The pygmy geese are a group of very small "

perching duck The term perching ducks is used colloquially to mean any species of ducks distinguished by their readiness to perch high in trees Until the late 20th century, perching ducks meant ''Cairinini'', a tribe of ducks in the duck, goose and swan family ...

s" in the

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...

''Nettapus'' which breed in the Old World tropics. They are the smallest of all

wildfowl The Anatidae are the biological family of water birds that includes ducks, geese, and swans. The family has a cosmopolitan distribution, occurring on all the world's continents except Antarctica. These birds are adapted for swimming, floating on ...

. As the "perching ducks" are a

paraphyletic In taxonomy (general), taxonomy, a group is paraphyletic if it consists of the group's most recent common ancestor, last common ancestor and most of its descendants, excluding a few Monophyly, monophyletic subgroups. The group is said to be pa ...

group, they need to be placed elsewhere. The initially assumed relationship with the

dabbling duck The Anatinae are a subfamily of the family Anatidae ( swans, geese and ducks). Its surviving members are the dabbling ducks, which feed mainly at the surface rather than by diving. The other members of the Anatinae are the extinct moa-nalo, a yo ...

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 ...

Anatinae has been questioned, and it appears they form a lineage in an ancient

Gondwana Gondwana () was a large landmass, often referred to as a supercontinent, that formed during the late Neoproterozoic (about 550 million years ago) and began to break up during the Jurassic period (about 180 million years ago). The final stages ...

n radiation of waterfowl, within which they are of unclear affinities. An undescribed fossil species from the late Hemphillian (5.0–4.1 mya) of

Jalisco Jalisco (, , ; Nahuatl: Xalixco), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Jalisco ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Jalisco ; Nahuatl: Tlahtohcayotl Xalixco), is one of the 31 states which, along with Mexico City, comprise the 32 Federal En ...

, central

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

, has also been identified from the distal end of a tarsometatarsus. It is only record of the genus in the New World. The genus ''Nettapus'' was erected by the German naturalist

Johann Friedrich von Brandt Johann Friedrich von Brandt (25 May 1802 – 15 July 1879) was a German-Russian natural history, naturalist, who worked mostly in Russia. Brandt was born in Jüterbog and educated at a Gymnasium (school), gymnasium in Wittenberg and the Humboldt ...

in 1836. The name is from

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...

''nētta'' meaning "duck" and ''pous'' meaning "foot". It was thought that 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

African pygmy goose The African pygmy goose (''Nettapus auritus'') is a perching duck from sub-Saharan Africa. It is the smallest of Africa's waterfowl, and one of the smallest in the world. Though pygmy geese have beaks like those of geese, they are more related ...

(''Nettapus auritus''), possessed the feet and body of a duck and the neck of a goose. There are three

extant Extant is the opposite of the word extinct. It may refer to: * Extant hereditary titles * Extant literature, surviving literature, such as ''Beowulf'', the oldest extant manuscript written in English * Extant taxon, a taxon which is not extinct, ...

species in the genus: Pygmy geese have short bills, rounded heads and short legs. They nest in tree holes.

References

External links

Species text in The Atlas of Southern African Birds
{{Taxonbar, from=Q244107 Geese *

References

Further reading

External links