Pygmy geese are a group of very small "perching ducks" in the genus Nettapus which breed in the Old World tropics.

The initially assumed relationship with the dabbling duck subfamily Anatinae[citation needed] has been questioned, and it appears they form a lineage in an ancient Gondwanan radiation of waterfowl, within which they are of unclear affinities.

[3] An undescribed fossil species from the late Hemphillian (5.0–4.1 mya) of Jalisco, central Mexico, has also been identified from the distal end of a tarsometatarsus.

[4] The genus Nettapus was erected by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich von Brandt in 1836.

It was thought that the type species, the African pygmy goose (Nettapus auritus), possessed the feet and body of a duck and the neck of a goose.