The Red-vented Bulbul (Pycnonotus Cafer)

In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the red-vented bulbul in his Ornithologie based on a specimen that he mistakenly believed had been collected from the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa.

He used the French name Le merle hupé du Cap de Bonne Espérance and the Latin Merula Cristata Capitis Bonae Spei Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature.

When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition, he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson.[6] One of these was the red-vented bulbul. Linnaeus included a brief description, coined the binomial name Turdus cafer and cited Brisson’s work.

The red-vented bulbul does not occur in Africa. The type location was later changed to Sri Lanka and then in 1952 designated as Pondicherry in India by the German naturalist Erwin Stresemann. The specific epithet cafer is Neo-Latin for South Africa.[11] This species is now placed in the genus Pycnonotus that was introduced by the German zoologist Friedrich Boie in 1826.

Two formerly designated races, P. c. nigropileus in southern Burma and P. c. burmanicus of northern Burma, are now considered as hybrids.