Couas are large, mostly
terrestrial
Terrestrial refers to things related to land or the planet Earth.
Terrestrial may also refer to:
* Terrestrial animal, an animal that lives on land opposed to living in water, or sometimes an animal that lives on or near the ground, as opposed to ...
birds
Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweig ...
of the
cuckoo
Cuckoos are birds in the Cuculidae family, the sole taxon in the order Cuculiformes . The cuckoo family includes the common or European cuckoo, roadrunners, koels, malkohas, couas, coucals and anis. The coucals and anis are sometimes separat ...
family,
endemic
Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found els ...
to the island of
Madagascar
Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...
.
Couas are reminiscent of African
turacos when walking along tree branches, and they likewise feature brightly coloured bare skin around the eyes. Some resemble
coucal
A coucal is one of about 30 species of birds in the cuckoo family. All of them belong in the subfamily Centropodinae and the genus ''Centropus''. Unlike many Old World cuckoos, coucals are not brood parasites, though they do have their own repr ...
s in their habit of clambering through jungle while foraging, while the arboreal species move between tree canopies with gliding flight. Four species have been recorded in
rainforests while the remaining six are found in the
dry forests of western and
southern Madagascar.
They have large feet, with a reversible third toe like all cuckoos. Their long
tibia suggest a relationship with the ''
Carpococcyx'' ground-cuckoos of Asia, a genus with similar nestlings. Consequently, they are sometimes united in the
subfamily ''Couinae''. Couas build their own nests and lay white eggs. Couas' calls are a short series of evenly-spaced notes, which are sometimes answered by other individuals.
Taxonomy
The genus ''Coua'' was erected by the Swiss naturalist
Heinrich Rudolf Schinz in 1821 with the ''Cuculus madagascariensis'' (a synonym of ''Cuculus gigas'') as the
type species
In zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specimen( ...
. The name is from ''koa'', the
Malagasy word for the couas.
Species
There are nine extant species placed in the genus:
Fossils and extinct species
* Ancient coua, ''Coua primaeva'' –
prehistoric
Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use o ...
* Bertha's coua, ''
Coua berthae'' – only known from
Holocene
The Holocene ( ) is the current geological epoch. It began approximately 11,650 cal years Before Present (), after the Last Glacial Period, which concluded with the Holocene glacial retreat. The Holocene and the preceding Pleistocene togeth ...
fossil remains
[Goodman & Ravoavy; Smithsonian Institution (1993). ''Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington''. 106. Smithsonian Libraries. ashington : Biological Society of Washington pp. 26–33.]
*
Delalande's coua, or the snail-eating coua ''Coua delalandei'' –
extinct (late 19th century)
References
* ''Birds of the Indian Ocean Islands'', Sinclair and Langrand, 1998.
External links
Birds of Madagascar, including Couas
{{Taxonbar, from=Q869407
Bird genera