The ground hornbills (Bucorvidae) are a family of the order Bucerotiformes, with a single genus Bucorvus and two extant species. The family is endemic to 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.
Ground hornbills are large, with adults around a metre tall. Both species are ground-dwelling, unlike other hornbills. Also unlike most other hornbills, they are carnivorous and feed on insects, snakes, other birds, amphibians and even tortoises.[1] They are among the longest-lived of all birds,[2] and the larger southern species is possibly the slowest-breeding (triennially) and longest-lived of all birds.[3]
The genus Bucorvus was introduced, originally as a subgenus, by the French naturalist René Lesson in 1830 with the Abyssinian ground hornbill Bucorvus abyssinicus as the type species.[4] [5] The generic name is derived from the name of the genus Buceros introduced by Carl Linnaeus in 1758 for the Asian hornbills where corvus is the Latin word for a "raven".[6]
A molecular phylogenetic study published in 2013 found that the genus Bucorvus was sister to the rest of the hornbills.[7]
The genus Bucorvus contains two species:[8]
A prehistoric ground hornbill, Bucorvus brailloni, has been described from fossil bones in Morocco, suggesting that prior to Quaternary glaciations the genus was either much more widespread or differently distributed.[9]
It is currently thought that the ground hornbills, along with Tockus and Tropicranus, are almost exclusively carnivorous[1] and lack the gular pouch that allows other, less closely related hornbill genera to store fruit.