zygodactylous

Updated: May 25, 2025

What possible suggestion of a toucan is to be found in this head it is not easy to see. Squier and Davis remark of this sculpture: From the size of its bill, and the circumstance of its having two toes before and two behind, the bird intended to be represented would seem to belong to the zygodactylous order probably the toucan.

Henry W. (Henry Wetherbee) Henshaw - Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley: Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the: Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1880-81,: Government Printing Office, Washington, 1883, pages 117-166

In this curious way came their zygodactylous bird. The wood-cut is a poor one, and exhibits certain important changes, which, on the assumption that the pipe is at all well illustrated by the cast in the Smithsonian, reflects more credit on the artist's knowledge of what a toucan ought to look like than on his fidelity as an exact copyist.

Henry W. (Henry Wetherbee) Henshaw - Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley: Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the: Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1880-81,: Government Printing Office, Washington, 1883, pages 117-166

This cut corresponds with the cast in the Smithsonian collection, in having the normal number of toes, four three in front and one behind. This departure from the arrangement common to the toucan family, which is zygodactylous, seems to have escaped Stevens's attention.

Henry W. (Henry Wetherbee) Henshaw - Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley: Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the: Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1880-81,: Government Printing Office, Washington, 1883, pages 117-166