[1] Like the true woodpeckers, wrynecks have large heads, long tongues, which they use to extract their insect prey, and zygodactyl feet, with two toes pointing forward and two backwards, but they lack the stiff tail feathers that the true woodpeckers use when climbing trees, so they are more likely than their relatives to perch on a branch rather than an upright trunk.

[2] Their bills are shorter and less dagger-like than in the true woodpeckers, but their chief prey is ants and other insects, which they find in decaying wood or almost bare soil.

DNA sequencing and phylogenetic analysis show that the wrynecks are a sister clade to other woodpeckers including the Picinae and probably diverged early from the rest of the family.

[4] The wryneck subfamily Jynginae has one genus, Jynx, introduced in 1758 by Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the 10th edition of his Systema Naturae.

[6] The genus name Jynx is from the Ancient Greek name for the Eurasian wryneck, ιυγξ, iunx, and ruficollis is from the Latin rufus, "rufous" and collum "neck".

[11] The two wrynecks form a superspecies that probably separated early in their evolution from the piculets,[4] although there has subsequently been only limited divergence between the Jynx species.