GUAN

This article appears in Volume V12, Page 649 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: GRA-GUI

GUAN , a word apparently first introduced into the ornithologist's vocabulary about 1743 by Edwards,' who said that a bird he figured (Nat. Hist. Uncommon Birds, p1. xiii.) was " so called in the West Indies," and the name has hence been generally applied to all the members of the subfamily Penelopinae, which are distinguished from the kindred subfamily Cracinae or curassows by the broad postacetabular area of the pelvis as pointed out by Huxley (Prot. Zool. Society, 1868, p. 297) as well as by their maxilla being wider than it is high, with its culmen depressed, the crown feathered, and the nostrils barethe last two characters separating the Penelopinae from the Oreophasinae, which form the third subfamily of the Cracidae,2 a
family belonging to that taxonomer's division Peristeropodes of the order Gallinae.
The Penelopinae have been separated into seven genera, of which

Penelope

PENELOPE

and Ortalis, containing respectively about sixteen and nineteen species, are the largest, the others numbering from one to three only. Into their minute differences it would be useless to enter: nearly all have the throat bare of feathers, and from that of many of them hangs a wattle; but one form, Chamaepetes, has neither of these features, and Stegnolaema, though wattled, has the throat clothed. With few exceptions the guans are confined to the South-American continent; one species of

Penelope

PENELOPE

is however found in

Mexico

(e.g. at

Mazatlan

MAZATLAN

), Pipile cumanensis inhabits Trinidad as well as the mainland, while three species of Ortalis occur in

Mexico

Texas

TEXAS

, and one, which is also common to Venezuela, in

Tobago

TOBAGO

. Like curassows, guans are in great measure of arboreal habit. They also readily
1 Edwards also gives " quan " as an alternative spelling, and this may be nearer the

original

ORIGINAL

form, since we find Dampier in 1676 writing (Voy. ii. pt. 2, p. 66) of what was doubtless an allied if not the same bird as the " quam." The species represented by Edwards does not seem to have been identified.
2 See the excellent Synopsis by Sclater and Salvin in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society for 187o (pp. 5(4-544), while further information on the Cracinae was given by Sclater in the Transactions of the same society (ix. pp. 273-288, pls. Some additions have since been made to the knowledge of the family, but none of very great importance.
become tame, but all attempts to domesticate them in the full sense of the word have wholly failed, and the cases in which they have even been induced to breed and the

young

have been reared in confinement are very few. Yet it would seem that guans and curassows will interbreed with poultry (Ibis, 1866, p. 24;

Bull

. Soc. Imp. d'Acclimatation, 1868, p. 559; 1869, p. 357), and what is more extraordinary is that in

Texas

TEXAS

the hybrids between the chiacalacca (Ortalis vetula) and the domestic fowl are asserted to be far superior to

ordinary

ORDINARY (med. Lat. ordinarius, Fr. ordinaire)

game-cocks for fighting purposes. (A. N.)

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