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Blinded by love: some male pheasants restrict their vision in a bid to impress females

https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2025-12-05-blinded-love-some-male-pheasants-restrict-their-vision-bid-impress-females
porcoesphino - 22hr

I clicked through to see what "restrict their vision" means. It's a bit click baity for me and the content wasn't too interesting. Pretty bird though

Many animals try to win a mate by displaying spectacular ornamentation – such as the famous tail of male peacocks. However, these impressive traits can have negative consequences, even hindering movement or making individuals easier for predators to find.

Up to now, researchers have not found any major differences in how males and females see in terms of their visual fields. However, for the first time ever, the new findings reveal that the cranial feathers of male golden (C. pictus) and Lady Amherst’s (C. amherstiae) pheasants are so much more exaggerated than their female counterparts that this impedes their ability to gather information from the world about them.

This effect is most extreme in the vertical axis, where the males have a field of view 30° or 40° less in golden and Lady Amherst’s pheasants respectively.

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