Red-Billed Hornbills In Captivity

BerdNerd

Well-Known Member
5+ year member
I used to think that the red-billed hornbill was an individual species of bird but I found out recently that they are just a family of birds, and are actually split into five different species. So I was just wondering, which of these five species are currently kept in captivity? I'm doing research on an individual hornbill that I saw at the Honolulu Zoo, since the sign they had there isn't specific enough. I've checked the zoo's official website, Google Images, multiple random websites, and every single image relating to the Honolulu Zoo on ZooChat's gallery and had no luck finding what species of red-billed hornbill I saw there. So any information about that would be helpful too. :)
 
In the 1980s / 1990s when the Red-billed hornbill still was seen as one species with several subspecies it was the most commonly kept and bred hornbill-species in zoos and privat collections ( at least in Europe ). Because it was imported in good numbers and from different home-countries many of the ( sub ) species were mixed and I guess there are still a lot of hybrid-Red-billed hornbills around in captivity which makes it very difficult to find out to which species the one you're looking for belongs - maybe it is a bird with hybrid-orgin...
 
I used to think that the red-billed hornbill was an individual species of bird but I found out recently that they are just a family of birds, and are actually split into five different species. So I was just wondering, which of these five species are currently kept in captivity? I'm doing research on an individual hornbill that I saw at the Honolulu Zoo, since the sign they had there isn't specific enough. I've checked the zoo's official website, Google Images, multiple random websites, and every single image relating to the Honolulu Zoo on ZooChat's gallery and had no luck finding what species of red-billed hornbill I saw there. So any information about that would be helpful too. :)

To my understanding the status of what Red-billed species are in captivity is pretty cloudy, for the reasons stated by @vogelcommando. Most zoos where I've seen them just list them as "Red-billed Hornbill", most likely since updating the signage isn't worth it if you don't really know what species it now belongs to. I would suspect you'll probably not find a solid answer to Honolulu's individual, nor any of the rest of the population unless you can find some accurate import records. (And also assuming there's no crossbreeding between subspecies/species, which is highly likely given they are a relatively common species)
 
Back
Top