Comments by a High Court judge on the odd mating habits of peacocks has given rise to a frenzy of searches on Google from citizens curious to know more about the subject.
From practically nothing, the number of searches on the topic ‘peacock mating’ has exploded since Wednesday evening, reaching a crescendo at 7:30 AM today.
On a relative scale, the number of searches on the peacock’s mating habits on Google were at ‘100’, while searches on the reproductive habits of chickens and tigers were at ‘0’ in comparison.
Searches on human reproduction — a perennially interesting topic to homo sapiens — were at ‘3’.
In other words, the number of people who were interested in the fowl were 33 times as high as those who were interested in the procreative habits of their own species.
However, there were a couple of states where interest in human habits remained higher than in those of the fowl — Odisha and Assam.
Google does not reveal the exact number of searches on any topics, but makes public the relative frequency of search terms.
SEEING IS BELIEVING
Not satisfied with reading about it, most people also looked for videos on the subject.
The trends also indicated that most of the queries came from states where India’s national bird is a rare sight, such as Kerala.
Some, however, were not ready to give up on the exotic theory of reproduction and were specificially searching for information about how the bird reproduced using tears, as alleged by Rajasthan High Court judge Mahesh Chandra Sharma (see chart).
Speaking to reporters on the Wednesday, Sharma had said: “The peacock is a lifelong brahmachari (celibate). It never has sex with the peahen. The peahen gets pregnant after swallowing the tears of the peacock.”
The comment caused a sensation on social media as biological reproduction through tears is an unheard of phenomenon in most parts of India.