Description
Like other toucans, the White-throated Toucan is brightly marked and has a huge bill. It has a total length of 50–61 cm (20–24 in). Body weight is somewhat variable, ranging in adult birds from 425 to 830 g (0.94 to 1.8 lb). The male averages slightly larger, at a mass of 642 g (1.42 lb), while the female averages 580 g (1.3 lb). Among standard measurements, the wing chord is 20.4 to 26.5 cm (8.0 to 10.4 in), the bill is 12.2 to 22 cm (4.8 to 8.7 in), the tail is 13.3 to 16.8 cm (5.2 to 6.6 in), and the tarsus is 4.5 to 5.6 cm (1.8 to 2.2 in). The only species of toucan that surpasses the White-throated in size is the Toco Toucan.
It has black plumage with a white throat and breast bordered below with a narrow red line. The rump is bright yellow and the crissum is red. The bare skin around the eye is blue. The bill has a yellow tip, upper ridge and base of the upper mandible, and the base of the lower mandible is blue. The rest of the bill is mainly black in R. t. cuvieri and mainly reddish-brown in R. t. tucanus, with intergrades showing a mixed coloration. Males are larger and longer-billed than females, but otherwise the sexes are alike.
Juveniles are noticeably shorter-billed, more sooty-black, and have duller plumage.
The White-throated Toucan of the race cuvieri is virtually identical to the related Channel-billed Toucan of the race culminatus, but the latter is smaller and has a proportionally shorter bill with a more strongly keeled culmen. The call is often the best distinction between the species. White-throated has a yelping eeoo, hue hue, whereas Channel-billed has a croaking song.
Read more about this topic: White-throated Toucan
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“A sound mind in a sound body, is a short, but full description of a happy state in this World: he that has these two, has little more to wish for; and he that wants either of them, will be little the better for anything else.”
—John Locke (1632–1704)
“The type of fig leaf which each culture employs to cover its social taboos offers a twofold description of its morality. It reveals that certain unacknowledged behavior exists and it suggests the form that such behavior takes.”
—Freda Adler (b. 1934)
“Everything to which we concede existence is a posit from the standpoint of a description of the theory-building process, and simultaneously real from the standpoint of the theory that is being built. Nor let us look down on the standpoint of the theory as make-believe; for we can never do better than occupy the standpoint of some theory or other, the best we can muster at the time.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)