The name honors the German naturalist Carl Wahnes, who collected in New Guinea.

[2] Wahnes's parotia is evaluated as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

The male has an iridescent yellow-green breast shield, elongated black plumes, three erectile spatule head wires behind each eye, coppery-bronzed nasal tuft feathers and long, wedge-shaped tail feathers.

The male is polygamous and performs a spectacular courtship dance in the forest ground.

They have a varying pattern of streaks and dots, dense at the large end and very sparse on the other, and consisting of a lower gray and an upper tan layer with some overlap.