The frogmouths are a group of

nocturnal Nocturnality is an animal behavior characterized by being active during the night and sleeping during the day. The common adjective is "nocturnal", versus diurnal meaning the opposite. Nocturnal creatures generally have highly developed sens ...

bird 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 ...

s related to

owlet-nightjar Owlet-nightjars are small crepuscular birds related to the nightjars and frogmouths. Most are native to New Guinea, but some species extend to Australia, the Moluccas, and New Caledonia. A flightless species from New Zealand is extinct. There is ...

swift Swift or SWIFT most commonly refers to: * SWIFT, an international organization facilitating transactions between banks ** SWIFT code * Swift (programming language) * Swift (bird), a family of birds It may also refer to: Organizations * SWIFT, ...

s, and

hummingbird Hummingbirds are birds native to the Americas and comprise the biological family Trochilidae. With about 361 species and 113 genera, they occur from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, but the vast majority of the species are found in the tropics aro ...

s. Species in the group are distributed in the

Indomalayan The Indomalayan realm is one of the eight biogeographic realms. It extends across most of South and Southeast Asia and into the southern parts of East Asia. Also called the Oriental realm by biogeographers, Indomalaya spreads all over the Indi ...

and

Australasian realm The Australasian realm is a biogeographic realm that is coincident with, but not (by some definitions) the same as, the geographical region of Australasia. The realm includes Australia, the island of New Guinea (comprising Papua New Guinea and ...

Biology

They are named for their large flattened hooked bill and huge frog-like

gape The beak, bill, or rostrum is an external anatomical structure found mostly in birds, but also in turtles, non-avian dinosaurs and a few mammals. A beak is used for eating, preening, manipulating objects, killing prey, fighting, probing for food ...

, which they use to capture insects. The three ''Podargus'' species are large frogmouths restricted to Australia and

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu Hiri Motu, also known as Police Motu, Pidgin Motu, or just Hiri, is a language of Papua New Guinea, which is spoken in surrounding areas of Port Moresby (Capital of Papua New Guinea). It is a simplified version of ...

, that have massive flat broad bills. They are known to take larger prey such as small vertebrates (frogs, mice, etc.), which are sometimes beaten against a stone before swallowing. The ten ''Batrachostomus'' frogmouths are found in tropical Asia. They have smaller, more rounded bills and are predominantly insectivorous. Both ''Podargus'' and ''Batrachostomus'' have bristles around the base of the bill, and ''Batrachostomus'' has other, longer bristles which may exist to protect the eyes from insect prey. In April 2007, a new species of frogmouth was described from the

Solomon Islands Solomon Islands is an island country consisting of six major islands and over 900 smaller islands in Oceania, to the east of Papua New Guinea and north-west of Vanuatu. It has a land area of , and a population of approx. 700,000. Its capita ...

and placed in a newly established genus, ''Rigidipenna''. Their flight is weak. They rest horizontally on branches during the day, camouflaged by their cryptic plumage. Through convergent evolution as night hunters, they resemble owls, with large front-facing eyes. Up to three white eggs are laid in the fork of a branch, and are incubated by the female at night and the male in the day.

Taxonomy

DNA-DNA hybridisation studies had suggested that the two frogmouth groups may not be as closely related as previously thought, and that the Asian species may be separable as a new family, the Batrachostomidae. Although frogmouths were formerly included in the order

Caprimulgiformes Nightjars are medium-sized nocturnal or crepuscular birds in the family Caprimulgidae and order Caprimulgiformes, characterised by long wings, short legs, and very short bills. They are sometimes called goatsuckers, due to the ancient folk tal ...

, a 2019 study estimated the divergence between ''Podargus'' and ''Batrachostomus'' to between 30 and 50 mya and forming a clade well separated from the nightjars and being a sister group of the swifts, hummingbirds, and owlet-nightjars. The name Podargiformes proposed in 1918 by

Gregory Mathews Gregory Macalister Mathews Order of the British Empire, CBE FRSE FZS FLS (10 September 1876 – 27 March 1949) was an Australian-born amateur ornithologist who spent most of his later life in England. Life He was born in Biamble, New South Wal ...

was reinstated for the clade.

Species

* Genus ''Podargus'' :*

Tawny frogmouth The tawny frogmouth (''Podargus strigoides'') is a species of frogmouth native to the Australian mainland and Tasmania and found throughout. It is a big-headed, stocky bird, often mistaken for an owl, due to its nocturnal habits and similar colour ...

, ''Podargus strigoides'' :*

Marbled frogmouth The marbled frogmouth (''Podargus ocellatus'') is a bird in the family Podargidae. The species was first described by Jean René Constant Quoy and Joseph Paul Gaimard in 1830. It is found in the Aru Islands, New Guinea and Queensland. Its nat ...

, ''Podargus ocellatus'' :*

Papuan frogmouth The Papuan frogmouth (''Podargus papuensis'') is a species of bird in the family Podargidae. Taxonomy The species was originally described by zoologist Jean René Constant Quoy and naturalist Joseph Paul Gaimard in 1830. The three subspeci ...

, ''Podargus papuensis'' * Genus ''Batrachostomus'' :*

Large frogmouth The large frogmouth (''Batrachostomus auritus'') is a species of bird in the family Podargidae. It is found in Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, in subtropical or tropical moist lowland forest. Logging of its habitat poses a risk to i ...

, ''Batrachostomus auritus'' :*

Dulit frogmouth The Dulit frogmouth (''Batrachostomus harterti'') is a little-known species of bird in the frogmouth family, Podargidae, with a patchily recorded distribution in the mountain forests of northern and central Borneo to which it is endemic. The spe ...

, ''Batrachostomus harterti'' :*

Philippine frogmouth The Philippine frogmouth (''Batrachostomus septimus'') is a nocturnal bird that can be found throughout the Philippine archipelago. It is common in lowland forests and maturing second growth. There is little information about the bird. It feeds o ...

, ''Batrachostomus septimus'' :*

Gould's frogmouth Gould's frogmouth (''Batrachostomus stellatus'') is a nocturnal species of bird in the order Caprimulgiformes and the family Podargidae. It is one of the 12 species in the Batrachostomus genus. Its common name commemorates the English ornitholog ...

, ''Batrachostomus stellatus'' :*

Sri Lanka frogmouth The Sri Lanka frogmouth, Sri Lankan frogmouth or Ceylon frogmouth (''Batrachostomus moniliger'') is a small frogmouth found in the Western Ghats of south India and Sri Lanka. Related to the nightjars, it is nocturnal and is found in forest habi ...

, ''Batrachostomus moniliger'' :*

Hodgson's frogmouth Hodgson's frogmouth (''Batrachostomus hodgsoni'') is a species of bird in the family Podargidae. It is found in Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam. Its natural habitat is temperate forests. The common name ...

, ''Batrachostomus hodgsoni'' :*

Short-tailed frogmouth The Sumatran frogmouth (''Batrachostomus poliolophus''), also known as the short-tailed frogmouth and the pale-faced frogmouth, is a nocturnal bird belonging to the family Podargidae. It is endemic to the island of Sumatra in Indonesia I ...

, ''Batrachostomus poliolophus'' :*

Javan frogmouth The Javan frogmouth (''Batrachostomus javensis''), sometimes known as Horsfield's frogmouth, is a species of bird in the family Podargidae. It is sometimes considered conspecific with the Blyth's and Palawan frogmouths. Found in Southeast Asia, ...

, ''Batrachostomus javensis'' :*

Blyth's frogmouth Blyth's frogmouth (''Batrachostomus affinis'') is a species of bird in the family Podargidae. It lives in the tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam. It is ...

, ''Batrachostomus affinis'' :*

Sunda frogmouth The Sunda frogmouth (''Batrachostomus cornutus'') is a species of bird, typically placed in the family Podargidae of the order Caprimulgiformes. Recent research suggests, however, that the old order Podargiformes should be re-established, where ...

, ''Batrachostomus cornutus'' * Genus ''Rigidipenna'' :*

Solomons frogmouth The Solomons frogmouth (''Rigidipenna inexpectata''), also known as the Cinnamon frogmouth or Solomon Islands frogmouth, is a bird in the frogmouth family. It was first described in 1901, but not recognized as a distinct species until 2007.Cleere ...

, ''Rigidipenna inexpectata''

In culture

In a journal article published in April 2021, researchers Katja Thömmes and Gregor Hayn-Leichsenring from the Experimental Aesthetics group at the University Hospital

Jena Jena () is a German city and the second largest city in Thuringia. Together with the nearby cities of Erfurt and Weimar, it forms the central metropolitan area of Thuringia with approximately 500,000 inhabitants, while the city itself has a popu ...

, Germany, found the frogmouth to be the most "instagrammable" bird species. Using an algorithm to analyze the aesthetic appeal of more than 27,000 bird photographs on

Instagram Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. The app allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters and organized by hashtags and geographical tagging. Posts can ...

, they found that photos depicting frogmouths received the highest number of likes relative to the posts' exposure to users. The journal article was picked up by several news outlets, including ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' and ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

''.

References

External links

Frogmouth videos
on the Internet Bird Collection

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