New Zealand Rocks

Remove all ads!

I saw a show last night called "Mutant Planet" on the discovery channel. What they do is they look at places that have been largely geographically isolated for a long time and show how the animals from that location have evolved differently than animals you see just about anywhere else. They've done programs from areas all over the world, but they tend to focus on island locations as islands are naturally geographically isolated.

The show last night featured New Zealand. New Zealand is pretty much in the middle of nowhere - it's about 1200 miles (2000 Km) away from Australia, which is the closest land mass of any significance, and it's been that way for millions of years.

I was especially impressed with the number of unique birds found in New Zealand, and in particular, the kiwi. I had heard of the fruit called a kiwi, but I didn't know there were kiwi birds as well. The strangest thing about the bird was not only was it flightless, it didn't appear to have any wings whatsoever. (Other flightless birds like ostriches and emus still have wings.)

 

You had never heard of Kiwi birds before? You should see their eggs!

 

Kiwis are strange, but those walking trees are just bizarre.

@8, the eggs are the one with wings?

 

No - I had not heard of kiwi birds before. To me, if you asked me what a kiwi was, I'd have said it's that fruit from NZ with a brown fuzzy exterior and a green interior. I would not have added afterwards that it was also a bird.

The eggs were cool too - evidently, kiwis have the largest egg relative to body size known. Kiwis are pretty small, but their eggs are 5 times the size of a typical chicken egg, and weigh about a pound. It was speculated that they kept the size because kiwis evolved from what was a much larger bird. The advantage of the big egg is that the newborn bird hatches completely formed, with feathers and everything, and is largely self-sufficient and doesn't need one of the parents to gather food for it.

The other cool thing was that it is the father that incubates the egg after the mother lays the egg.

 

It's also a colloquialism for New Zealanders - as it's also their national animal. There's one subspecies of Kiwi where both parents incubate the egg. The strain of gestation for the mother means she has to eat three times as normal to survive the process and the last stage she has to fast as the egg is so big it leaves no room for her stomach before it is laid!

I grew up with encyclopedias and wildlife folios since I learnt to read. Some animals really are just incredible.

 

Aldeth - I can't believe you didn't know what a Kiwi was. It's our NATIONAL bird (and therefore our national animal), it's our national rugby league team, and it's a shorthand way of describing a New Zealander. And the fruit is called a kiwifruit. I never understood why Americans call it just a kiwi. Silly Americans.

Another kiwi fact: it has the shortest beak of any bird. It may look long but a beak is defined from the nostrils down, and a kiwi has nostrils right at the end of the long thing on it's mouth (all the better for hunting out grubs and worms in the leaf litter)

Unsurprisingly they are also endangered species. I ran my last half-marathon to raise money for Kiwi conservation.

New Zealand also has the world's largest parrot (Kakapo) and the world's only alpine parrot (Kea).

 

I also knew it was a shorthand way of describing a New Zealander. In your posts where you have mentioned that the national rugby team was the Kiwis, I just assumed that's what it was referring to.

As for not knowing about them, well, I assume I'd know it if I lived in New Zealand. And as far as being national birds, the only one I know is the US one (bald eagle). I'm guessing most nations have one, but FIIK what any of them are.

They also had them on the show. In fact, the vast number of the species they featured were birds - I also recall a type of penguin. I liked the Kea - never thought I'd see a parrot living in the mountains. The Kakapo also doesn't fly. Between the Kiwi, Kakapo, the penguin, and a few other species mentioned, I'd hazard a guess that New Zealand has to largest concentration of flightless birds in the world.

 

I have your back, Aldeth. Until now, to me kiwi meant fruit, and had no bird association whatsoever.

I love the fact that SP continues to make me feel stupider every day.

 

Kiwi fruit is originally from China (the chinese gooseberry IIRC) but seeds were transported to NZ a few hundered years ago.
Just some random useless information for you

 

I thought this was another thread about earthquakes....

 

We also used to have an enormous flightless bird called a moa - bigger than an ostrich - but it got hunted to extinction. And we also had an enormous eagle (made your bald eagle look like a sparrow) but that's extinct now too, because its main diet was, er, moas.

Most of the animals would have been birds because New Zealand has no native mammals at all (except for a couple of bat, but they're practically birds anyway). That's why so many of the birds became flightless - no rats and cats means no real need to waste energy growing wings and flying.

We do have some awesome flying birds as well though. The Piwakawaka, or fantail, is a cute little bird that follows you around if you go walking through the forest. It looks friendly, but it's really zipping around eating all the bugs that you're disturbing as you walk along.

So many New Zealand birds are extinct or very endangered now, because they had no defences against introduced mammals.

And finally, the Kiwis are the national rugby league team, not that the national rugby union team, who are the All Blacks. You might not think it's an important difference, but it's a bit like .... um ..... {trying to think of an American equivalent} .... getting NASCAR and IndyCar mixed up, kind of the same to outsiders, but like ice and fire to fans.

 

In Last Chance To See, it was said that the defense mechanism of the Kakapo to the newly introduced mammals was to sit as still as possible in the face of danger and hope it goes away. I guess not really a defense mechanism, but more wishful thinking But the Kakapo is a really awesome bird; not only did it forget how to fly, it likes to climb in trees and occasionally it forgets that it forgot how to fly and jumps out of the tree at great heights

In case anybody doesn't know: Last Chance To See is a BBC documentary series where Stephen Fry and Mark Carwardine search for almost extinct animals. I really recommend it. They had a bit about kiwis as well in that episode.

As for the other kiwis, they're on of my favorite fruit. Especially the golden kiwis are delicious.

 

The fruit is called "kiwifruit"! Not "kiwi"! How hard is that for you foreigners to understand?? It's like calling a "pineapple" a "pine".

 

Or an apple a manzana? Different countries have different names for the same thing? Or did that change while I wasn't looking?

 

Two Americans in this thread didn't that the Kiwi bird existed, yet everyone else did. I love you guys to bits, but it never ceases to amaze me how insular America is! Genuinely.

 

Maybe if you're talking a different language.

 

Do you call football foot? Or New York New? Or basketball basket.?