cannot afford to do so, and so they will produce duller colors and shorter tails. (Perhaps next year they will be stronger and thus will be able to be more ambitious in their plumage.)

And thus among peafowl, the bright colors and long tails are honest signals of male quality, used by females to choose their mates. This is the basic idea behind the use of the costly signals in a sexual selection context. Of course, the costly signal need not involve bright coloration and extended tail feathers; a big rack of antlers, an elaborate song, a captured prey offered as a gift, or any number of other expensive ornaments or gestures could serve equally well. Nor, for that matter, must the male sex be the signalling sex. In some cases, females may use costly signals to advertise their own qualities to male suitors.