Photos by Ray Meibaum/Saint Louis Zoo
The horned guan is a rare and endangered bird. The chicks will grow their namesake horn in a few months.
For only the second time on U.S. soil, two critically endangered horned guan (pronounced gwahn) chicks hatched at the Saint Louis Zoo this month.
The zoo announced Thursday that the two-week-old chicks, which belong to one of the rarest bird species in the world, weigh five ounces, stand about eight inches tall and have brown and black downy feathers. The chicks’ parents—a male, age 12, who came to the zoo nine years ago and a female, age 7, who came five years ago—are too inexperienced to raise the chicks on their own, so zookeepers will hand-raise them in a private area of the zoo’s Bird House.
"This hatching is an important development in what has been a great effort to save this species,” said Jeffrey P. Bonner, zoo president and CEO, in a statement. “It was the result of many years of hard work.”
Horned guans are named for the bright horn of skin that grows on the top of their heads. The chicks will start to grow their horns at the age of three months, when they develop bumps that eventually twist and grow together.
Here’s how the zoo describes these unique birds:
Large and dramatic, the horned guan (or pavon) has a unique two-inch-long red horn of bare skin extending from the top of its head. This horn is thought to be ornamental to attract a mate. It has a bright white chest laced with fine lines of black feathers and a body covered with a jet black plumage that shines an iridescent blue in the sun. They are about the size of a small turkey and are arboreal, rarely coming to the ground in their native mountain forests.
Saint Louis Zoo was the first accredited zoo in the U.S. to exhibit the horned guan, which has a population of less than 2,000 birds in its native southeastern Mexico and Guatemala. The birds’ highland forest habitat has been destroyed by logging, coffee plantations and other cash crops.
Contact Lindsay Toler by an email at LToler@stlmag.com or on Twitter @StLouisLindsay. For more from St. Louis Magazine, subscribe or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
