However, some authors treat the last as a subspecies of scaled chachalaca and others suggest it deserves to be an entirely separate species.

[4] O. g. subaffinis is lighter but browner overall than the nominate, does not have the chestnut wash on the mantle, and the marks on the throat and breast are more scalloped than speckled.

It differs from the nominate: Its crown is rufescent rather than gray, it is paler and more olive above, the rump is chestnut, and the "speckles" are larger and less well defined.

[4] The nominate subspecies of speckled chachalaca is found in the Amazonia of eastern Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru; northern Bolivia; and western Brazil.

O. g. remota is, as its specific epithet implies, remote from the other two subspecies; it is found in southeastern Brazil's Mato Grosso do Sul and São Paulo states.

[4] The speckled chachalaca mostly forages in small flocks of up to seven birds, primarily in the subcanopy and understory and only rarely on the ground.

The song of the nominate speckled chachalaca is a "rhythmic five-syllable phrase rendered ha-ga-GAA-gogok, repeated rapidly."

O. g. remota, however, is very rare; much of its habitat was flooded by hydroelectric reservoirs and Brazilian authorities consider it Critically Endangered.