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 lightweigh ...

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 separ ...

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 elsew ...

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

turaco The turacos make up the bird family Musophagidae ( "banana-eaters"), which includes plantain-eaters and go-away-birds. In southern Africa both turacos and go-away-birds are commonly known as loeries. They are semi-zygodactylous: the fourth ( ...

s when walking along tree branches, and they likewise feature brightly coloured bare skin around the eyes. Some resemble coucals 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 Rainforests are characterized by a closed and continuous tree canopy, moisture-dependent vegetation, the presence of epiphytes and lianas and the absence of wildfire. Rainforest can be classified as tropical rainforest or temperate rainforest ...

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 The tibia (; ), also known as the shinbone or shankbone, is the larger, stronger, and anterior (frontal) of the two bones in the leg below the knee in vertebrates (the other being the fibula, behind and to the outside of the tibia); it connects ...

suggest a relationship with the ''

Carpococcyx ''Carpococcyx'' is a genus of large terrestrial cuckoos in the family Cuculidae. They are restricted to humid forested regions in Southeast Asia. Despite their similarities, they are not closely related to the South American ground cuckoos of t ...

'' ground-cuckoos of Asia, a genus with similar nestlings. Consequently, they are sometimes united in the

subfamily In biological classification, a subfamily (Latin: ', plural ') is an auxiliary (intermediate) taxonomic rank, next below family but more inclusive than genus. Standard nomenclature rules end subfamily botanical names with "-oideae", and zoologi ...

''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 Heinrich Rudolf Schinz (30 March 1777 – 8 March 1861) was a Swiss physician and naturalist. Biography Schinz was born in Zürich and studied medicine at the universities of Würzburg and Jena. In 1798 he received his doctorate and subseque ...

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 of ...

* Bertha's coua, ''

Coua berthae ''Coua berthae'' is an extinct species of coua, a large, mostly terrestrial bird in the cuckoo family, from Madagascar. It was the largest member of its genus, living or extinct. It was named in honour of the Malagasy zoologist Berthe Rakotosami ...

'' – 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 togethe ...

fossil remainsGoodman & 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 Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

(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