Hobbies And Interests
Kingdom and Phylum
The sun conure, like all birds, are found in the Kingdom Animalia and the Phylum Chordata. To qualify as a member of the Animalia kingdom, animals such as sun conures eat food, have many cells that make up the body and have specialized organs such as air sacs, lungs, a heart and digestive tract. To meet the definition of the Chordata phylum, sun conures have a notochord as an embryo that forms into the backbone.
Class Aves
Most would recognize that the sun conure is a member of the bird class. Like all Aves members, the sun conure has feathers, a high metabolic rate, a beak but no teeth and lay eggs. Sun conures also possess a strong but lightweight skeletal system with the internal structure of the bones forming a honeycomb pattern rather than a completely solid structure. These features of the Aves class make birds lightweight and allow birds the advantage of flight.
Order Psittaciformes
The sun conure falls into the Psittaciformes order, more commonly known as parrots. The sun conure and all parrots share several features. Parrots, including the sun conure, have a distinctive beak with the upper mandible curving over the lower mandible, zygodactylous feet where they have two toes that point forward and two toes that point backwards, a broad prehensile tongue, a cere (where the nostrils are located) and large rounded head with a short neck.
Family Psittacidae
The parrot order includes two families, the Psittacidae family and the Cacatuidae family. These families are commonly referred to as the psittacine or parrot family and the cockatoo family. Sun conures are a true parrot. This classification is partly due to DNA research and the fact that the sun conure lacks a movable crest, a characteristic of all cockatoos.
Genus Aratinga
The common term "conure" applied to many small parrots such as the sun conure, yellow-eared conure, golden conure and many more actually does not apply to any particular scientific classification birds. Birds called conure in the pet trade may be in the Ognorhynchus, Guaruba, Aratinga, Leptosittaca, Nandayus and Cyanoliseus genus. These birds are classified into so many different scientific genera because they have more different characteristics than their collective common name "conure" would suggest. Sun conures are in the genus Aratinga. Birds in the Aratinga genus have a "swift, direct flight" that differs from other similar birds according to "Parrots of the World." Other characteristics include the males and females looking alike, a fully feathered face and a rather long tail that starts wide at the base and becomes slender at the tip.