Screamers

Summary: What’s all that racket? Could it be a Screamer? Join Kiersten to find out.

Show Notes: 

Screamers: https://animaldiversity.org

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

 

For my hearing impaired followers, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean

 

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

 

Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… This is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

My name is Kiersten and I have a Master’s Degree in Animal Behavior and did my thesis on the breeding behavior of the Tri-colored bat. I was a zookeeper for many years and have worked with all sorts of animals from Aba Aba fish to tigers to ravens to domesticated dogs and so many more in between. Many of those years were spent in education programs and the most important lesson I learned was that the more information someone has about a particular animal the less they fear them. The less they fear them the more they crave information about them and before you know it you’ve become an advocate for that misunderstood animal.

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

This is episode one of the new series on Screamers. The first thing I like about Screamers is that they are birds.

Yes, that’s right screamers are birds. Screamers are not people who run around screaming, I mean technically yes, but that is a subject for a different podcast all together, not Ten Things I Like About… I can’t believe I have created over 100 episodes and this is the first time I‘ve talked about a bird. It is a great bird to start with, though. We’ll have lots of twists and turns with this little known but seriously interesting bird.

First, we’ll start at the beginning. What is a screamer? We have established that it is a bird but there many, many birds out there so I’ll narrow it down for you. Here comes the taxonomy: (For those of you just joining this podcast, taxonomy is the method that scientists use to classify and differentiate between species of living organisms. It consists of various group names to help make sure we’re all taking about the same animal, plant, or invertebrate.)

The taxonomy of screamers is a follows: 

Kingdom: Animalia ( they are animals)

Phylum: Chordata

Subphylum: Vertebrata (they have an internal skeleton)

Class: Aves (birds)

Order: Anseriformes (this order includes the screamers as well as ducks, geese, and swans)

Family: Anhimidae

Species: There are three species of screamer. The Horned Screamer, Anhima cornuta, the Southern Screamer, Chauna torquata, and the Northern Screamer, Chauna chavaria. 

All three species of screamers look similar. They are a large birds at 27 to 36 in or 71 to 92 cm, weighing about 3100 grams, with a wingspan of 5.5 feet or  1.7 meters. That is a decently big bird. They are classified with other waterfowl, ducks, geese, and swans, so you may be imagining a goose-like bird, but here is one of our first twists. 

Screamers look more like a turkey than a goose. They have a large body with a short neck and tiny head, especially compared to their body. They have a hooked beak, more like a bird of prey than a duck. Their legs are thick and stocky, and they have very little webbing between their toes. Doesn’t sound much like a duck at all!

So why are ducks and screamers classified in the same order? Genetic testing and cladistics science shows them as close relatives to ducks, geese, and swans, so they share an order but are in separate families. 

Screamers are found in wetland areas of South America such as swamps, marshes, lagoons, and lakes, as well as open savannas and meadows, and in the floodplains of moist tropical forests. They are most often found around water and they can swim, but they do not spend as much time in the water as ducks and geese.

Another strange twist with screamers is the long spurs they have on their wings. Yes, long spurs on their wings. There  are two large, curved spurs attached to the elbow on each wing of the screamer. The larger one is at the joint and a smaller one is just beneath that. They look like terrible claws they use to rip open prey animals or fight off predators, but they tend to use them only during intraspecies dominance fights at breeding season. 

This segues us into twist number three, screamers are herbivores. They have short, hooked beaks like raptors and scary spurs on their wings like a