File:White cockatoo (Cacatua alba).jpg

English: The white cockatoo (Cacatua alba), also known as the umbrella cockatoo, is a medium-sized all-white cockatoo endemic to tropical rainforest on islands of Indonesia. When surprised, it extends a large and striking head crest, which has a semicircular shape (similar to an umbrella, hence the alternative name). The undersides of the wings and tail have a pale yellow or lemon color which flashes when they fly.The white cockatoo was first described in 1776 by German zoologist Philipp Ludwig Statius Müller. Its species name alba is a feminine form of the Latin adjective albus for "white". It lies in the subgenus Cacatua within the genus Cacatua. The term "white cockatoo" has also been applied as a group term to members of the subgenus Cacatua, the genus Cacatua as well as larger groups including Major Mitchell's cockatoo and the galah cockatoo. While psittaciform parrots and cockatoos have many common anatomical attributes like zygodactyl feet and hooked bills, the cockatoos and parrots diverged from the ancestral parrots as separate lineages as early as 45 MYA (fossil record) or 66 MYA (molecular analysis) (Wright 2008) during the period when Australia, South America and Antarctica were breaking away from the super-continent Gondwanaland where the ancestral parrots were believed to have evolved.