The Kakapo, in the Māori language kākāpō, which translates to mean night parrot, was classified by George Robert Gray in 1845, an English Zoologist and author, with its scientific name being Strigops habroptila. The Kakapo, often referred to as owl parrot, is New Zealand’s species of large nocturnal flightless parrot. The plumage of the Kakapo is beautiful by having very finely blotched yellow and green feathers, with a facial disc of sensory vibrissa like feathers. The night parrot is characterized by its large grey beak, its short legs with disproportionately large size feet, and shortened wings and tail relative to its body length.
The Kakapo is the world’s only flightless parrot, also the heaviest parrot, which carries on as a nocturnal and herbivorous life. Quite possibly, the Kakapo is one of the world’s longest living bird species but further research needs to be conducted to prove this claim. The anatomy of the night parrot is synonymous and typical of a bird evolving on oceanic islands that has both few predators and has an abundant food supply. The physique of the Kakapo is robust with the enlargement of thermodynamic efficiency that sacrifices its ability to take flight, including the reduction of its wing muscles and a diminished keel on the parrot’s sternum.
As of June 2011, there are only 131 known Kakapo to exist making it one of the most critically endangered species on the planet. Most of the Kakapo parrots that are individually known of have been given names to easily and quickly identify them in the field to the researchers. Historically, around 82 million years ago when New Zealand’s land mass broke off from Gondwana, the common ancestor of Kakapo and the genus Nestor had become stranded and isolated from all other parrot species. Then around 70 million years ago, the Kakapo diverged from the genus Nestor, and over the course of evolution, the night parrot lost its ability to fly from the absence of mammalian predator species. However, with the European and Polynesian colonization of New Zealand, the Kakapo was introduced to cats, ferrets, stoats and rats as predators that almost completely erradicated their species. Beginning in the late 1890s, conservation efforts had begun to rescue this flightless parrot from extinction. Then in the 1980s, the Kakapo Recovery Plan was implemented and the then surviving night parrots were placed and closely monitored on the predator free islands of Codfish and Anchor.
For the indigenous Māori people, the Kakapo, along with many other native bird species, were historically important to their traditional way of life, folklore and legends. While the Kakapo parrot was still widespread, it was then hunted by the Māori for use as a food source and was considered to be a delicacy. Also, the Māori utilized the parrot’s beautiful feathers in producing valuable pieces of clothing. Despite the Kakapo being used as a food supply and its feathers being used to make clothing, the Māori truly considered the night parrot to be like a pet. Even George Edward Grey remarked in a letter written to a close associate that his affinity for his pet Kakapo was “more like that of a dog than a bird.”
Credit For First Header Graphic of Kakapo Parrot (GFDL & CC ShareAlike 2.0); Credit For Second Header Graphic of Kakapo Parrot (GFDL & CC ShareAlike 2.0)