A medium-sized songbird with reddish-brown and black plumage, this species is one of the few known poisonous birds, containing a range of batrachotoxin compounds in its skin, feathers and other tissues.

The close resemblance of this species to other unrelated birds also known as pitohuis which are also poisonous is an example of convergent evolution and Müllerian mimicry.

The hooded pitohui is found in forests from sea level up to 2,000 m (6,600 ft) but is most common in hills and low mountains.

This species is apparently a cooperative breeder, with family groups helping to protect the nest and feed the young.

[4] Richard Bowdler Sharpe encapsulated that attitude when he wrote in 1903 "Pitohui is doubtless an older name than Rectes, but can surely be laid aside as a barbarous word".

[5][6] Eventually however the principle of priority, which favours the first formal name given to a taxon, was applied, and Rectes was suppressed as the junior synonym of Pitohui.

[10] In 1990 scientists preparing the skins of the hooded pitohui for museum collections experienced numbness and burning when handling them.

[16] The same toxin had previously been found only in Central and South American poison dart frogs from the genera Dendrobates, Oophaga and Phyllobates (family Dendrobatidae).

[20] The presence of the toxins in muscle, heart and liver shows that hooded pitohuis have a form of insensitivity to batrachotoxins.

[17] One possible source has been identified in the forests of New Guinea: beetles of the genus Choresine (family Melyridae), which contain the toxin and have been found in the stomachs of hooded pitohui.

[15] Some researchers cautioned this suggestion was premature,[21] and others noted that the levels of batrachotoxins were three orders of magnitude lower than in the poison dart frogs that do use it in this way.

[19] One argument in favour of the toxin acting as a defence against predators is the apparent Müllerian mimicry in some of the various unrelated pitohui species, which all have similar plumage.

The species known as pitohuis were long thought congeneric, due to their similarities in plumage, but are now spread through three families,[b] the oriole, whistlers and Australo-Papuan bellbirds.

[17] The existence of resistance to batrachotoxins and the use of those toxins as chemical defences by several bird families have led to competing theories as to its evolutionary history.

[10] The diet of the hooded pitohui is dominated by fruit, particularly figs of the genus Ficus, grass seeds, some insects and other invertebrates,[10] and possibly small vertebrates.

[19] Among the invertebrates found in their diet are beetles, spiders, earwigs, bugs (Hemiptera, including the families Membracidae and Lygaeidae), flies (Diptera), caterpillars and ants.

[31] Little is known about the breeding biology of the hooded pitohui and its relatives due to the difficulties of studying the species high in the canopy of New Guinea.

[10][32] The incubation period is not known, but the species is thought to be a cooperative breeder, as more than two birds in a group have been observed defending the nest from intruders and feeding the young.

Young birds, which are covered in white down as nestlings before developing their adult plumage,[33] have been observed being fed acorn-shaped red berries and insects.

[30] The toxic and unpalatable nature of the hooded pitohui has long been known to local people in New Guinea, and this knowledge has been recorded by Western scientists as far back as 1895.