The Black-fronted Piping-guan, Aburria jacutinga (sometimes still called Pipile jacutinga), is a bird in the chachalaca, guan and curassow family Cracidae. This species occurs in Atlantic Forests in south-eastern Brazil and adjacent Argentina and Paraguay. It has become quite rare in recent decades due to hunting and habitat destruction (BirdLife International 2004).

It is a large bird, some 63-74 cm in length, and similar in general appearance to a slim turkey with thin neck and small head. Aburria jacutinga is mainly black with a bluish gloss; it has a conspicuous white wing patch bearing 3 neat rows of tiny black dots. The large crest is whitish, and it has a red throat wattle with a dark blue patch at the front. Its naked whitish eye-ring and black-feathered face and forehead are unique in its genus. The legs and feet are red.

No other piping-guan is found in its range, though the Gray's Piping-guan (Aburria cumanensis grayi) approaches it in Paraguay. This bird has a pale bluish pendulous wattle, a smaller wing patch, and an entirely naked white face and white forehead.

Systematics

Formerly, Aburria jacutinga was considered one of the two species of piping-guan, the other being the variable "Common Piping-guan". However, analysis of mtDNA, osteology and biogeography (Grau et al., 2005) did not only show that the Wattled Guan is an aberrant hypermelanistic piping-guan, but vindicated the hypothesis than many taxa of the "Common Piping-guan" were actually distinct species. The Black-fronted Piping-guan is apparently the most basal member of its genus, but its precise relationship with the Wattled Piping-guan is not fully resolved (Grau et al. 2005).