The national animal of Jamaica is the red-billed streamertail. This is a species of hummingbird that is endemic to Jamaica and is both the country’s national animal and its national bird. Like many hummingbirds, they are a striking sight, subtly but strikingly colorful and extremely quick on the wing.
Though small, this streamertail is nonetheless among Jamaica’s most striking and iconic wildlife.
They exhibit a high degree of sexual dimorphism but nonetheless, both males and females are beautiful birds to say the least, and thus it is no surprise that they have been chosen to fill two spaces of Jamaica’s national symbols.
Let’s find out more.
What is the national animal of Jamaica?
The national animal of Jamaica is the red-billed streamertail, a hummingbird species that is endemic to Jamaica.
This means that it is only found in Jamaica and nowhere else.
They go by a few different names, such as the doctor bird, or scissor-tail hummingbird.
They are part of the emeralds hummingbird family Trochilini and are both the national animal and national bird of Jamaica.
This alone goes to show the great significance the bird has to the people of the island nation.
They were first formally described by Western zoology in Carl Linnaeus’s tenth edition Systema Naturae, published in 1758.
Linnaeus was an incredibly prolific zoologist and personally described a great many species we now recognize today.
He was quoting a description from an Irish physician which had been published in 1756.
Depending on the ornithological society you are talking to, the red billed and black billed streamertail may be distinct species or subspecies of streamertail more generally.
The males are typically 9 to 10 inches long, including their 4 to 5-inch tails.
They weigh only around 0.14 to 0.23 ounces.
Females are around 4 inches long and weigh ever so slightly less.
They are quite sexually dimorphic: males have a coral red bill with a black tip.
Their crow is dull black to blue black.
The nape together with the crown forms a velvety black crest, and the rest of its plumage is then bright, iridescent green.
The female, most significantly, lacks the extremely long tail feathers of the male from which it gets the name scissor-tail.
These are impressively long in the male.
They do have a long tail, but the male’s is typically significantly longer than the females.
This kind of sexual dimorphism is typical of birds of this kind.
Why is the red-billed streamertail the national animal of Jamaica?
The red-billed streamertail is the national animal of Jamaica for a variety of reasons.
On the one hand, birds in Jamaica symbolize a great many things.
They are images of freedom and liberty, as well often of the dawn and the new day.
The red-billed streamertail certainly embodies these things to the people of Jamaica and they are seen as images of the emancipation of the day and the importance of the kind of care-free attitude which birds, from our point of view, seem to exhibit.
On the other hand, they are seen more literally as embodiments of the country’s natural beauty.
This kind of bird is very much emblematic of the tropical beauty of Jamaica and is seen to embody the natural beauty of the whole island.
There is a great variety of diverse wildlife on Jamaica, but the humble streamertail is in many ways the single most important member of the island’s wildlife.
You may, though, get a different answer to this question depending on whom you ask.
The streamertail could signify different things to different people, and so in general it really depends; there is no single, official reason why.
What do red-billed streamertail eat?
As hummingbirds tend to do, the streamertail forages for nectar in a very wide selection of native and introduced flowering plants.
They tend to prefer Besleria, a genus of over two hundred flowering plants.
They forage at all heights whether at ground level or in the highest canopies of the forests.
They are also fond of profiting off the work of other birds; they will steal nectar from the holes in flowers created by bananquits, and they will feed from wells drilled by the yellow-bellied sapsucker.
They will also sometimes feed on small insects, again sometimes stealing them from spider webs.
Where do red-billed streamertail live?
They are found throughout Jamaica except in the far east of the island.
They prefer evergreen montane forests, meaning forests on the sides of hills and the slopes of mountains.
They also are found in lowland tropical forests as well as secondary forests.
They can range in elevation anywhere from sea level up to as high as 4,900 feet.
They are still a fairly abundant species, though much more abundant at middle and higher elevations rather than down at sea level.
Here they have access to a wider range of plants to forage from.
They tend to avoid mangroves and the more arid of the highlands.
Hummingbirds in general are sights that often have to be seen to be believed.
We may have images in our minds of them, but experiencing them in reality is always much different.
The red-billed streamertail is a particularly good example of this; they are stunningly beautiful even when standing still, and they transform into something like a mythical forest spirit on the wing.
It is easy to see why they were chosen as Jamaica’s national animal.