Home Topics Wildlife The Kakapo: The world’s weirdest parrot?

The Kakapo: The world’s weirdest parrot?

The rare kakapo is a flightless bird from New Zealand. (Credit: Chrissie Goldrick)

THE KAKAPO COULD EASILY be considered the strangest parrot in the world. Three things mark it out as very unusual among its peers: it’s flightless, it’s nocturnal, and it’s also larger and heavier than any other member of the parrot family. On top of all this, just 124 remain on a few remote New Zealand islands, making it perhaps the world’s rarest parrot too.

Its scientific name, Strigops habroptila, describes its owl-like face and the softness of its feathers, while its common name, kakapo, means ‘night parrot’ in Maori. In an evolutionary strategy all but doomed to failure, kakapo reproduction is inextricably linked to the irregular and infrequent fruiting of a single tree, the rimu.

So much about this bird remains shrouded in mystery, but its natural history is slowly being unravelled through prolonged close observation, meticulous record keeping and DNA analysis by a dedicated team of conservationists who are battling to save it.

To find out more about the mysterious kakapo, grab a copy of issue 115 (July/Aug) of the Australian Geographic journal.

RELATED STORIES

Read Next

Moonstruck: how lunar light influences animal behaviour

Lunar animal research is receiving the technological and methodological breakthroughs necessary for the next wave of intriguing findings.

10 million animals die on our roads each year. Here’s what works (and what doesn’t) to cut the toll

There’s almost no warning. A dark shape appears on the side of the road, then you feel a jolt as something goes under the car. Or worse, the shape rears up, hits the front of your vehicle, then slams into the windscreen. You have just experienced a wildlife-vehicle collision.

Rare footage shows 'unseen world’ of South Australia's little penguins

On Granite Island off South Australia, a colony of little penguins is fighting to survive. About two decades ago, the penguins numbered 1,600 adults – now there are just 30.