Toco Toucan (Ramphastos toco): Facts, Beak, Diet and Habitat

What does a toco toucan look like?

The toco toucan is one of the most recognizable birds on Earth. Its body is glossy black, with a white throat and upper chest, a white patch on the rump above the tail and bright red feathers under the tail. Bare orange skin surrounds a brown eye, framed by a thin ring of blue skin.

The bill is the bird’s most famous feature. It is long, slightly curved and yellow-orange to reddish orange, with a black band at the base and a large black oval at the tip of the upper half. The cutting edges are finely serrated like a bread knife, which helps the bird grip and tear fruit. Birds do not have true teeth, a topic covered in do birds have teeth?.

Males and females look alike, although males are larger and have longer bills on average. Young birds are duller, with shorter, less brightly colored bills that grow to full size over the first months of life.

How big is a toco toucan?

The toco toucan is the biggest member of the toucan family, Ramphastidae, which includes more than 40 species from Mexico to Argentina. Most of its length is bill and tail rather than body: the body itself is about the size of a crow.

Measured males have bills of roughly 17–21.5 cm (6.8–8.5 in) and females 16–20 cm (6.2–8 in). Relative to body size, the toco toucan has one of the largest bills of any bird. Only a few species, such as the sword-billed hummingbird, have a bill that is longer in proportion to the body.

The famous beak

For centuries, people wondered what such a huge bill was for. Early European naturalists who saw only dried bills even guessed that toucans were fish-eating water birds. In fact the bill is a light, strong tool with several jobs.

It is built like a crash helmet: a thin outer sheath of keratin, the same material as fingernails, covers an inner core of spongy bone with many air spaces. This makes it far lighter than it looks. The long reach lets a toucan perched on a thick branch pluck fruit from thin twigs that would not hold its weight.

A study published in Science in 2009 by Glenn Tattersall and Brazilian colleagues used infrared cameras to show that the toco toucan’s bill also works as a radiator. The bird can send more blood to the bill to dump body heat on hot days and cut the flow to save heat on cool nights. The bill may also play a part in courtship and in deterring other birds. Learn more in why do toucans have big beaks?.

Where do toco toucans live?

The toco toucan lives in eastern and central South America. Its main range runs from northeastern and central Brazil through Bolivia and Paraguay to northern Argentina. There are also scattered populations in the Guianas, along the lower Amazon River, in far southeastern Peru and, more recently, in Uruguay, where the species has only been recorded in recent decades.

Unlike most toucans, which need continuous, closed forest, the toco toucan prefers semi-open country. It is especially common in the cerrado, the wooded savanna of central Brazil, in the gallery forests that line rivers and in the vast Pantanal wetlands. It also lives in dry chaco woodland, palm groves, orchards, plantations and the edges of towns, from the lowlands up to about 1,750 m (5,740 ft).

Two subspecies are usually recognized: R. t. toco in the Guianas and northern and northeastern Brazil, and R. t. albogularis further south and west, in Paraguay, Bolivia, southern Brazil and Argentina. The southern birds are said to have whiter throats and slightly shorter bills, but measurements show a lot of overlap.

Because it likes open habitats, the toco toucan may even benefit from some forest clearing. It is often seen around roads, farms and airports, and its range in parts of the Amazon basin appears to be spreading as forest is cut.

What do toco toucans eat?

Toco toucans are omnivores, but fruit makes up most of their diet. They eat a wide range of fleshy fruits, including figs, guavas, palm fruits and cultivated fruits such as oranges and papayas, and they eat flowers in the dry season when fruit is scarce.

They also eat insects such as caterpillars and termites, small lizards and frogs, and the eggs and chicks of other birds. Toco toucans regularly raid the nests of caciques, flycatchers, parrots and even the endangered hyacinth macaw, reaching deep into nest holes with their long bills.

To eat, a toucan seizes a fruit with the tip of its bill, then flicks its head back to toss the food into its throat, because its tongue is too thin and flat to move food along the bill. Read more in what do toucans eat?.

Behavior and flight

Toco toucans are active by day and usually seen in pairs or small groups moving through treetops. They hop and bound from branch to branch more often than they fly, and when a group travels it often flies in a loose single file from one tree to the next. After the breeding season they may gather in larger flocks that wander in search of fruiting trees.

Their flight is a series of quick, heavy flaps followed by a downward glide, giving an undulating, roller-coaster path. Toco toucans are stronger fliers than most toucans and have been seen crossing rivers and lakes more than 5 km (3 miles) wide. The topic is covered in more detail in can toucans fly?.

Toco toucans use large home ranges, averaging around 86 hectares (210 acres) in one study, and move between patches of woodland as different trees come into fruit. They are often less active in the hottest part of the day, resting quietly in the shade of the canopy.

Toucans are noisy but not musical. The toco toucan’s call is a deep, rattling croak or grunt, repeated many times. Pairs and group members often preen one another and may “fence” with their bills in playful contests.

At night toco toucans sleep in tree hollows or dense foliage. A toucan sleeps with its head turned so the bill lies along its back and its tail folded up over the bill, packing itself into a compact ball of feathers.

Reproduction and life cycle

Toco toucans breed once a year in the wild. The timing varies across the range but in much of Brazil and Paraguay it falls in the southern spring and summer, roughly from September to February. Pairs become quieter and more secretive while nesting.

The toucan’s bill is not built for digging into hard wood, so the birds nest in existing cavities: natural tree hollows, old woodpecker holes, holes in earth banks or even termite mounds. The female lays two to four white eggs, and both parents take turns incubating them for 17–18 days.

The chicks hatch naked and blind. Both parents feed them, mainly on insects at first and then more and more fruit. Young toco toucans leave the nest about 43–52 days after hatching, still with short bills that will keep growing.

How long do toco toucans live?

The lifespan of wild toco toucans is not well known, because few long-term studies of marked birds exist. In zoos and bird parks, toco toucans commonly live into their teens and can reach about 20 years.

Predators, threats and conservation

Adult toco toucans have few predators, although large birds of prey can catch them. Eggs and chicks in nest holes are more at risk from snakes and climbing mammals. Toucans react to danger with loud calls and by gathering to mob the intruder.

The toco toucan is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List. It has a very large range and is fairly common in much of it. The main threats are capture for the international and local wildlife trade, local hunting for meat, and loss of the large old trees it needs for nest holes. All toucans of the genus Ramphastos, including the toco, are listed on CITES Appendix II, which controls international trade.

Relationship with people

The toco toucan is one of the best-known birds of South America and an icon of tropical wildlife around the world. Its image has appeared in cartoons and in famous advertisements, including a long-running poster campaign for Guinness stout.

The species plays an important role in its ecosystems as a seed disperser. Toco toucans swallow fruit whole and later drop the seeds hundreds of meters from the parent tree. In the Pantanal, they spread most of the seeds of the manduvi tree, the very tree in which hyacinth macaws nest, even though the toucans also eat many macaw eggs. Like many fruit-eating birds and bats of the tropics, including several of the rainforest animals on our list, toucans help trees spread into cleared and fragmented land.