The Peacock and the Turkey

Peacocks, living in the jungles of Asia, would never meet wild turkeys in nature, as the latter are an inhabitant of North America. The only place the two birds can come face to face is in zoos, where it soon becomes clear that, in spite of their different appearances, the birds are close relatives, responding to each others’ war cries.

When one of the males initiates a duel, a cross-species tragedy begins to unfold. The peacock, attacking from a tree, usually takes the upper hand. This triggers the turkey’s species-specific surrender response: once the male turkey gives up, he ceases to fight and exposes his highly vulnerable head to the enemy. This is a result of turkeys being social animals who have an inborn inhibition preventing them from killing each other: When a defeated animal acknowledges the winner’s superiority by offering his vulnerable nape, the other bird is literally unable to attack further.

Unfortunately for the turkey, his cousin leads a solitary life and as such does not have a similar inhibition. In Peacock World the rule is: loser begone! If an opponent keeps staying, he is obviously still game.

The more the turkey is attacked, the more it is paralysed and forced to exhibit the submission gesture, usually all the way to being beaten to death.

Let us not judge the peacock as evil, since all he does is following the rules of his group to the letter. People are not unlike in this matter – they are trying to fulfil the rules of their own cultures. And since every family, clan, nation, country has quite different standards, and everyone is interpreting the ’same’ behaviours by a different code, misunderstandings are quite common in intercultural communication.

Much to our luck, while the behaviour rules of peacocks or turkeys are inherited, humans learn these rules and are very much capable of acquiring new ones. And an insider calling our attention to the rules of a culture can considerably speed up the learning process.

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