Evidence was published in a 2013 molecular study which showed that it was the sister taxon to the Australian magpie (Gymnorhina tibicen).

The ancestor to the two species is thought to have split from the other butcherbirds between 8.3 and 4.2 million years ago, during the late Miocene to early Pliocene, while the two species themselves diverged sometime during the Pliocene (5.8–3.0 million years ago).

[3] As the only butcherbirds with wholly black bodies, they are sometimes confused with crows or currawongs, from which they are distinguished by their gray and hooked bills.

[4] In Papua New Guinea, Black butcherbirds have been observed parasitizing the nests of Hooded monarch birds.

[5] In 1903, ornithologist E. M. Cornwall observed brown and black varieties of the bird, the black preferring deeper forest and the brown preferring coastal scrub or mangroves.