Peacock Emoji

A peacock with its iridescent blue-green tail feathers fanned out in full display. No other animal on Earth carries this much mythological weight across so many unrelated traditions. The peacock is sacred to Hinduism, Greek mythology, early Christianity, and Yazidism, where it represents everything from divine beauty to resurrection to the chief archangel.

In texting, 🦚 is the emoji for showing off. Someone looking too good? 🦚. New outfit? 🦚. Humble-bragging about a promotion? Peacock. The fanned tail is nature's original flex, and the emoji carries that exact energy. It's also used for real beauty, bold aesthetics, confidence, and self-expression.

The peacock was approved in Unicode 11.0 (2018) after a proposal from Emojination argued it would fill a gap in the bird emoji set. Given that peafowl are the national bird of India, that turned out to be an understatement.

🦚 thrives on Instagram and TikTok, where it's paired with fashion, beauty, and "look at me" content. Influencers drop it in outfit-of-the-day posts. Makeup artists use it when showcasing iridescent or jewel-toned looks. It's become shorthand for "peacocking," the dating strategy made famous by pickup artist Mystery on VH1's The Pickup Artist.

Indian users lean on it heavily for cultural posts, especially around Republic Day) and Independence Day when national symbols trend. The Peacock streaming service (NBC) also drives some incidental usage, though that's more about the brand than the bird.

In group chats, 🦚 functions as a playful callout. Someone's fishing for compliments? Friends will reply with just the peacock. It's teasing without being mean.

The peacock emoji was proposed in June 2017 by Emojination, the grassroots organization behind dozens of successful emoji proposals. Christian Kamkoff, Irene Cho, Yiying Lu (the designer behind the Twitter fail whale), and Jennifer 8. Lee co-authored the submission.

Their argument was simple: the peacock is one of the world's most visually distinctive birds, it's the national bird of India (home to 1.4 billion people), and the existing bird emoji set had no representative for peafowl. The proposal cited the peacock's cross-cultural significance, from Hindu mythology to Greek symbolism to its role as a Western metaphor for vanity and pride.

Unicode approved 🦚 in June 2018 as part of Emoji 11.0, alongside 🦜 Parrot, 🦢 Swan, and 🦞 Lobster. It appeared on iPhones with iOS 12.1 in October 2018.

1. 2017Emojination submits the Peacock emoji proposal to Unicode (L2/17-270)↗
2. 2018Approved in Unicode 11.0 / Emoji 11.0. First appears on Apple iOS 12.1 and Google Android 9.0
3. 2020Google redesigns its peacock for Android 11 with updated Noto Color Emoji
4. 2022Samsung aligns its peacock design closer to Apple/Google styling with One UI 5.0

• •A peacock's train contains over 200 feathers, each tipped with an iridescent eyespot called an ocellus. The male can stretch 55 to 63 inches from base to tip.
• •Peacock colors aren't caused by pigment. The iridescence comes from microscopic crystal structures in the feathers that reflect specific wavelengths of light, similar to how a prism splits white light.
• •During courtship, peacocks rattle their tail feathers 25 times per second, creating a resonance similar to a guitar string. The sound is partly infrasonic, meaning peahens can feel it before they hear it.
• •Peacock feathers can function as biological lasers. Scientists stained the feathers with dye and fired light pulses at them, producing coherent yellow-green laser beams from the eyespot structures.
• •The Mughal emperor Shah Jahan commissioned the legendary Peacock Throne in the 1630s, studded with the Koh-i-Noor diamond and over 100 rubies and emeralds. It cost twice as much as building the Taj Mahal.
• •Despite their enormous trains, peacocks can fly, reaching about 10 mph and heights of 10-15 feet. They fly for only about 2% of their lifetime, mostly to escape predators or reach high roosting spots.
• •White peacocks aren't albinos. They have a genetic condition called leucism that prevents pigment from reaching feathers. Only about 1 in 30,000 peacocks are born white.
• •The peacock's colorful display is actually invisible to most mammalian predators. The eyespots are below detection threshold for dichromat mammal vision against foliage backgrounds, but perfectly visible to other birds. Evolution optimized the display for the right audience.
• •The Ashkenazi Jewish tradition celebrates the "golden peacock" (di goldene pave) as a symbol of joy and creativity, appearing in Yiddish folk songs and poetry.

• •NBC has used a peacock logo since 1956, originally designed to highlight color TV programming. The current six-feather version represents NBC's six divisions. Their streaming service, launched in 2020, is literally called "Peacock."
• •Shah Jahan's Peacock Throne, commissioned in the 1630s, was studded with the Koh-i-Noor diamond and cost twice as much as the Taj Mahal. It was looted by Persian invader Nader Shah in 1739 and eventually dismantled.
• •The term "peacocking" entered mainstream vocabulary through Neil Strauss's 2005 book The Game and VH1's reality show The Pickup Artist (2007), where Mystery wore black nail polish and layered necklaces.
• •Flannery O'Connor, one of America's greatest short story writers, famously raised peafowl on her Georgia farm and wrote extensively about them.