Red-crowned crane
| Red-crowned crane | |
|---|---|
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| In snow in Hokkaido, Japan. | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Gruiformes |
| Family: | Gruidae |
| Genus: | Grus |
| Species: | G. japonensis |
| Binomial name | |
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Grus japonensis (Statius Müller, 1776) |
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The red-crowned crane (Grus japonensis), also called the Japanese crane (traditional Chinese: 丹頂鶴; simplified Chinese: 丹顶鹤; pinyin: Dāndǐng Hè; Japanese: 丹頂鶴 or タンチョウヅル; rōmaji: tanchōzuru; Korean: 두루미; romaja: Durumi; the Chinese character '丹' means 'red', '頂/顶' means 'crown' and '鶴/鹤' means 'crane') or Manchurian crane, is a large East Asian crane and among the rarest cranes in the world. In some parts of its range, it is known as a symbol of luck, longevity and fidelity.
Adult red-crowned cranes are named for a patch of red bare skin on the crown, which becomes brighter in the mating season. Overall, they are snow white in color with black on the wing secondaries, which can appear almost like a black tail when the birds are standing, but the real tail feathers are actually white. Males are black on the cheeks, throat and neck, while females are pearly gray in these spots. The bill is olive green to greenish horn, the legs are slaty to grayish black, and the iris is dark brown.
This species is among the largest cranes, typically measuring about 150 to 158 cm (4 ft 11 in to 5 ft 2 in) tall and 101.2–150 cm (3 ft 4 in–4 ft 11 in) in length (from bill to tail tip). Across the large wingspan, the red-crowned crane measures 220–250 cm (7 ft 3 in–8 ft 2 in). Typical body weight can range from 4.8 to 10.5 kg (11 to 23 lb), with males being slightly larger and heavier than females and weight ranging higher just prior to migration. On average, it is the heaviest crane species, although both the sarus and wattled crane can grow taller and exceed this species in linear measurements. On average, adult males from Hokkaido weighed around 8.2 kg (18 lb) while adult females there averaged around 7.3 kg (16 lb) while a Russian study found males averaged 10 kg (22 lb) and females averaged 8.6 kg (19 lb) and in some cases females could outweigh their mates despite the male's slightly larger average body mass. Another study found the average weight of the species to be 8.9 kg (20 lb). The maximum known weight of the red-crowned crane is 15 kg (33 lb). Among standard measurements, the wing chord measures 50.2–74 cm (19.8–29.1 in), the exposed culmen measures 13.5–17.7 cm (5.3–7.0 in), tail length is 21.5–30 cm (8.5–11.8 in) and the tarsus measures 23.7–31.9 cm (9.3–12.6 in).
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Wikipedia