Greater roadrunner
Geococcyx californianus
— Where the name comes from
Geococcyx is “ground cuckoo”, from gê and kókkyx: a cuckoo that gave up flying and learned to run. Californianus names where the first specimen came from. The English roadrunner comes from its habit of running ahead of carts and cars along desert tracks, which has made it the most famous bird in cartoons.
— Facts
- Group
- Birds · Aves
- Order
- Cuckoos
- Habitat
- Deserts, arid scrub, grassland with bushes
- Range
- The south-western United States and northern Mexico
- Size
- 52–62 cm, 220–540 g
- Diet
- Lizards, snakes, insects, rodents, birds, cactus fruit
- Lifespan
- 8 years in the wild
— Characteristics
- 01
It runs at thirty kilometres an hour and flies only a few metres.
- 02
It kills rattlesnakes by striking the head and beating them on stones.
- 03
At night it lets its body temperature fall to save energy.
— What sets it apart
In the morning, before moving, it raises the feathers of its back to expose a patch of black skin and turns it to the sun: a solar panel, used to recover for nothing the degrees lost overnight, when the animal deliberately enters a kind of torpor. The cartoon, incidentally, reversed the facts: in the real desert it is the coyote that eats the roadrunner, and with some regularity.
