Peacock

A dazzling shapeshifter who made reinvention an art form.

Stepping onstage at the 1972 Top of the Pops performance as Ziggy Stardust — draped in an alien jumpsuit, arm slung around Mick Ronson — he announced to the world that identity itself was a costume to be worn and discarded at will. The peacock's defining trait is its compulsive need to display, to transform the act of being seen into high art, and David Bowie embodied this completely: from the glacial aristocrat of the Thin White Duke era to the soulful Berlin experimentalist, each reinvention was less a career move than a plumage change. His declaration that "I reinvent myself" wasn't mere provocation — it was biological imperative. Like the peacock, whose extravagant tail serves no practical purpose beyond pure, magnificent spectacle, Bowie's genius lay in elevating self-presentation into something that felt genuinely transcendent.