Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A crested bird (Opisthocomus hoazin) of tropical South America having brown and buff plumage and a blue face. Juveniles have claws on the first and second digits of the wings.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Same as hoactzin.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Zoöl.) Same as hoazin.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A bird, Opisthocomus hoazin, with claws on the wing fingers of the juvenile and an enlarged crop used as a rumen.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun crested ill-smelling South American bird whose young have claws on the first and second digits of the wings

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[American Spanish hoazín, from Nahuatl uatzin, pheasant or small game bird.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Nahuatl huāctzin (which probably designated a different bird).

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Examples

  • Even if the hoatzin is not one of them, cuckoos are quite interesting.

    Goodbye, my giant predatory, cursorial, flightless hoatzin Darren Naish 2006

  • The idea that the hoatzin is not close to seriemas or turacos, but is in fact a member of a hitherto-overlooked metavian clade at the base of Neoaves is an exciting one, mostly because it would make this bird strongly convergent on the coronavian turacos.

    Goodbye, my giant predatory, cursorial, flightless hoatzin Darren Naish 2006

  • The idea that the hoatzin is not close to seriemas or turacos, but is in fact a member of a hitherto-overlooked metavian clade at the base of Neoaves is an exciting one, mostly because it would make this bird strongly convergent on the coronavian turacos.

    Archive 2006-11-01 Darren Naish 2006

  • More taxa, more characters: the hoatzin problem is still unresolved.

    Archive 2006-11-01 Darren Naish 2006

  • What do other studies have to say about the affinities of the hoatzin?

    Goodbye, my giant predatory, cursorial, flightless hoatzin Darren Naish 2006

  • More taxa, more characters: the hoatzin problem is still unresolved.

    Goodbye, my giant predatory, cursorial, flightless hoatzin Darren Naish 2006

  • Darren Naish: Tetrapod Zoology: Goodbye, my giant predatory, cursorial, flightless hoatzin

    Goodbye, my giant predatory, cursorial, flightless hoatzin Darren Naish 2006

  • Sibley & Ahlquist (1973) concluded that the hoatzin was not just closely related to cuckoos, but actually deeply nested within Cuculidae.

    Archive 2006-11-01 Darren Naish 2006

  • Based – it has to be said – on just a handful of detailed morphological characters, combined with some inference based on biogeography and superficial similarity, the South American landbird group theory suggests the following: that there might be a hoatzin-cariamaen clade, probably persisting as relicts in South America but more widespread during the early Cenozoic.

    Archive 2006-11-01 Darren Naish 2006

  • Worth noting is that, while there are two fossil hoatzins, neither of them preserve enough information to tell us anything useful about hoatzin affinities, or about the way of life of the fossil forms.

    Archive 2006-11-01 Darren Naish 2006

Comments

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  • I hope I'm not the only one who played EcoQuest when I was little.

    April 17, 2007

  • Nicknamed "stinkbird." Hoatzins use bacterial fermentation in the front part of the gut to break down the vegetable material they consume. With ruminants, this occurs in the rumen (a specialized stomach); in the hoatzin, it occurs in the crop. Aromatic compounds in the leaves the hoatzin consumes and the fermentation process itself give the bird its characteristic manure-like odor.

    September 3, 2008

  • Alimentary, my dear hoatzin !

    September 3, 2008

  • Neat article, mollusque--thanks!

    September 3, 2008