Did You Know?
- The Helmeted Hornbill just happens to be the largest Hornbill species in all of Asia (okay, so maybe it isn’t that impressive but still, did you know that little fact?)
- The name for this bizarre bird comes from the large casque on their head, which of course resembles a helmet
- Males and females have a bare patch on their neck – it is turquoise coloured for the smaller females and shiny red colour for the males
Get Your Helmet On
So what is up with the odd looking helmet on this bird’s head? Well don’t stare at it, you are going to make the poor bird feel awkward. This helmet-like structure known as a casque is actually quite unique for the Helmeted Hornbill. Sure, other Hornbill species have a similar casque but those ones are typically hollow. The “Helmet” our featured bird is wearing is actually solid and filled with an ivory-like substance, so you can imagine how hard it is.
Why Does the Helmeted Hornbill Need a Helmet?
This incredibly solid casque has a couple of uses. For starters, it offers protection (and could make a decent weapon) for the Hornbill. You see, the males are known to get quite rowdy when protecting their food source and will often battle it out with their intruder, mid-flight. I am not kidding, there are many sightings of two of these birds (usually around a tasty fig tree) headbutting each other high above the ground. This mid-air collision is so violent that it can easily be heard by people wandering around on the ground far below the fighting birds. Let’s just say, if they weren’t wearing their helmets, this sort of behaviour would be quite dangerous.
The second use for the heavy duty casque is for foraging. Oh yeah, these birds have been observed hanging upside down in the canopy of their favourite tree. Why are they pretending to be like a bat? It could be due to the fact that bats are cool but it most likely has to do with them having a better vantage point to rip the bark off the tree and eat whatever it finds underneath. They are able to destroy the bark using their powerful beak and of course their solid helmet-like casque.
Who would have thought a helmet could be so handy?
