South America – Animal life

Fish and bird life

Freshwater fishes are numerous, with about 2,700 species, though they derive from only a few ancestral groups. Amazonian fishes may approach 1,500 species in number. Among the dominant groups are characins (800 species), which include the flesh-eating piranha; gymnotids, South American cyprinoid fishes that include the electric eel; catfishes; cyprinodonts, a large family of small scaly-headed soft-finned fishes; and cichlids, a family consisting chiefly of fishes that somewhat resemble sunfish.

Birds are represented by 89 families and some 3,000 species—a much higher figure than in Africa or Asia, which justifies the application of the name bird continent to South America. Some 25 families are endemic to the Neotropical region. Unique birds include rheas (large, tall, flightless birds that resemble ostriches), curassows (large arboreal birds distantly related to the domestic fowl), hoatzins (a brownish crested bird, having claws on the digits of the wing when young), oilbirds, motmots (bright-coloured birds related to kingfishers), jacamars (small, bright-coloured birds), toucans, manakins, and cotingas (related to manakins), and many passerine (perching) birds. Hummingbirds have evolved to fill a variety of habitat niches, with more than 120 species in Ecuador alone. Parrots, pigeons, cuckoos, tyrants (a kind of flycatcher), woodhewers, and orioles are among the dominant groups. Remarkably, the proportion of nonpasserine to passerine birds is greater in South America than in any other part of the world. Several species of penguins are native to southern South America, the coastal regions of Peru and Chile, and the Galapagos Islands.