1. Its look

Ok, that’s not a very scientific statement, but just look at it. Have you seen anything like that before? A kind of “pheasant” with a long neck, red eyes, blue-skinned cheeks and an eccentric crest made of a bunch of feathers on its head!

2. It doesn’t fly much

Hoatzins are rather clumsy birds and they are bad at flying. They mostly hop from branch to branch around the oxbow lakes. This is because their pectoral muscles are not very developed, their digestive system taking more space than in other birds (see next fact).

3.It digests like a cow

Hoatzins are one of the very rare herbivorous bird species in the world. It just feeds on leaves of some trees that grow along the lakes. The leaves containing a low concentration of nutrients, it has to consume great quantities of it in order to get a sufficient amount of energy. Its large crop full of anaerobic bacteria help it digest the leaves by a process of fermentation. That makes this bird a ruminant just like the cow!

4.It stinks

The hoatzin is nicknamed “stinkbird”. The bad smell, result of its fermentation-based digestion, spreads in the whole of its body. It is never hunted by the local populations, because its flesh stinks and has a bad taste. It can, however, be hunted by hawks or other large birds.

5.It has clawed wings

The young hoatzins bear functional claws at the tip of their wings that help them move around the branches. This characteristic was shared by the 150 million year-old Archaeopteryx, the very first species of birds – an evolution of the dinosaurs. This has caused a long struggle for scientists to classify this bird! In the end, studies have shown that the hoatzin is not a living fossil and it was classified in its own order.

The young birds are the most vulnerable to predators, and the claws help climb the branches to escape these predators. If necessary, they would let themselves fall in the water and dive to escape the danger, and then climb back on the tree.The claws are lost at adult age.