>>55732703It's one of the reasons I love the line! I used to be really into ornithology as a kid and still have these massive ornithological compendiums about basically every known species of bird on the planet.
Woodpeckers and toucans are extremely related, both belonging to the same order (the piciformes). They're more closely related than the starling -> raptor or finch -> hawk bird evolutions we've seen from other generations, which I think is really cool from the developers of this line.
What's even cooler is that the first two iterations seem to be stylized after the pileated woodpecker, a native to North and Central America (or potentially the now extinct ivory billed woodpecker, also a native of Central America), and toucans are native to South and Central America. If we use our imagination a bit, it sort of paints a story of the birds slowly moving south and evolving to adapt to the environment. Toucans are much more specialized at eating various types of tropical fruits and easy to access insects compared to their northern relatives who specialize in hard nuts and burrowed insects deep in wood.
