50 Fun Facts About Toucan

Toucans are native to which region?

They never made it to the West Indies: toucans are poor dispersers, especially over water.

Toucans belong to which bird family?

The family holds five genera and over 40 species; their nearest relatives are the toucan-barbets.

Which Old World birds fill the same ecological niche as toucans, an example of convergent evolution?

Big bill, fruit diet, tree-hole nests: the two families arrived at the same design independently.

How many eggs do toucans typically lay?

The white eggs go in a tree hollow, and the chicks hatch completely naked, without any down.

Where do toucans usually nest?

Their bill is almost useless for excavation, so they borrow woodpecker holes and natural cavities.

The word 'toucan' comes from which language family, via Portuguese?

Tukana or tukã imitates the bird's call.

What is the smallest toucan?

At 130 g and 29 cm it is less than half the length of a toco toucan.

The largest toucan, the toco, weighs about how much?

It measures about 63 cm; the body is roughly crow-sized and the wings are short because it never flies far.

How are a toucan's toes arranged?

The zygodactyl foot, shared with woodpeckers and parrots, is a good grip for a life spent hopping among branches.

How can you usually tell a female toucan's bill from a male's?

Most toucans show no colour difference between the sexes; the dichromatic toucanets of the genus Selenidera are the exception.

Why is a toucan's huge bill so light?

The structure is a biofoam; in the big species the bill runs more than half the body length.

The tooth-like serrations on a toucan's bill once led naturalists to think it ate what?

A 16th-century French naturalist, working from a lone bill, even imagined the bird had webbed feet; in fact it eats mostly fruit.

Researchers have found the toucan's bill is a highly efficient system for what?

By adjusting blood flow it works as a radiator, and it also lets a perched bird reach fruit without moving.

How long is a toucan's tongue?

It is narrow, grey and frayed along both edges, which makes it a better tasting organ.

Thanks to a ball-and-socket joint in its rear vertebrae, a toucan sleeps how?

The rear three tail vertebrae are fused, so the sleeping bird looks like a ball of feathers with a tail tip poking out.

Which is the only member of the family that lives outside forest, in savannah and open woodland?

It is common in the Brazilian cerrado and the Pantanal wetlands, and its range is spreading south.

Mountain toucans of the genus Andigena live in which range, up to the tree line?

They are known for donkey-like braying rather than the usual croak.

Toucans mostly live in groups of up to how many birds?

Pairs peel off to breed and rejoin the flock with their young afterwards.

How long can it take a toucan to digest a meal of fruit?

It cannot feed while digesting, which is when the bill-fencing, tag-chasing and calling happen.

Besides fruit, what do toucans take from the nests of smaller birds?

That protein is especially useful for feeding chicks; captive toucans can even live on insects alone.

What crucial ecological role do toucans play in their forests?

They are the dominant fruit-eaters of their range, carrying seeds far from the parent tree.

What is the toucan's predominant call?

They also bark, growl and clatter their bills; the very word toucan is Tupi for the croak.

Which 19th-century naturalist first popularised toucans in the West with a two-edition monograph?

Across their native range they had long been hunted, kept as pets and used for feather and bill decoration.

The constellation Tucana, named after the toucan, contains most of what?

It also holds 47 Tucanae, one of the brightest globular clusters, and was mapped by Plancius from Dutch navigators' observations in 1598.

A toucan featured in the 1930s and 1940s advertising of which drink?

The bird's black-and-white look mirrored the stout; artist John Gilroy also drew a kangaroo, an ostrich, a seal and a lion.

Which detective novelist, then a copywriter, sketched the Guinness toucan and wrote some of its adverts?

She also coined 'Guinness is Good for You'; a 1940s jingle asked what one or toucan do.

Toucan Sam has been the mascot of which cereal since 1963?

His catchphrase is 'Follow your nose! It always knows!'

Who originally voiced Toucan Sam, using an ordinary American accent and Pig Latin?

The agency later switched to a British accent, with Paul Frees doing an impression of Ronald Colman.

From the 1970s, what did each stripe on Toucan Sam's bill represent?

He started with two pink stripes; green arrived in 1991, purple in 1994 and blue in 1996, and the scheme no longer keeps up.

Members of which Brazilian political grouping are nicknamed 'tucanos' after their toucan mascot?

Mexico's Ecologist Green Party also puts a toucan on its logo.

In Dora the Explorer, what is the name of the Spanish-speaking toucan who gives advice?

Two other cartoon toucans, Zippi and Zac, were the detectives of the 1992 UK series Toucan Tecs.

The Pokémon Toucannon was modelled on which species?

Its pre-evolutions were inspired by a different Piciformes bird, the pileated woodpecker.

Tuca, title character of the 2019 animated series Tuca & Bertie, is a toucan whose companion Bertie is what bird?

The show pairs the loud toucan with an anxious songbird in the fictional Bird Town.

The toco toucan lives in semi-open habitats up to what altitude?

It ranges from the Guianas to northern Argentina and Uruguay and is especially common in the Pantanal.

What colour is the toco toucan's bill?

The body is black with a white throat and chest and red under the tail.

The toco toucan's bill sheds body heat comparably to what other animal structure?

At high air speed it can radiate four times the bird's resting heat output; a duck's bill or an elephant's ears shed only about 9%.

How long do toco toucan parents incubate their eggs?

Both parents share the sitting; the nest holds two to four eggs in a tree hollow.

The first European account of the toco toucan, in 1555, was written by which French naturalist?

He had only a bill to go on and guessed the bird was a web-footed fish-eater; the idea lasted two centuries.

The keel-billed toucan is the national bird of which country?

Its rainbow bill is mostly green with a red tip and orange sides, and it ranges from southern Mexico to Venezuela.

The keel-billed toucan's bill makes up about what fraction of its total length?

It averages 12 to 15 cm on a bird 42 to 55 cm long and weighing under half a kilogram.

The channel-billed toucan is found in tropical South America and on which Caribbean island?

Its species name vitellinus means 'deep yellow tinged red', from the Latin for egg yolk.

Rafael, the toucan who tries to teach Blu to fly in the 2011 film Rio, is voiced by whom?

He is a toco toucan with a bulldog friend, Luiz, and a large brood at home.

Toucans and their relatives, the barbets and woodpeckers, are grouped in which suborder?

The wider order is Piciformes, which holds nine families in all.

Toucans' underparts in the smaller aracaris are yellow crossed by what?

The toucanets, meanwhile, are mostly green with blue markings, and the big Ramphastos species are largely black.

In what state do toucan chicks emerge from the egg?

Keel-billed chicks also keep their eyes closed for about three weeks and have heel pads for the seed-littered nest floor.

Being poor dispersers over water, toucans have never reached which island region?

They are mostly tied to primary forest with old trees big enough to hold nesting holes, which limits how far they spread.

How many genera make up the toucan family Ramphastidae?

Between them those genera hold more than 40 species of toucans, aracaris and toucanets.

The 1992 UK cartoon Toucan Tecs starred two toucan detectives with what names?

The family kept turning up on screen, from Dora the Explorer's Señor Túcan to the 2019 series Tuca & Bertie.

A toucan appears on the logo of which country's Ecologist Green Party?

Brazil's Social Democracy Party also uses a toucan mascot, which is why its members are called tucanos.

In 2018 in Costa Rica, the keel-billed toucan became possibly the first toucan seen eating what?

Its usual diet is fruit such as gumbo-limbo, topped up with insects, eggs, nestlings and lizards.