The Golden Pheasant – 10,000 Birds

The total scientific identify of the Golden Pheasant is Chrysolophus pictus, with the “Chrysolophus” half that means “with golden crest” whereas “pictus” means painted. That feels like a smart identify, however then once more, Girl Amherst’s Pheasant (the topic of an earlier submit) can be within the genus “Chrysolophus” regardless of not having a golden crest in any respect.

A corporation referred to as the Carolina Avian Analysis and Training states that “in the event you google the highest ten most lovely birds on the planet, it [the Golden Pheasant] all the time makes the checklist.”

True or not? Having as soon as been burned by fallacious info on the web, I made a decision to test this for myself. Right here is the results of the primary few web sites {that a} Google search introduced up:
A-Z animals: Not included within the high 10
The Mysterious World: Included and taking the No. 1 spot
The Coolist: Included within the high 10 (no particular order)
World Net Instances: Included and taking the No. 1 spot
Sprintally: Not included within the high 10 (regardless of some quite broad “chicken species” making into the checklist, e.g. “kingfisher”)
Chipper Birds: It is a checklist of the highest 30 however the Golden Pheasant is listed as No. 3, so, sure.
Tajbirds: Included at No. 6.
Bscholarly: It is a checklist of the highest 12, however the Golden Pheasant lands the highest spot, so sure.
Types at Life: Sure, included. However the checklist additionally consists of the Mute Swan, which I personally discover fairly ugly …
Allabouttopten: Sure, included – bonus factors for together with the Black-naped Monarch, although a few of these bonus factors are instantly deducted for utilizing the identify “black-naped blue flycatcher”
Webspy: Included, and with a transparent assertion – “it’s the most lovely chicken on the planet in 2023.”
Owlcation: Included at quantity 7 however species will not be listed in any explicit order.
Legit: Included and taking the quantity 2 spot.

There are numerous extra such web sites, however taking a look at them it will get boring in a short time. So, right here’s the consequence: Out of 13 web sites, 11 embrace the Golden Pheasant of their high 10. And I discovered that there are lots of extra ineffective web sites than I ever thought doable.

For good measure, I additionally requested ChatGPT in regards to the 10 most tasty chicken species – it doesn’t embrace the pheasant however thoughtfully warns that “the idea of attractiveness can differ from individual to individual” …

Anyway, first-year male Golden Pheasants present a mixture of female and male options and are not often chosen as one of many high ten most lovely birds.

However the seems to be of the grownup male Golden Pheasant make it a beautiful chicken for animal parks, zoos, and related locations – for instance, it has its personal webpage at Seaworld and at a spot referred to as Marineland on the Cote D’Azur.

I suppose in China, there’s all the time cash for analysis associated to Big Pandas. One such research regarded on the consideration the pandas pay to totally different species, utilizing eye-tracking expertise. It seems the pandas aren’t very excited by Golden Pheasants regardless of their place among the many high 10 most lovely chicken species.

These readers with barely morbid pursuits would possibly wish to search out a paper within the Turkish Journal of Veterinary and Animal Sciences describing the case of heavy blended an infection of Golden Pheasants by Heterakis isolonche and H. gallinarum (supply). Full with coloration photos of the contaminated areas – good for printing out and adorning front room partitions.

Sadly, the HBW states that Golden Pheasants are thought-about an costly delicacy in eating places.

When in search of literature on Golden Pheasants, I stumbled throughout a thesis titled “Golden Pheasants and Japanese Kings: The German District Administration within the Occupied Soviet Union, 1941–1944”. Whereas this was unlikely to result in any bird-related info, I nonetheless wanted to determine what the time period “Golden Pheasant” stands for on this non-avian context.

A footnote within the thesis gives a solution: “‘Golden Pheasant‘ (Goldfasanen) was a derogatory time period to explain the civil administration [of the areas occupied by the Nazis]. The phrase itself referred to the yellow-brown uniform … It was additionally used to explain long-time Nazis who got vital positions within the Get together or certainly one of its organizations.” (supply: Fritz Hillenbrand, Underground Humour in Nazi Germany: 1933-1945, Routledge: London).
And the primary textual content of the thesis explains: “Total, these ‘Golden Pheasants‘, as they have been referred to by navy personnel, indiscriminately plundered the native inhabitants and displayed a eager style for vodka, ladies and public executions. Briefly, the civil administration was supposedly composed of ‘blockheads and ass-lickers, ‘drunk on energy.’”

One other use of the chicken identify is to explain rich potential donors, which a priest gathering funds for a hospital thus described as his “Golden Pheasants” -as printed within the journal (?) “The Hospital” in 1890 (supply).

One British birder describes the decline of the Golden Pheasant in Britain – the place it had been launched within the late nineteenth century – and ends this with the assertion that as a consequence of the presumed extinction, “Golden Pheasant will thus signify a real blocker on the British and Western Palearctic lists in years to return”. The unusual considering of listers.

Apparently, in Chinese language tradition, the Golden Pheasant is regarded as the ancestor of the phoenix and represents auspiciousness (supply).

Some researchers introduced Golden Pheasants (and two different species, the Chukar Partridge and the Ring-necked Pheasant) with a novel object (a white tennis ball – the researchers have been Australian, so perhaps one left over from the Australian Open).
The Golden Pheasants have been those least prone to strategy and react to the tennis ball. Throughout the species, reactions have been stronger by males, by teams of birds quite than people, and by captive birds. In science communicate, this then leads to the next conclusion:
“Outcomes from particular person topic checks have been interpreted as reflecting species-specific strategy/avoidance behaviors. Group patterns of conduct have been interpreted as reflections of regular responses to novel conditions within the birds’ realm of expertise with conspecifics.” Sounds extra refined, proper?

Jennifer Hill acquired her Ph.D. in biology on the College of Mexico taking a look at sexual choice in Golden Pheasants. She discovered that the females choose males with full grownup plumage quite than the one-year males, and males with longer cape feathers. And among the many males, male spur size was the perfect indicator of the standing of a male within the hierarchy.

It sounds sort of apparent, however scientific rigor requires to show the apparent as effectively. So, analysis discovered that the flight initiation distance of grownup male Golden Pheasants is constantly longer than that of the better-camouflaged grownup females and juveniles of both intercourse. And certainly, it was simpler to get pictures of the juvenile male than of the grownup male, although I believed this was as a result of higher stupidity of the juvenile quite than its much less sensible look.

And at last, if Golden Pheasant mother and father wish to frighten their chicks, they inform them the true story of a Nice Gray Owl attacking captive pheasants.