8-12-2015 KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA - HELMETED GUINEA FOWL (Numida meleagris)

The helmeted guineafowl (Numida meleagris) is the best known of the guineafowl bird family, Numididae, and the only member of the genus Numida. It is native to Africa, mainly south of the Sahara, and has been widely introduced, as a domesticated species, into the West Indies, North America, Colombia, Brazil, Australia and Europe.

The likely extinct subspecies N. m. sabyi of Morocco

The helmeted guineafowl was formally described by Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae under the binomial name Phasianus meleagris.[3] In 1764, Linnaeus moved the helmeted guineafowl to the new genus Numida. The genus name Numida is Latin for "North African".

In the early days of the European colonisation of North America, the native wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) was confused with this species. The word meleagris, Greek for guineafowl, is also shared in the scientific names of the two species, though for the guineafowl it is the species name, whereas for the turkey, it is the name of the genus and (in inflected form) the family.