Wildlife
Pelicans are well known for the large throat pouch they have attached to their lower beak. The pouch can hold over 10 litres of water and prey and in hot weather the pelicans flutter it to keep cool. Pelican chicks have no feathers or down when they hatch and take several weeks to grow their beaks to adult size.
Scientific name: Pelecanidae
Rank: Family
In order to see this content you need to have an up-to-date version of Flash installed and Javascript turned on.
Air display
American white pelicans fly in formation to save energy.
American white pelicans fly in formation to save energy.
Pelican plunder
Low fish stocks force a change in the habits of breeding cape gannets.
On Malgas Island in South Africa's West Coast National Park, there are thousands of Cape gannet chicks that are safe from human interference. But there is no protection from the large white pelicans that swallow the poor chicks whole.
The shading illustrates the diversity of this group - the darker the colour the greater the number of species. Data provided by WWF's Wildfinder.
The Pelicans can be found in a number of locations including: Africa, Asia, Australia, China, Europe, Indian subcontinent, North America, South America. Find out more about these places and what else lives there.
Pelicans are a genus of large water birds comprising the family Pelecanidae. They are characterised by a long beak and large throat pouch used in catching prey and draining water from the scooped up contents before swallowing. They have predominantly pale plumage, the exceptions being the Brown and Peruvian Pelicans. The bills, pouches and bare facial skin of all species become brightly coloured before the breeding season. The eight living pelican species have a patchy global distribution, ranging latitudinally from the tropics to the temperate zone, though they are absent from interior South America as well as from polar regions and the open ocean. Fossil evidence of pelicans dates back at least 30 million years, to the remains of a beak very similar to that of modern species recovered from Oligocene strata in France.
Long thought to be related to frigatebirds, cormorants, tropicbirds, gannets and boobies, pelicans are now known instead to be most closely related to the Shoebill and Hammerkop, and are placed in the order Pelecaniformes. Ibises, spoonbills and herons are more distant relatives, and have been classified in the same order. Pelicans frequent inland and coastal waters where they feed principally on fish, catching them at or near the water surface. Gregarious birds, they often hunt cooperatively and breed colonially. Four white-plumaged species tend to nest on the ground, and four brown or grey-plumaged species nest mainly in trees.
The relationship between pelicans and people has often been contentious. The birds have been persecuted because of their perceived competition with commercial and recreational fishers. They have suffered from habitat destruction, disturbance and environmental pollution, and three species are of conservation concern. They also have a long history of cultural significance in mythology, and in Christian and heraldic iconography.
This entry is from Wikipedia, the user-contributed encyclopedia. If you find the content in the 'About' section factually incorrect, defamatory or highly offensive you can edit this article at Wikipedia. For more information on our use of Wikipedia please read our FAQ.
Take a trip through the natural world with our themed collections of video clips from the natural history archive.
The wildlife of Life
In autumn 2009, a major new series brought us life as we've never seen it before.
BBC © 2013 The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read more.
This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so.
