Buttonquail or hemipodes are members of a small family of birds, Turnicidae, which resemble, but are not closely related to, the quails of Phasianidae.

The Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy elevated them to ordinal status as the Turniciformes and basal to other Neoaves either because their accelerated rate of molecular evolution exceeded the limits of sensitivity of DNA-DNA hybridization or because the authors did not perform the appropriate pairwise comparisons or both.

[7][8][9] They seem to be an ancient group among these, as indicated by the buttonquail-like Early Oligocene fossil Turnipax and the collected molecular data.

They superficially resemble the true quails of the genus Coturnix, but differ from them in lacking a hind toe and a crop.

The females of this family also possess a unique vocal organ created by an enlarged trachea and inflatable bulb in the esophagus, which they use to produce a booming call.