The beak is unusual, as the lower and upper mandibles do not meet for much of its length, allowing the tongue to hold a nut against the top mandible while the lower mandible works to open it. The male has a larger beak than the female. This powerful bill enables palm cockatoos not only to eat very hard nuts and seeds, but also enables males to break off thick (about 1 in) sticks from live trees to use for a drumming display. It is a distinctive bird with a large crest and has one of the largest bills of any parrot (only the hyacinth macaw's is larger). It may be the largest cockatoo species and largest parrot in Australia, although large races of yellow-tailed black cockatoos and sulphur-crested cockatoos broadly overlap in size. Confusingly, this name was also used by early naturalists and Brazilian natives to refer to the dark blue hyacinth macaw. It is also sometimes given the misnomer "black macaw" in aviculture - the macaws are unrelated New World parrots. The species was named the "Goliath Aratoo" in Wood's Natural History (1862). "Palm cockatoo" has been designated the official name by the International Ornithological Committee (IOC). stenolophus, similar to the goliath, but crest feathers are much narrower). macgillivrayi, intermediate in size, and the northern palm cockatoo (P. aterrimus), the larger goliath cockatoo (P. Earlier limited genetic studies found it to be the earliest offshoot from the ancestors of what have become the cockatoo family.įour subspecies are recognized, three poorly differentiated and one distinctive. The only member of the monotypic genus, Probosciger, the palm cockatoo is a member of the white cockatoo subfamily Cacatuinae. Its specific name, Probosciger aterrimus, is from Latin proboscis, long thin nose + -ger, carry, and Latin superlative adjective for ater, black, hence a "black with a long thin nose (beak)". The palm cockatoo was originally described by German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in 1788 as Psittacus aterrimus.
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