Horned Screamer

About the Horned Screamer

The horned screamer (Anhima cornuta) is a species of waterfowl that belongs to a relatively small family, the Anhimidae, which occurs in wetlands of tropical South America. There are three screamer species, the other two being the southern screamer and the northern screamer in the genus Chauna. They are related to ducks, geese and swans, which are in the family Anatidae, but have bills looking more like those of Galliformes.

Already known in the 17th century, the horned screamer was described in 1766 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the twelfth edition of his Systema Naturae. He introduced the binomial name Palamedea cornuta. The horned screamer is now the only species placed in the genus Anhima that was introduced by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760. The specific epithet cornuta is the Latin word for "horned". The German naturalist Georg Marcgrave had used the Latin name Anhima in 1648 for the horned screamer in his Historia naturalis Brasiliae. The name was from the word for the bird in the Tupi language of South America.

The horned screamer is a massive 84–95 cm (33–37.5 in) long, 3–3.5 kg (6.6–7.7 lb) bird, with a... Wikipedia →