How to Raise the Rarest Kiwi

[Judi Lynn]

Thanks to a long-running plan to rear their chicks in captivity, these national icons are bouncing back from the edge of extinction.

A five-day-old kiwi chick
Kami the kiwi, five days oldWest Coast Wildlife Center

ED YONG 4:30 AM ET

FRANZ JOSEF, NEW ZEALAND—When I first see the kiwi chick, I briefly wonder if I’m actually looking at a real animal. It’s a grapefruit-sized sphere of fluff with an adorably short version of an adult’s long beak. When it sits still in its dark, red-lit enclosure, it looks indistinguishable from some of the plush toys that fill New Zealand’s gift shops.

Unlike the chicks of most birds, the kiwi’s surprisingly mobile and self-sufficient, even though it hatched just six days ago. It’s too early to tell if it’s male or female, but it already has a name: Kami, after a Maori word that means “force of nature.” And it will soon have company. In the room next door, 22 more kiwi eggs are incubating in an artificial chamber.

I’m in the West Coast Wildlife Center, a stark black-and-lime building in Franz Josef, on the western flank of New Zealand’s South Island. Most of the people in this town have come to trek the glaciers that smear the landscape. But some are here for the kiwis. As part of Operation Nest Egg, a 23-year project to save New Zealand’s most iconic animal, rangers and volunteers capture the eggs of wild kiwis, incubate them in captivity, and rear the chicks till they’re large enough to fend for themselves.

For millions of years, they had little to fend against. The only land mammals in New Zealand were bats, so kiwis evolved to fill the niche that's typically occupied by shrews and hedgehogs, becoming honorary mammals. With their tiny vestigial wings, bristly feathers, and heavy marrow-filled bones, they can’t fly. Then again, they don’t need to. Their attention lies not in the meters above the ground, but in the inches below it, which they explore with long bills that have nostrils at their tip. They use their exceptional sense of smell to probe for worms and insects, and they move with a steady deliberation that belies their bumbling exterior.

More:
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/09/how-to-raise-the-rarest-kiwi/540387/

[Rhiannon12866]

1. Thanks for posting this good news!

And I agree that they are adorable!

[hunter]

2. Kiwi "etiquette" sounds rough.

Beware the claws.