The African jacana is a wader in the family Jacanidae.
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Its long toes and long claws enable it to walk on floating vegetation in shallow lakes, its preferred habitat.
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Johann Friedrich Gmelin, a German naturalist, formally described the African jacana in 1789 in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae.
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The African jacanas is a bird that is both conspicuous and unmistakable.
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It is 23 to 31 cm in overall length. The female is on average larger than the male, as in other jacanas.
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The average weight for males is 137 g (4.8 oz) and for females is 261 g (9.2 oz). Males can weigh from 115 to 224 g and females from 167 to 290 g.
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The African jacana feeds on insects and other invertebrates that it picks from the floating vegetation or the surface of the water.
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Sub-Saharan Africa is where African jacanas breed. It is sedentary, except for seasonal dispersion.
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The Jacana is also known as the Jesus bird because it has the ability to walk on water with its slender legs and curious long toes.
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Bird photographers often capture jacanas walking on waterlilies, where the birds spend most of their days searching for food, such as aquatic insects and larvae, worms, snails, and other arthropods.
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The chicks can hide underwater with only the tip of their bills sticking out above the surface in dangerous situations.
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Jacana have an unusual mating system called polyandry, which means that one female mates with multiple males.