It lives in the drier, upland rainforests in Amazonian Brazil, and is threatened by deforestation and flooding, and also by the now-illegal trapping of wild individuals for the pet trade.

[4] The golden parakeet was listed in 1633 by the Dutch geographer Joannes de Laet in his History of the New World.

[8] Based on Marcgrave's description, the golden parakeet was included in the works of Francis Willughby in 1678,[9] John Ray in 1713,[10] and Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760.

[11] In 1779 the French polymath, the Comte de Buffon, included a description based on a preserved specimen in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux.

[14] Formerly classified as Aratinga guarouba[15][a] the golden parakeet is now the only species placed in the genus Guaruba that was introduced in 1830 by the French naturalist René Lesson.

The golden parakeet is 34–36 cm (13–14 in) long and mainly yellow with green in the outer wings and with an all-yellow tail.

[19] It has a large horn-colored (gray) beak, pale-pink bare eye rings, brown irises, and pink legs.

[26] In the wild, they have a varied diet, feeding on fruits such as mango, muruci and açai, flowers, buds, seeds (including Croton matouensis, and crop plants, particularly maize.

[28] After the golden parakeet reaches sexual maturity at the age of three years, the breeding season starts in November and runs through February.

In the first few years of sexual maturity, golden parakeets tend to lay infertile clutches until the age of six to eight.

[31] An international effort led by the Brazilian government in partnership with Parrots International, Lymington Foundation, the University of São Paulo and others is underway to raise young birds in captivity reintegrate them to their natural habitat with support of locals in Northeast Brazil.