Kookaburra larger group known as "kingfishers", kookaburras are not closely associated with water. The genus "Dacelo" was introduced by the English zoologist William Elford Leach in 1815. The type species is the laughing kookaburra. The name "Dacelo" is an anagram of "Alcedo", the Latin word for a kingfisher. A molecular study published in 2017 found that the genus "Dacelo", as currently defined, is paraphyletic. The shovel-billed kookaburra in the monotypic genus "Clytoceyx" sits within "Dacelo". Four species of kookaburra can be found in Australia, New Guinea, and the Aru Islands. Kookaburras are sexually dimorphic. This is noticeable in the blue-winged and
Carnarvon Gorge humans, due to hand-feeding which is against Park regulations. This situation is of concern to Park rangers as it allows opportunistic species, such as the laughing kookaburra ("Dacelo novaeguineae") and the pied currawong ("Strepera graculina"), to develop population sizes that are abnormally large. When visitation (and therefore hand-feeding) tapers off over the summer low tourism season the abnormal populations place abnormal pressure on the species' natural food sources which can include the young of other bird species. Australian bustards ("Ardeotis australis") are frequently seen in farmland on approach to the Gorge, along with brolgas if the weather has been wet.