Peafowl genetics question!
I like leucistic peacocks, they’ve always struck me as very elegant! But you mentioned that the “black” peafowl suffer from shorter lifespans and other genetic issues. What’s the cause of these type of issues, how they’re bred? And do leucistic peafowl suffer from the same kind of health issues?
Nope! It's something about the Charcoal gene itself that is the problem. Various breeders have tried to fix the issues, from outcrossing to diet and environmental changes, but sometimes phenotype changes really are just the result of a gene that's doing Other Fucked Up Stuff- like "progressive pied" in peafowl is a form of vitiligo, and comes with a host of autoimmune problems that are the root cause of the pigment cell death, and makes THAT mutation also a bad one to propagate. The new Black gene in peafowl does not appear to have the same functionality problems as Charcoal (the other black-colored gene, though it's more like a dark brown or grey in most cases), but it also hasn't been around long enough to know that for sure. However, the hens are producing eggs and offspring, which was the first major indicator that Charcoal was unhealthy- all homozygous Charcoal hens are sterile, they do not lay eggs.
The leucistic genes (white and pied at least, possibly also white eye though I'm of the opinion that that's a white spotting gene not a leucistic gene) have both been around for hundreds of years and show no signs of being deleterious to healthy function of the animal. They're costmetic in nature, and fine to reproduce!
