The Laughing falcon a raptor bird that appears in the Popol Vuh

Posted July 11, 2022

On our June field trip in Parque Nacional Laguna del Tigre, part of the Reserva de Biósfera Maya, Petén; we were documenting savanna ecosystems -as we have been doing for the last couple years- and we get to hear a very peculiar sound. As we were getting closer, we get able to see it… A Laughing falcon (Herpetotheres cachinnans) in front of us! By its common name you can imagine the sound that produces.

Herpetotheres cachinnans

H. cachinnas is a raptor species, inhabiting tropical and subtropical zones from southern Mexico to northern Argentina, in a variety of habitat types such as forest edges, riverine woodlands, savannas and secondary forests (Caldeira et al 2014).

Laughing falcon is not the only common name for this bird, it is also called snake hawk and the reason is that snakes comprise the majority of its diet, big and small, venomous and non-venomous, arboreal and terrestrial. The falcon pounces on snakes with great force, hitting the ground with an audible thud. When it catches a snake, it holds it just behind the head with its beak. Then it readily bites off the snake's head. However, it also will pray on lizards, small mammals, birds, fish, and large insects, such as grasshoppers (Caldeira et al, 2014; The Peregrine Fund, n.d.).

An interesting fact from H. cachinnas is that sometimes nests close to ants, because even if the ants doesn’t bother the falcons, the attack other animals that come close, helping the falcon protect its netslings from predator.

Taxonomy:

Kingdom

ANIMALI

Phylum	CHORDATA
Class	BIRDS
Order	FALCONIFORMES
Family	FALCONIDAE
Genus	HERPETOTHERES
Species	H. CACHINNANS

PNLT-Herpetotheres-cachinnans-laughing-falcon-EC-jun-2022

H. cachinnas in Parque Nacional Laguna del Tigre, June 2022
Photographies by Emanuel Chocooj

The laughing falcon in the Popol Vuh

It is very impressive when you find some of the fauna that is part of the sacred book of the Maya, because you are in the authentically atmosphere was their worldview was conceive. Nicholas Hellmuth explained how the Laughing falcon appears in the Popol Vuh:

The Laughing falcon is very important; it is also called the snake hawk. But this bird is the bird of the Popol vuh. In the Popol Vuh is considered to be a macaw and in Copan ruins in Honduras, the sacred bird is a macaw, in every aspect, kind of a symbol logo. But in other maya sites the bird that sits on the tree that has the calabash is the Laughing falcon and in my PhD dissertation I devote time for that and I showed and I incised the shell that shows two of the aspect again in the Popol Vuh, the grandmother gives a message to a flee, or an insect. The insect is eaten by a frog or a toad who carries it further, a snake eats the toad and carries the message further and the laughing falcon eats the snake. The when it gets to Xibalba the bird regurgitates the snake and regurgitates the toad but then has a little trouble regurgitating the flee.

We know the relevance of the Popol Vuh, but it was Michael Coe from Yale Univesity, he is the one who really showed the relevance of the Popol Vuh and the hero twins. And then in my PhD in the 1980’s at the Graz University in Austria showed more of the Popol Vuh that was not widely known, because every person knows a little bit about it – I don’t know everything – but Michael Coe introduce it and I was able to follow it up and find even more basis more plates, more bowls that shows the hero twins and shows the laughing falcon and I am also the one who notice on top of the tree, it was not a Macaw, it was a bird with a snake in his mouth and that’s the snake hawk which is the laughing falcon.

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