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Cockatoo

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A cockatoo is any of the 21 bird species belonging to the family Cacatuidae. Along with the Psittacidae family (the true parrots), they make up the order Psittaciformes. The name cockatoo originated from the Malay name for the bird, kakaktua, which translates literally as older sister (from kakak, "sister," and tua, "old").

Cockatoos share many features with other parrots including the characteristic curved beak shape and a zygodactyl foot, with two forward toes and two backwards toes. They differ, however in a number of characteristics, including the often spectacular movable headcrest, and their lack of the Dyck texture feather composition, which gives feathers of many parrots their iridescence. Cockatoo species are also, on average, larger than the true parrots (however, the cockatiel is a small cockatoo and the very large parrots include the Hyacinth Macaw by length and the Kakapo by weight.)

Cockatoos have a much more restricted range than the true parrots, occurring naturally only in Australia and nearby islands. Eleven of the 21 species exist in the wild only in Australia, while seven species occur in Indonesia, New Guinea, and other south Pacific islands. Three species occur in both New Guinea and Australia.

Contents

Cockatoos as endangered or vulnerable species

All of the species of cockatoo are protected by the CITES international agreement which make the trade of wild-caught specimins of endangered or vulnerable species illegal.

The following cockatoo species are classified as endangered species (on CITES appendix 1 list).

All of the other cockatoo species are classified at vulnerable (on CITES appendex 2 list).

Classification

Phylogeny of the family Cacatuidae based on existing molecular evidence.
Phylogeny of the family Cacatuidae based on existing molecular evidence.

The list below is a traditional classification of the cockatoos. However, Brown & Toft (1999) performed molecular analysis on 15 out of the 18 recognised species in this group and found that

  1. The Cockatiel and the Gang-gang Cockatoo group together with the black cockatoos of the genus Calyptorhynchus as a clade, indicating that they should move to the subfamily Calyptorhynchinae, and the subfamily Nymphicinae should deprecated.
  2. Major Mitchell's Cockatoo is basal to all other Cacatua species, indicating that its original placement in the monotypic genus Lophocroa is valid.
  3. Splitting the current genus Cacatua in its three subgenera seems logical based on the current phylogenetic insights.

Species list

References

External links

 

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

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