Flash Those Feathers

Peacocks don’t do much all day, but whatever they do, they look great while doing it. This fancy bird has beautiful, super-colorful tail feathers with funny little dots on them that look like eyes. Sadly, only the boy peacocks have these splashy feathers, so they can show off for the lady “peahens.” Peacocks have about 150 feathers, and each year they shed their feathers and grow back even more new ones. So the older the peacock, the more he can show off!

Wee ones: If a peacock’s tail has blue, green, orange, black and white, how many colors is that?

Little kids: If a peacock takes 7 seconds to fan out his feathers, then shows them off for 2 seconds, how long does that all take?  Bonus: If you have 10 pea-birds in total and there are 2 more peacocks than peahens, how many of each do you have?

Big kids: If a peacock has 150 feathers and 1 falls out, how many are left?  Bonus: If every 3rd feather that’s left has an eye on it, how many eyes can there be at most?

Answers:

Wee ones: 5 colors.

Little kids: 9 seconds.  Bonus: 6 peacocks and 4 peahens.

Big kids: 149 feathers.  Bonus: 50 eyes, since you can start counting on the 1st or 2nd feather instead of the 3rd. Put another way, he could have had 50 eyes at most on the 150 feathers, but could have lost one of the feathers with no eyes.

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