Meet a Kiwi

Posted on Wednesday, March 18, 2009, at 1:10 pm, by Customer Service Minion #2.

Here at Archelaus we’re not all that wild about seeing animals in cages, which explains why we’ve spent little time over the years exploring the National Zoo, even though it’s nearby and free.

On the other hand, we are big fans of the kiwi — the nocturnal, flightless, and generally peculiar national bird of New Zealand. And since I don’t personally foresee any trips to the Antipodes in my future, it seemed about time to take advantage of the Zoo’s “Meet a Kiwi” program.

I am pleased to say it was worth my time. The kiwi keeper duly produced Manaia — a handsome adult North Island Brown Kiwi who hatched at the Zoo in February 2006 — from a carrier and placed him in an open-topped glass case. The latter had a thick floor of soil, just crawling with juicy worms that Manaia eagerly began to devour. I had spent a fair amount of time reading about kiwis on the Zoo’s website, so I was glad that the keeper had interesting facts to add to what I already knew. One thing I had not fully appreciated was just how alarmingly large a fully-developed kiwi egg is relative to the bird itself. It is frankly astonishing that the female has any room left inside her body cavity for internal organs! I was also intensely interested to learn that DNA studies have established that kiwis are not at all closely related to the regrettably now-extinct moas.

After about fifteen minutes, Manaia had eaten his fill of worms and seemed anxious to find a way out of his glass case. The keeper then dismissed us and returned him to his carrier.

Apart from meeting a kiwi, I was fascinated to see that the Zoo had construction workers in captivity — presumably in response to news reports that the species is now endangered. The workers were housed in an impressively large enclosure, replete with earth-moving equipment and every sort of loose rubbish, just like in the wild.