The seriemas are the sole living members of the small
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 ...
family Cariamidae, which is also the only surviving lineage of the order
Cariamiformes
Cariamiformes (or Cariamae) is an order of primarily flightless birds that has existed for over 60 million years. The group includes the family Cariamidae (seriemas) and the extinct families Phorusrhacidae, Bathornithidae, Idiornithidae and Ame ...
. Once believed to be related to
cranes, they have been placed near the
falcon
Falcons () are birds of prey in the genus ''Falco'', which includes about 40 species. Falcons are widely distributed on all continents of the world except Antarctica, though closely related raptors did occur there in the Eocene.
Adult falcons ...
s,
parrot
Parrots, also known as psittacines (), are birds of the roughly 398 species in 92 genera comprising the order Psittaciformes (), found mostly in tropical and subtropical regions. The order is subdivided into three superfamilies: the Psittacoid ...
s and
passerine
A passerine () is any bird of the order Passeriformes (; from Latin 'sparrow' and '-shaped'), which includes more than half of all bird species. Sometimes known as perching birds, passerines are distinguished from other orders of birds by t ...
s, as well as the extinct
Phorusrhacidae
Phorusrhacids, colloquially known as terror birds, are an extinct clade of large carnivorous flightless birds that were one of the largest species of apex predators in South America during the Cenozoic era; their conventionally accepted temporal ...
(terror birds).
[Hackett, S. J. ''et al''. (2008) A Phylogenomic Study of Birds Reveals Their Evolutionary History. ''Science'' 320(5884):1763–1768 10.1126/science.1157704] The seriemas are large, long-legged territorial birds that range from in length. They live in grasslands, savanna, dry woodland and open forests of
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
,
Bolivia
, image_flag = Bandera de Bolivia (Estado).svg
, flag_alt = Horizontal tricolor (red, yellow, and green from top to bottom) with the coat of arms of Bolivia in the center
, flag_alt2 = 7 × 7 square p ...
,
Argentina
Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...
,
Paraguay
Paraguay (; ), officially the Republic of Paraguay ( es, República del Paraguay, links=no; gn, Tavakuairetã Paraguái, links=si), is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to th ...
and
Uruguay
Uruguay (; ), officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay ( es, República Oriental del Uruguay), is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast; while bordering ...
. There are two species of seriemas, the
red-legged seriema
The red-legged seriema (''Cariama cristata''), also known as the crested cariama and crested seriema, is a mostly predatory terrestrial bird in the seriema family ( Cariamidae), included in the Gruiformes in the old paraphyletic circumscription ...
(''Cariama cristata'') and the
black-legged seriema
The black-legged seriema (''Chunga burmeisteri'') is one of two living species of seriemas in the family Cariamidae. It is found from southeastern Bolivia and northern Paraguay south into north-central Argentina. It is a large, mostly grey ...
(''Chunga burmeisteri'').
[del Hoyo, J. Elliott, A. & Sargatal, J. (editors). (1996) ''Handbook of the Birds of the World. Volume 3: Hoatzin to Auks''. Lynx Edicions. ] Names for these birds in the
Tupian languages
The Tupi or Tupian language family comprises some 70 languages spoken in South America, of which the best known are Tupi language, Tupi proper and Guarani language, Guarani.
Homeland and ''urheimat''
Rodrigues (2007) considers the Proto-Tupian u ...
are variously spelled as ''siriema'', ''sariama'', and ''çariama'', and mean "crested".
Description
Both species are around long (the red-legged seriema is slightly bigger than the black-legged, with 90 and 70–85 cm respectively). They forage on foot and run from danger rather than fly (though they can fly for short distances, and they roost in trees). They have long legs, necks, and tails, but only short wings, reflecting their way of life. They are among the largest ground-dwelling birds
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 ...
of the
Neotropic
The Neotropical realm is one of the eight biogeographic realms constituting Earth's land surface. Physically, it includes the tropical terrestrial ecoregions of the Americas and the entire South American temperate zone.
Definition
In bioge ...
s (only behind
rheas).
They are brownish birds with short bills and erectile crests, found on fairly dry open country, the red-legged seriema preferring grasslands and the black-legged seriema preferring scrub and open woodland. They give loud, yelping calls and are often heard before they are seen. They have sharp claws, with an extensible and very curved second toe claw.
Image:Blacklegged.jpg, The black-legged seriema
The black-legged seriema (''Chunga burmeisteri'') is one of two living species of seriemas in the family Cariamidae. It is found from southeastern Bolivia and northern Paraguay south into north-central Argentina. It is a large, mostly grey ...
(''Chunga burmeisteri'') is smaller and has a more restricted distribution.
Image:Cariama_cristata_(Rotfußseriema_-_Red-legged_Seriema)_-_Weltvogelpark_Walsrode_2013-01.jpg, The frontal crest of the red-legged seriema
The red-legged seriema (''Cariama cristata''), also known as the crested cariama and crested seriema, is a mostly predatory terrestrial bird in the seriema family ( Cariamidae), included in the Gruiformes in the old paraphyletic circumscription ...
(''Cariama cristata'') is unique among Neotropic
The Neotropical realm is one of the eight biogeographic realms constituting Earth's land surface. Physically, it includes the tropical terrestrial ecoregions of the Americas and the entire South American temperate zone.
Definition
In bioge ...
al birds.
Image:Cariama-cristata-DC.jpg, The seriemas have short wings and rarely take flight.
File:Red-legged seriema (Cariama cristata) head.JPG, ''Cariama cristata''
the Pantanal
The Pantanal () is a natural region encompassing the world's largest tropical wetland area, and the world's largest flooded grasslands. It is located mostly within the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul, but it extends into Mato Grosso and p ...
, Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
Behaviour and ecology
Ecologically
Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their biophysical environment, physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community (ecology), community, ecosy ...
, the seriema is the South American counterpart of the African
secretary bird
The secretarybird or secretary bird (''Sagittarius serpentarius'') is a large, mostly terrestrial bird of prey. Endemic to Africa, it is usually found in the open grasslands and savanna of the sub-Saharan region. John Frederick Miller describe ...
. They feed on
insect
Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body ( head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs ...
s,
snake
Snakes are elongated, Limbless vertebrate, limbless, carnivore, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes . Like all other Squamata, squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping Scale (zoology), scales. Ma ...
s,
lizard
Lizards are a widespread group of squamate reptiles, with over 7,000 species, ranging across all continents except Antarctica, as well as most oceanic island chains. The group is paraphyletic since it excludes the snakes and Amphisbaenia alt ...
s,
frog
A frog is any member of a diverse and largely Carnivore, carnivorous group of short-bodied, tailless amphibians composing the order (biology), order Anura (ανοὐρά, literally ''without tail'' in Ancient Greek). The oldest fossil "proto-f ...
s, young
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, and
rodent
Rodents (from Latin , 'to gnaw') are mammals of the order Rodentia (), which are characterized by a single pair of continuously growing incisors in each of the upper and lower jaws. About 40% of all mammal species are rodents. They are na ...
s, with small amounts of plant food (including
maize
Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn (North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. Th ...
and
bean
A bean is the seed of several plants in the family Fabaceae, which are used as vegetables for human or animal food. They can be cooked in many different ways, including boiling, frying, and baking, and are used in many traditional dishes th ...
s). They often associate with grazing
livestock
Livestock are the domesticated animals raised in an agricultural setting to provide labor and produce diversified products for consumption such as meat, eggs, milk, fur, leather, and wool. The term is sometimes used to refer solely to animals ...
, probably to take insects the animals disturb. When seriemas catch small
reptile
Reptiles, as most commonly defined are the animals in the class Reptilia ( ), a paraphyletic grouping comprising all sauropsids except birds. Living reptiles comprise turtles, crocodilians, squamates (lizards and snakes) and rhynchocephalians ( ...
s, they beat the prey on the ground (Redford and Peters 1986) or throw it at a hard surface to break resistance and also the bones. If the prey is too large to swallow whole, it will be ripped into smaller pieces with a
sickle claw by holding the prey in the beak and tearing it apart with the claw.
Because of these feeding behaviors, seriemas are important by eating
detritivore
Detritivores (also known as detrivores, detritophages, detritus feeders, or detritus eaters) are heterotrophs that obtain nutrients by consuming detritus (decomposing plant and animal parts as well as feces). There are many kinds of invertebrates, ...
s and helping the soil get more nutrients from dead plant matter.
In contact with humans, seriemas are suspicious and if they feel threatened, usually spread their wings and face them. They walk in pairs or small groups. Although perfectly capable of flying, they prefer to spend most of their time on land. They only take flight when necessary, for example to escape a predator. Overnight they take shelter in the treetops, where they also build their nests.
Breeding
The breeding biology of the seriemas is poorly known, and much of what is known comes only from red-legged seriemas. Pairs appear to be territorial and avoid others of their species while breeding, and fights between rivals have been observed. These fights involving kicking rivals, can go on for long periods of time, and involve much calling by the involved birds.
[Gonzaga, Luiz P. & Bonan, A. (2017). Seriemas (Cariamidae). In: del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A., Sargatal, J., Christie, D.A. & de Juana, E. (eds.). Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona. (retrieved from http://www.hbw.com/node/52233 on 4 April 2017).]
Seriemas build a large bulky stick
nest
A nest is a structure built for certain animals to hold eggs or young. Although nests are most closely associated with birds, members of all classes of vertebrates and some invertebrates construct nests. They may be composed of organic materia ...
, lined with leaves and dung, which is placed in a tree off the ground. The placement of the nest is so that the adults can reach the nest by foot rather than flying, through hops and the occasional flutter. Both sexes are involved in building the nest. They lay two or three white or buff
eggs
Humans and human ancestors have scavenged and eaten animal eggs for millions of years. Humans in Southeast Asia had domesticated chickens and harvested their eggs for food by 1,500 BCE. The most widely consumed eggs are those of fowl, especial ...
sparsely spotted with brown and purple. The female does most of the incubation, which lasts from 24 to 30 days. Hatchlings are downy but stay in the nest for about two weeks; after which they leave the nest and follow both parents. They reach full maturity at the age of four to five months. It is unknown when fledgling chicks reach sexual maturity.
Classification
There are two living species of seriemas. The
red-legged seriema
The red-legged seriema (''Cariama cristata''), also known as the crested cariama and crested seriema, is a mostly predatory terrestrial bird in the seriema family ( Cariamidae), included in the Gruiformes in the old paraphyletic circumscription ...
, or crested cariama (''Cariama cristata'') is found from eastern
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
, to central
Argentina
Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...
. It is bigger and nests on the ground or in bushes or trees up to above the ground. The
black-legged seriema
The black-legged seriema (''Chunga burmeisteri'') is one of two living species of seriemas in the family Cariamidae. It is found from southeastern Bolivia and northern Paraguay south into north-central Argentina. It is a large, mostly grey ...
(''Chunga burmeisteri'') is found in northwest Argentina and
Paraguay
Paraguay (; ), officially the Republic of Paraguay ( es, República del Paraguay, links=no; gn, Tavakuairetã Paraguái, links=si), is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to th ...
. It nests in trees.
These birds are thought to be the closest living relatives of a group of gigantic (up to tall) carnivorous "terror birds", the
phorusrhacid
Phorusrhacids, colloquially known as terror birds, are an extinct clade of large carnivorous flightless birds that were one of the largest species of apex predators in South America during the Cenozoic era; their conventionally accepted temporal ...
s, which are known from
fossil
A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...
s from South and North America.
Several other related groups, such as the
idiornithids and
bathornithids
Bathornithidae is an extinct family of birds from the Eocene to Miocene of North America. Part of Cariamiformes, they are related to the still extant seriemas and the also extinct Phorusrhacidae. They were likely similar in habits, being terrestr ...
were part of
Palaeogene
The Paleogene ( ; also spelled Palaeogene or Palæogene; informally Lower Tertiary or Early Tertiary) is a geologic period and system that spans 43 million years from the end of the Cretaceous Period million years ago ( Mya) to the beginning o ...
faunas in
North America
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...
and
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
and possibly elsewhere too.
However, the fossil record of the seriemas themselves is poor, with two prehistoric species, ''
Chunga incerta''
[Noriega, J.I., Vizcaíno, S.F., & Bargo, M.S. (2009). "First record and a new species of seriema (Aves: Ralliformes: Cariamidae) from Santacrucian (early–middle miocene) Beds of Patagonia." ''Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology'', 29(2), 620-626.] and ''
Miocariama patagonica'' (formerly ''
Noriegavis santacrucensis''),
[Mayr, G., & Noriega, J. I. A well-preserved partial skeleton of the poorly known early Miocene seriema Noriegavis santacrucensis (Aves, Cariamidae).] both from the
Miocene
The Miocene ( ) is the first geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and means "less recen ...
of Argentina, having been described to date. Some of the fossils from the
Eocene
The Eocene ( ) Epoch is a geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 56 to 33.9 million years ago (mya). It is the second epoch of the Paleogene Period (geology), Period in the modern Cenozoic Era (geology), Era. The name ''Eocene' ...
fauna of the
Messel Pit
The Messel pit (german: Grube Messel) is a disused quarry near the village of Messel ( Landkreis Darmstadt-Dieburg, Hesse) about southeast of Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Bituminous shale was mined there. Because of its abundance of well-preserv ...
(i.e. ''
Salimia'' and ''
Idiornis'') have also been suggested to be seriemas,
[Morlo, M & al. (2004): An annotated taxonomic list of the Middle Eocene (MP 11) Vertebrata of Messel. ''Courier Forschingsinstitut Senckenberg'' 252, pp 95-108]
/ref> as has the massive predatory ''Paracrax
''Paracrax'' ("near curassow") is a genus of extinct North American flightless birds, possibly related to modern seriemas and the extinct terror birds. Part of Bathornithidae (though some analysis recover it as closer to the living seriemas inst ...
'' from the Oligocene
The Oligocene ( ) is a geologic epoch of the Paleogene Period and extends from about 33.9 million to 23 million years before the present ( to ). As with other older geologic periods, the rock beds that define the epoch are well identified but the ...
of North America, though their status remains uncertain.
References
External links
Seriema videos
on the Internet Bird Collection
{{Taxonbar, from=Q754030
Birds of Argentina
*
Extant Miocene first appearances
Higher-level bird taxa restricted to the Neotropics
Langhian first appearances
Taxa named by Charles Lucien Bonaparte