It is native to Africa, mainly south of the Sahara, and has been widely introduced, as a domesticated species, into the West Indies, North America, Colombia, Brazil,[2] Australia and Europe.

The helmeted guineafowl was formally described by Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae under the binomial name Phasianus meleagris.

[5] In the early days of the European colonisation of North America, the native wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) was confused with this species.

Various subspecies are proposed, differences in appearance being mostly a large variation in shape, size, and colour of the casque and facial wattles.

[12] Guineafowl are equipped with strong claws and scratch in loose soil for food much like domestic chickens, although they seldom uproot growing plants in so doing.

They attempt to make themselves look more fearsome by raising their wings upwards from their sides and bristling their feathers across the length of their bodies, and they may also rush towards their opponent with a gaping beak.

The keets are cryptically coloured, and rapid wing growth enables them to flutter onto low branches barely a week after hatching.

Feral populations descended from domestic flocks are now widely distributed and occur in the West Indies, North America, Australia and Europe.