The guineafowl are a small family of deep-bodied, bare-headed, poultry-type birds, most of which are intensively patterned in black with white dots.  All extant species are native to sub-Saharan Africa, although the “Moroccan Guineafowl” (Numida meleagris sabyi) was endemic to North Africa until well into the 1900s, and was well-known to Mediterranean Europeans during the classical Greek and Roman eras.

The Numididae are closely related to the partridges, pheasants, grouse, and turkeys (Phasianidae) and have been included in that large, diverse family under some past taxonomic models.  Guineafowl especially resemble the turkeys of the New World—and were named for this resemblance, as “Turkey-bird” (i.e., bird from Turkey) was a common synonym for “guineafowl” when the English colonists encountered the Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo).