The mostly rufous underparts, olive brown upperparts, a prominent white eyebrow and a black throat make it unmistakable.

It is easily detected by its loud series of nasal call notes and can be hard to spot when it is hidden away inside a patch of dense vegetation.

[2][3] In 1872 he noted that the form Trochalopteron jerdoni that he had discovered on the peak of Banasura ["Banasore"] in Wayanad would likely also occur in Coorg.

[4] The species jerdoni included fairbanki and meridionale (both from south of the Palghat Gap) while cachinnans was kept separate.

The form south of the Palghat gap without a black chin was elevated to a full species, fairbanki with meridionale as a subspecies, and called the Kerala laughingthrush.

Trochalopteron was said to have the nostril visible and not covered by overhanging bristles as in Ianthocincla, the genus in which the Wayanad laughingthrush was placed.

Subsequent revision by Ripley and Ali lumped all the south Indian laughingthrushes into the single genus Garrulax.

[8][9][10][11][12] A detailed phylogenetic study published in 2017 identified that the south Indian species that were included in Trochalopteron were best treated as a sister group of a clade that included Leiothrix, Minla, Heterophasia and Actinodura and they were not closely related to members of Trochalopteron in the strict sense.

[13] This laughingthrush is about 24 cm long with a rufous underside and a dark olive grey upper body.

They feed on the fruits of Ilex spp., Solanum auriculatum, Eurya japonica, Rhamnus wightii, Pyrus baccata, Rubus spp., Mahonia leschenaultii and Rhodomyrtus tomentosa ("hill guava").

[20] The distribution of the species is restricted to a small area which is prone to habitat destruction leading to its status being considered as endangered.