40 Fun Facts About Quetzal

Resplendent quetzals long died soon after capture because their bodies took up too much of which mineral?

Iron was the hidden killer: once keepers cut it from the diet and added tannic acid, a few zoos could finally keep the bird alive.

A resplendent quetzal's plumage looks shimmering green, but which colour is it really, thanks to melanin?

Brown is the true pigment colour; the green is iridescence, which is why the same feather can flash gold or violet as the light shifts.

Resplendent quetzals swallow the wild relatives of which supermarket fruit whole, later coughing up the large pit?

Avocado relatives in the laurel family make up over half the fruit these birds eat, and the dropped pits plant new trees across the forest.

Which country's flag shows its national bird, a resplendent quetzal, perched above crossed rifles and swords?

Guatemala has flown the quetzal on its flag since 1871, and the crossed rifles make it one of just four UN member flags to show a firearm.

The tail plumes of the quetzal were so valuable to the ancient Maya that they were used as what?

Money in feather form is the reason a modern Central American currency is still called the quetzal.

The resplendent quetzal has long been a traditional symbol of which ideal?

Liberty: the bird was long believed to die in captivity, and it sits on a national coat of arms above a scroll marking independence from Spain.

Which European capital holds a quetzal-feather headdress linked to Moctezuma II that Mexico wants returned?

Vienna's Weltmuseum displays the gold-trimmed headdress, which has been in Austria since the late 1500s, though nothing proves the emperor ever wore it.

At which Maya site does a handclap by the El Castillo pyramid return an echo likened to a quetzal's call?

Chichen Itza owes the effect to the pyramid's staircase, whose evenly spaced steps turn a clap into a brief falling chirp.

A resplendent quetzal sitting on eggs lets its long plumes spill out of the nest hole, where they resemble which plant?

A fern sprouting from the trunk is what the folded plumes look like, a handy disguise while the two parents take turns on the eggs.

Killing a quetzal was forbidden under Maya and Aztec law, so what did feather collectors do with a captured bird?

Collectors plucked and freed it, leaving the bird alive while its long plumes went into the diadems of rulers and high-ranking nobles.

The quetzal, a Central American currency named after the bird, was pegged one-to-one until 1987 to which other currency?

US dollar parity is long gone, but the banknotes keep an older tradition: each shows its value in Maya numerals in one corner.

Which kind of mountain woodland, among the most threatened ecosystems on Earth, is the resplendent quetzal's main home?

Cloud forest matters because the birds need big, dead and decaying old trees for nest holes, and those only form where such forest stands undisturbed.

Besides carving holes in rotting trunks, resplendent quetzals often nest in old cavities left by which birds?

Woodpeckers leave ready-made holes, and quetzals are loyal tenants that often come back to reuse the same nest site.

While adult resplendent quetzals live mostly on fruit, their chicks are raised mainly on which kind of food?

Insects come first on the chicks' menu, and the father tends to deliver more of them than the mother does.

Outside the breeding season, how do famously shy resplendent quetzals usually spend their time in the forest?

On their own is the rule until the mating season, when the normally quiet birds turn vocal and court each other in mid-air.

How do resplendent quetzals usually pick fruit growing near the very tips of a tree's branches?

While hovering or briefly stalling in mid-air, a quetzal can pick out single fruits, which it then swallows whole.

A quetzal's glossy green plumage is thought to work best as camouflage in which weather?

Rain leaves the canopy wet and shiny, so a glittering green bird sitting still among the leaves all but disappears.

Los Quetzales National Park, named for the resplendent quetzal, lies beside the Pan-American Highway in which country?

Costa Rica created the park in 2006 by carving it out of the larger Los Santos Forest Reserve, which still wraps around three of its sides.

Quetzals are the largest members of which tropical bird family, whose name comes from the Greek for nibbling?

Trogons earned the name by gnawing nest holes into trees, and the resplendent quetzal is the biggest of them all.

The Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, whose name means quetzal-feathered serpent, was closely linked to which planet?

Venus as the morning star was one of his forms, and he also watched over wind, learning and the Aztec priesthood.

In legend, the quetzal's breast turned red when it landed on K'iche' prince Tecún Umán, slain by which conquistador?

Pedro de Alvarado speared the prince in the story, and the bird, once a fine singer, is said to have fallen silent from that day on.

The word quetzal comes from which Mesoamerican language, in which quetzalli named the bird's long tail feather?

Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, built the word on a root meaning to stand up, and English later borrowed it through Spanish.

The eared quetzal, a bird of Mexico's western mountains, has been recorded nesting in which US state?

Arizona logged the first United States nest in 1991, in the far south of the state, where the bird still turns up only on rare occasions.

Quetzals are thought to have first emerged in which mountain range before the resplendent species spread north?

The Andes are still home to the crested quetzal, while the resplendent quetzal of Central America is the youngest species in the group.

Quetzalcoatlus, the giant pterosaur named after the quetzal-feathered Aztec god, was first unearthed in which US state?

Texas gave up the first bones in Big Bend National Park in 1971, from a flier now reckoned to have had a wingspan of ten metres or more.

Which Linux operating system gave its 12.10 release, launched in October 2012, the code name Quantal Quetzal?

Ubuntu names each release after an adjective and an animal that share a first letter, and when Q came round the quetzal got the job.

Quetzal is the elderly yellow teacher at the School in the Sky in which animated PBS children's series?

Dragon Tales made its Quetzal a bilingual teacher from Mexico, whose Spanish gives his young pupils a chance to learn a few words.

Which nocturnal tree-dwelling mammal, nicknamed the honey bear, is a known raider of resplendent quetzal nests?

Kinkajou raids target eggs and nestlings; with jays, squirrels and weasels hunting them too, at least two in three quetzal nests fail.

What colour are the eggs a female resplendent quetzal lays inside her nest hole in a decaying tree?

Pale blue shells are a quetzal trademark among their relatives, and a female lays only one to three eggs at a time.

The resplendent quetzal's thick plumage is thought to have evolved to protect which unusually fragile feature?

Thin skin that tears easily runs in the family, and it makes preparing museum specimens of these birds a delicate job.

Which quetzal species, whose males have a red bill, is the only one found in the lowland forest of the Amazon basin?

Pavonine quetzals range from Colombia to Bolivia, staying far below the mountain forests that the other species prefer.

Quetzaltenango, the highland city whose name means walled place of the quetzal, goes by which short K'iche' Maya name?

Xela is short for Xelajú, from a phrase meaning under ten mountains, a nod to the range that rises near the city.

Which novelist included a short story called The Resplendent Quetzal in her 1977 collection Dancing Girls?

Margaret Atwood's collection won the St. Lawrence Award for Fiction, and its cast of ordinary people includes a birdwatcher.

Quetzals belong to the bird family with the lowest known share of body weight devoted to what?

Leg muscle is just 3% of their weight, so these birds can barely shuffle along a branch and need their wings even to turn around on it.

Rather than flying long distances north or south, how do resplendent quetzals migrate with the seasons?

Up and down slopes is the pattern: after breeding, the birds drop to lower forest for a few months, probably following the ripest fruit.

Which sacred K'iche' Maya book opens with the god Q'uq'umatz, or quetzal serpent, afloat on a primordial sea?

Popol Vuh begins with the god wrapped in quetzal feathers on the still water, before he and Tepeu decide to raise the earth.

A lowland holding Central America's two largest lakes splits the resplendent quetzal's two subspecies in which country?

Nicaragua's lake-filled depression, about 50 km wide, offers too little breeding forest, so the northern and southern birds stay apart.

When the quetzal currency was introduced in 1925, it replaced which older unit at a rate of sixty to one?

Peso notes gave way under President José María Orellana, whose portrait still appears on the one-quetzal bill.

In several Mesoamerican languages, the word quetzal carried which second meaning beyond the name of the bird?

Precious, or sometimes sacred, is how the word was used, which is why Quetzalcoatl can also be read as the precious serpent.

Which short-lived state, with its capital at Quetzaltenango, flew Central America's first flag to show a quetzal?

Los Altos set a quetzal in front of a volcano on its seal in the late 1830s, decades before the bird reached a national flag.