The hooded pitohui is a species of bird in the genus Pitohui found in New Guinea. It is one of the few known poisonous birds, containing a range of batrachotoxin compounds in its skin, feathers and other tissues. These toxins are thought to be derived from their diet, and may function both to deter predators and to protect the bird from parasites. The species is found in forests from sea level up to 2,000 m, but is most common in hills and low mountains.
About Hooded pitohui in brief
The hooded pitohui is a species of bird in the genus Pitohui found in New Guinea. It is one of the few known poisonous birds, containing a range of batrachotoxin compounds in its skin, feathers and other tissues. These toxins are thought to be derived from their diet, and may function both to deter predators and to protect the bird from parasites. The species is found in forests from sea level up to 2,000 m, but is most common in hills and low mountains. It was once thought to reside within the Australasian whistler family, but is now known to be in the Old World oriole family. The close resemblance of this species to other unrelated birds also known as pitohuis which are also poisonous is an example of convergent evolution and Müllerian mimicry. Juvenile birds look like adults, except that the rectrices of the wing and remiges of the tail are tinged brown with numbness. In 1990 scientists preparing the skins of the hoodedpitohui for the museum collections of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, London, found that the birds look alike, except for the tinged tinged wings and the numbness of the tinge of the wings. The hooded pitsohui was described by the French ornithologist Charles Lucien Bonaparte in 1850. The specific name dichrous is from the Ancient Greek word for two coloured. It has a black upperwing, head, chin, throat and a black tail, and weighs 65–76 g.
The adult has a rufous chestnut and black plumage, and the bill and legs are black and the irish brown, dark brown or blackises are either reddish brown or the black and irises are reddish dark brown. This species is apparently a cooperative breeder, with family groups helping to protection the nest and feed the young. It lives in family groups and frequently joins and even leads mixed-species foraging flocks. The diet is made up of fruits, seeds and invertebrates. The bird is common and is not at risk of extinction, and it is monotypic, lacking any subspecies, but the differences are very slight and the supposed subspecies are generally regarded as inseparable. The genus name PitohUI is a Papuan term for rubbish bird, a reference to its inedibility. The birds are often mistaken for whistlers, with some purported members of the genus not actually falling within the whistlers. A 2010 study by the same team confirmed the birds were orioles and indeed were sister species, and that together with the figbirds they formed a well defined basal clade within the family. As the variable pitohuais was the type species for the genuspitohUI, the hooding pitohUI was retained in that genus and the four remaining species were moved to other genera. The black-headed pitohuei is 22 to 76 cm long and weighs 23 to 76–g.
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This page is based on the article Hooded pitohui published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 06, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
