This Parrot Will Do Anything

**Dakota Valkyrie** · February 27th, 2012, 05:36 PM

This is the worst reproductive strategy in the animal kingdom

Think pandas are inept when it comes to carrying on the species? Think again. The giant panda is a champion reproducer compared to a chubby, land-bound parrot called the kakapo. Between navigational problems, botanical problems, and the occasions when horny male parrots try to have sex with animals that can kill them, this is the most hopelessly inefficient reproducer on Earth.

It's not entirely the kakapo's fault that its entire species consists of one hundred and twenty-seven animals. The eight-pound parrot had evolved in ancient New Zealand, where it kept to itself, staying away from other animals even of its own species, obsessively clipped trails to its mating habitat, and developed a bright green cloak of feathers that so perfectly matched the surrounding undergrowth that you could look right at it and not see it. The bird's stumbling block is, if you do see it, it doesn't have the instincts to do anything useful. It can freeze. It can, and more friendly species will, come right up to you. And it can, if alarmed, run up into a tree (It's an excellent climber.) and jump out to fly away. It can't fly, and so it lands in a heap on the ground, but it will attempt to fly, if stressed out. It's trying to do its part.
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It's a hard life, and the female kakapo aren't going to make it any harder by bringing on chicks. It's only when they get a specific burst of food that the females will be interested in mating. Their favorite food, the food they eat almost exclusively when it's in season, is the fruit of the rimu tree. The rimu is a tall green tree with its fruit in the canopy, and so kakapos scale the entire thing to finally get enough food in them to make them horny. The problem is, the rimu fruits roughly every few years. And the kakapo will only mate in a high-fruit year. Occasionally there will be females fed enough to think about getting a little something every two years. More often, it's every five years.
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Very interesting article (IMO): http://io9.com/5886679/this-is-the-w...animal-kingdom

The video is hilarious.

**gee** · February 27th, 2012, 05:48 PM

DV that was too funny.

**cubby** · February 27th, 2012, 06:19 PM

The article is is very informative and hilarious, too!

Poor Kakapo, fat, dumb and happy. they list all the way the Kakapo is helping itself into extinction. Even when they discovered that the Kakapo would mate more if they had more of their favorite food, it seems that the fatter the female the more likely she was to produce only male chicks!

**malq** · February 27th, 2012, 09:01 PM

Originally Posted by cubby

The article is is very informative and hilarious, too!

Poor Kakapo, fat, dumb and happy. they list all the way the Kakapo is helping itself into extinction. Even when they discovered that the Kakapo would mate more if they had more of their favorite food, it seems that the fatter the female the more likely she was to produce only male chicks!

That's why some guys get laid. It is easy to keep chicks fed with the advent of late night fast food.