Wednesday, September 23, 2009

MFS - Strange But True - Creatures / Animals 8

Twitter



The Kakapo (Māori: kākāpō, meaning night parrot), also called owl parrot, is a species of flightless nocturnal parrot endemic to New Zealand. It has finely blotched yellow-green plumage, a distinct facial disc of sensory, vibrissa(whiskers)-like feathers, a large grey beak, short legs, large feet, and wings and a tail of relatively short length. A certain combination of traits makes it unique among its kind—it is the world's only flightless parrot, the heaviest parrot, nocturnal, herbivorous, visibly sexuall dimorphic (is the systematic difference in form between individuals of different sex in the same species)in body size, has a low basal metabolic rate, no male parental care, and is the only parrot to have a polygynous lek((mating arena) breeding system. It is also possibly one of the world's longest-living birds.

Kakapo are critically endangered; as of April 2009, only 125 living individuals are known, most of which have been given names.

Read more about this amazing bird on MFS,with videoclip.

1 comment:

  1. The Kakapo are so cute. It's very sad that they are endangered and only 125 are known to be living. It figures that man's greed is to blame, using there feather and eating them. I don't understand why people would eat them. They don't have much meat. Why wouldn't they just kill something much bigger, like a sheep?

    They are just too cute!!

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts with Thumbnails