Hooded Pitohui

Taxobox
name = Hooded Pitohui
status = LC | status_system = IUCN3.1
regnum = Animalia
phylum = Chordata
classis = Aves
ordo = Passeriformes
familia = Pachycephalidae
genus = "Pitohui"
species = "P. dichrous"
binomial = "Pitohui dichrous"
binomial_authority = Bonaparte, 1850

The Hooded Pitohui, "Pitohui dichrous" is a songbird of New Guinea with black and orange plumage.

This species and its two close relatives, the Variable Pitohui and the Brown Pitohui, were the first documented poisonous birds. A neurotoxin called homobatrachotoxin found in the birds' skin and feathers, causes numbness and tingling in those touching the bird.

The Hooded Pitohui acquires its poison from part of its diet, the "Choresine" beetles of the Melyridae family. This beetle is also a likely source of the lethal batrachotoxins found in Colombia's poison dart frogsFact|date=December 2007.

Common and widespread throughout New Guinea, the Hooded Pitohui is evaluated as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

ee also

Blue-capped Ifrita, another poisonous bird from New Guinea

References

* Database entry includes justification for why this species is of least concern

External links

* [http://www.birdlife.org/datazone/species/index.html?action=SpcHTMDetails.asp&sid=5676&m=0 BirdLife Species Factsheet]
* [http://www.redlist.org/search/details.php?species=51087 IUCN Red List]
* [http://natzoo.si.edu/Publications/ZooGoer/2001/2/intoxnewguineabirds.cfm "The Intoxicating Birds of New Guinea" by John Tidwell]
* [http://www.interaktv.com/articles/pitohui.htm "The Pitohui and the Frog" by Robert B. Hole, Jr.]