The Birds with Built-in Weapons in Their Wings

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Horned screamers, the official bird of the Department of Arauca and the Municipality of Arauca in Colombia, could be mistaken for mythical creatures. These fascinating animals have a horn and are extremely vocal (as you’d expect from a bird called a screamer). More alarmingly, they have weapons on their wings! Read on to learn all about these unique birds.

What Do Horned Screamers Look Like?

The horned screamer (Anhima cornuta) belongs to the family Anhimidae, which also includes the northern screamer and southern screamer. They are close relatives of ducks, geese, and swans.

These fowl-like birds are large and heavy-bodied, with males and females looking very similar. Typically, their plumage is gray or black, fading into a white abdomen. Their crown and wings are also white. They weigh around 7 pounds and reach around 36 inches long with an impressive 5-foot wingspan. Their heads are proportionally small compared to their body and can be a variety of colors and patterns.

Horned screamers have a short, downward-facing curved bill and bright orange or yellow eyes. Their legs are long and reddish, with strong grey feet that lack webbing.

What Are the Screamer’s Unusual Physical Features?

The horned screamer has a few unusual features that turn an otherwise regular avian into an extraordinary creature. First, they have 6-inch-long horn-like projections from which these birds get part of their name. The horn is not present in young birds but slowly grows as they age. Made of cartilage and only loosely attached to the skull, the horn seems to be purely ornamental. It swings back and forth as the bird’s head moves and breaks off quite easily, making it useless for defense. However, it will grow back over time.

Both males and females also possess sharp spurs on each wing. These can be between 0.8 and 2 inches long and are far from ornamental. They are formed from fused carpal bones covered in keratin and can do a lot of damage to soft flesh!

Compared to other birds of their size, these guys have a remarkably lightweight bone structure. Most of their bones and subcutaneous tissue contain air sacs, allowing them to remain in the air without using much energy. Interesting, the air sacs get squashed as the birds contract their muscles to take off, creating a rumbling or crackling noise. The males repeatedly make this crackling sound during pair bonding. While most birds have uncinate processes (bony projections on the ribs) that help strengthen the ribcage and support breathing, horned screamers lack this feature, which makes their ribcage weaker.

Where Do Horned Screamers Live?

These birds are non-migratory residents of northern and central South America, found in countries including Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela. They like to live around tropical lowland fresh water, such as lakes, ponds, rivers, marshes, and swamps. Most often, they are spotted roosting in trees and shrubs of wooded riverbanks and wet savannas. Here, they eat foliage, grains, and other plant parts; juveniles eat insects. Screamers usually graze in the mid-morning to late afternoon. Their only known predators are humans.

Fights Breaking Out Amongst Screamers

You’d think that a plant-eating bird with no predators would lead a peaceful life, but that is far from the case. These are semi-social birds who live in groups of five or 10 individuals. They establish a home range, or territory, which they defend against intruders who may steal their food or mating partners. When fights inevitably break out, wing spurs are deployed, especially by the males. Scientists have even found broken-off bits of bone spur embedded in the chest flesh of horned screamers, so these fights can obviously be brutal! Males will also fight for the attention of females.

Bone Spur Fighting Technique

When a screamer spots an intruder in his home range, he will summon back up, so the entire group can gang up on the stranger. And they are called screamers for a reason; these birds can generate a loud ‘moo’ call, which is used to sound the alarm. It usually starts with inflating and extending their necks so that their dorsal plumage becomes erect, a move which makes them look larger and more threatening!

Then, the wing flapping starts! The birds continuously flap their wings, pushing their shoulders forward, exposing their bony spurs. It’s the bird equivalent of pulling back your jacket to show an enemy that you are armed.

Bone spurs can also be used when males fight for mating rights to a female. Once a partnership is established, however, it can last their whole lives.

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