Characteristically, finfoots are brown above and whitish below, with a long, thin neck, a small head, and a strong tapered bill. They are poor flyers, spending most of their time in shady, quiet rivers, half-submerged near overhanging banks, where they feed upon frogs (frog), worms (worm), crustaceans (crustacean), mollusks (mollusk), and insects (insect). They build flat nests (nest) of sticks or reeds among branches of dead trees, laying two to five rounded cream-coloured eggs (egg). The finfoots are shy, scarce, secluded birds. None is more than 60 cm (24 inches) long. The sungrebe, or American finfoot (Heliornis fulica), is only half that size, with a red bill, an olive body, and black-banded yellow toes. The male has skin pouches under the wing in which he carries the naked, helpless chicks from the nest upon hatching, clamping them so tightly that he can carry them even while flying. The species ranges from Veracruz, Mex., to northeastern Argentina.

The African finfoot (Podica senegalensis) is the largest species, 46–53 cm (18–21 inches) long. It occurs from Senegal to the Congo basin and from Ethiopia to the Cape of Good Hope. It has bright red feet and a slate-gray neck with an ill-defined whitish stripe down the side. The masked, or Asiatic, finfoot (Heliopais personata) is found in Central and Southeast Asia. The feet are bright green, and the sexes can be told apart by the colour of the iris: it is yellow in the female and brown in the male.