[citation needed] The pintado petrel was formally described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae under the binomial name Procellaria capensis.

[3] Linnaeus cited the "white and black spotted peteril" that had been described and illustrated in 1747 by the English naturalist George Edwards in the second volume of his A Natural History of Uncommon Birds.

[4][5] The pintado petrel is now the only species placed in the genus Daption that was introduced in 1826 by English naturalist James Francis Stephens.

The specific epithet capense signifies the Cape of Good Hope, the locality where the type specimen was collected.

This can be sprayed out of their mouths as a defence against predators and as an energy rich food source for chicks and for the adults during their long flights.

[10] Finally, they also have a salt gland that is situated above the nasal passage and helps desalinate their bodies, due to the high amount of ocean water that they imbibe.

[12] During breeding season, pintado petrels feed around Antarctica's shelf and during the winter they range further north, as far as Angola and the Galapagos Islands.

[13] The pintado petrel has an occurrence range of 146,000,000 km2 (56,370,915 sq mi) and a 2009 estimate places their population of adult birds at 2 million.