Diet and Foraging

Razor-billed Curassow is primarily frugivorous, taking fruit mostly from the forest floor. Interestingly, they apparently do not regularly eat Ficus fruit, which is important in the diet of many other Amazonian frugivores (del Hoyo and Motis 2004). At one site in southeastern Peru, the most frequently consumed fruits were Pseudolmedia sp. (56% of observations), Clarisia recemosa (20%), and Lecointea amazonica (7%); in this study, fruit of at least 19 species (of 17 genera) were noted in the diet (Torres 1989). Other regular components of the diet are leaves (from at least 48 species, but primarily from ferns such as Tectaria and Thelypteris), stamens of palms (Scheelea), and invertebrates, such as termites, and insects at army ant swarms (Torres 1989). Other foods less frequently consumed include fungi (Gutiérrez 1997) and small vertebrates, such as frogs (including frog eggs), dead fish and a caecilian (Gutiérrez 1997, Torres 1989).