Ground hornbill

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Bucorvus
Bucorvus abyssinicus Wytsman.jpg
Male Abyssinian ground hornbill (Bucorvus abyssinicus)
Scientific classification OOjs UI icon edit-ltr.svg
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Bucerotiformes
Family: Bucerotidae
Genus: Bucorvus
Lesson, 1830
Type species
Buceros abyssinicus
Boddaert, 1783

The ground hornbills are birds belonging to the genus, Bucorvus, in the hornbill family, Bucerotidae. The two species are endemic to open savanna regions of sub-Saharan Africa: the Abyssinian ground hornbill occurs in a belt from Senegal east to Ethiopia, and the southern ground hornbill occurs in southern and East Africa. The ground hornbills have sometimes been placed in a separate family, Bucorvidae.

Ground hornbills are large, with adults around a metre tall. Both species are ground-dwelling, unlike other hornbills. They are carnivorous and feed on insects, snakes, other birds, amphibians and even tortoises. [1]

Taxonomy

The genus Bucorvus was introduced in 1830, originally as a subgenus, by the French naturalist René Lesson to accommodate a single species, Buceros abyssinicus Boddaert, the Abyssinian ground hornbill. This is the type species. [2] [3] The generic name is a portmanteau of the genus Buceros introduced by Carl Linnaeus in 1758 for the Asian hornbills and corvus, the Latin word for a "raven". [4]

A molecular phylogenetic study published in 2013 found that the genus Bucorvus was sister to the rest of the hornbills. [5] The ground hornbills are estimated to have diverged from the other hornbills in the early Miocene, around 22 million years ago. [6] The ground hornbills in the genus Bucorvus have sometimes been placed in a separate family, Bucorvidae. [7]


The genus contains two species: [8]

ImageCommon nameScientific nameDistribution
Abyssinian Ground Hornbill RWD3.jpg Abyssinian ground hornbill Bucorvus abyssinicus Senegambia to Ethiopia, northern Uganda, and northeastern Kenya
Southern Ground Hornbill (Bucorvus leadbeateri) male (30397098174).jpg Southern ground hornbill Bucorvus leadbeaterisavanna of eastern and southern Africa

References

  1. ↑ Kemp, A.C. (2001). "Family Bucerotidae (Hornbills)" . In del Hoyo, J.; Elliott, A.; Sargatal, J. (eds.). Handbook of the Birds of the World. Vol. 6: Mousebirds to Hornbills. Barcelona, Spain: Lynx Edicions. pp. 436–523 [437, 463]. ISBN   978-84-87334-30-6.
  2. ↑ Lesson, René (1830). Traité d'Ornithologie, ou Tableau Méthodique (in French). Vol. 1. Paris: F.G. Levrault. p. 256 (livre 4).
  3. ↑ Peters, James Lee, ed. (1945). Check-list of Birds of the World. Vol. 5. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p. 272.
  4. ↑ Jobling, James A. "Bucorvus". The Key to Scientific Names. Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Retrieved 9 October 2025.
  5. ↑ Gonzalez, J.-C.T.; Sheldon, B.C.; Collar, N.J.; Tobias, J.A. (2013). "A comprehensive molecular phylogeny for the hornbills (Aves: Bucerotidae)". Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 67 (2): 468–483. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2013.02.012.
  6. ↑ Prum, R.O.; Berv, J.S.; Dornburg, A.; Field, D.J.; Townsend, J.P.; Lemmon, E.M.; Lemmon, A.R. (2015). "A comprehensive phylogeny of birds (Aves) using targeted next-generation DNA sequencing". Nature. 526 (7574): 569–573. doi: 10.1038/nature15697 .
  7. ↑ Dickinson, E.C.; Remsen, J.V. Jr., eds. (2013). The Howard & Moore Complete Checklist of the Birds of the World . Vol. 1: Non-passerines (4th ed.). Eastbourne, UK: Aves Press. p. 282. ISBN   978-0-9568611-0-8.
  8. ↑ AviList Core Team (2025). "AviList: The Global Avian Checklist, v2025". doi: 10.2173/avilist.v2025 . Retrieved 19 November 2025.


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