Aramidopsis plateni
| Snoring rail | |
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| From The Birds of Celebes and the neighbouring islands, 1898 | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Gruiformes |
| Family: | Rallidae |
| Genus: |
Aramidopsis Sharpe, 1893 |
| Species: | A. plateni |
| Binomial name | |
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Aramidopsis plateni (Blasius, 1886) |
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Approximate resident range
Inset shows location of Sulawesi |
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| Synonyms | |
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Rallus plateni |
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Rallus plateni
The snoring rail (Aramidopsis plateni) also known as the Celebes rail or Platen's rail is a large flightless rail, the only member of the genus Aramidopsis. It is an Indonesian endemic found in dense vegetation in wet areas of Sulawesi and nearby Buton. The rail has grey underparts, a white chin, brown wings and a rufous patch on the hindneck. The sexes are similar, but the female has a brighter neck patch and a differently coloured bill and iris. The typical call is the snoring ee-orrrr sound that gives the bird its English name.
Its inaccessible habitat and retiring nature mean that the snoring rail is rarely seen and little is known of its behaviour. Only the adult plumage has been described, and the breeding behaviour is unrecorded. It feeds on small crabs and probably other small prey such as lizards. Although protected under Indonesian law since 1972, the rail is threatened by habitat loss (even within nature reserves), hunting for food and predation by introduced species; it is therefore evaluated as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
The rails are a large and very widespread family, with nearly 150 species. They are small to medium-sized, terrestrial or wetland birds, and their short bodies are often flattened laterally to help them move through dense vegetation. Island species readily become flightless; of 53 extant or recently extinct taxa restricted to islands, 32 have lost the ability to fly.
The snoring rail was first classified as Rallus plateni by German ornithologist August Wilhelm Heinrich Blasius in 1860, but was moved to its current monotypic genus Aramidopsis by English zoologist Richard Bowdler Sharpe in 1893. Following Taylor (1998), it was considered to be more similar to the Inaccessible Island and white-throated rails than to members of the Rallus genus, but a 2012 gene study suggests that it should actually be placed in Gallirallus, with Lewin's rail and the slaty-breasted rail as its closest relatives.
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