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Caring for the only known full kākāpō feather cloak in the world
- PostOnce 4y agoThe total # of kakapo on earth is now about 200, the recovery program has brought that up from about 60 birds 20 years ago history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C4%81k%C4%81p%C5%8D#/media/File:Kakapo-population-size.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C4%81k%C4%81p%C5%8D#/media/F... They're flightless, it doesn't help them escape rats, cats, and stoats. Despite all of that, I can still appreciate how incredible a brand-new kakapo cloak must have looked. Perhaps one day they will again number in the thousands. There are islands with no rats or predators where they can breed safely, now. Related trivia: the Takahe was thought to be extinct until someone went far inland to a remote valley in the 1940s and found a population there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C4%81k%C4%81p%C5%8D https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C4%81k%C4%81p%C5%8D https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takah%C4%93 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takah%C4%93
- olliej 4y agoYeah alas they evolved while essentially the only predators were birds, for which the strategy of being very still and looking like dense forest floor was effective. Then people came with rats and what not, and the English brought things like stoats and rabbits for hunting. :-(
- tialaramex 4y agoThe history of the rats is interesting too. The first human settlers probably brought rats, and successive waves of settlers bring more, and better, rats. When Europeans show up, they too bring new rats. But we today might get the idea it's all their fault, they're just the last straw. If you're a moderately successful Pacific rat living on Aotearoa and white settlers just showed up on a boat then even though you're an invasive pest the rats on that boat are as a big a threat to you as to the native wildlife.
- teruakohatu 4y agoI have only seen taxidermied Kākāpō in museums, but they are quite impressive giant green flightless parrots. To get an idea of the size, here are chicks with a DoC worker: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C4%81k%C4%81p%C5%8D#/media/File:Stephen_Bragg_with_kakapo_chicks.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C4%81k%C4%81p%C5%8D#/media/F... Of course I can't not mention our other more famous green parrot, the Kea, who are best known for dismantling cars in their spare time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kea#/media/File:Nestor_notabilis_-_damaging_car.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kea#/media/File:Nestor_notabil...
- richdougherty 4y agoYou may be able to see a real-life kākāpō by booking to see Sirocco, New Zealand's official spokesbird for conservation. I saw him once and he's pretty cool! Not sure if he's touring at the moment. https://twitter.com/spokesbird https://twitter.com/spokesbird It wasn't quite as exciting as when Stephen Fry's film crew met him. The video of that encounter is the origin of the Party Parrot emote which you might have seen on Slack. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T1vfsHYiKY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T1vfsHYiKY https://slackmojis.com/categories/7-party-parrot-emojis https://slackmojis.com/categories/7-party-parrot-emojis
- teruakohatu 4y agoThank you for the tip. I will keep an eye out for Sirocco's next tour.
- msrenee 4y agoThanks for linking the picture of the chicks. I had it in my head that they were cockatoo-sized. Such cool birds!
- teruakohatu 4y agoI would describe them as penguin sized :)
- olliej 4y ago
- UberFly 4y agoIt's pretty clear that you didn't bother to read the article.
- olliej 4y agoHaha, oh no I did indeed skip it reflexively this time. womp womp. :(
- Rebelgecko 4y agoThe British Museum was literally asked to help restore it, it's not like they're keeping it forever (only until 2023 it sounds like?)
- AbrahamParangi 4y agoTo be fair, the British Museum is literally full of looted artifacts. Here’s a highly abridged list: https://www.insider.com/british-empire-stole-cultural-artifacts-colonialism-repatriation-parthenon-benin-rosetta-2022-9?amp https://www.insider.com/british-empire-stole-cultural-artifa...
- bee_rider 4y agoMost of the British people who looted the planet are dead by now. As a result of tending to their ill-gotten gains, their descendants learned something about preserving priceless cultural artifacts. While it would be preferable that the looting had never occurred in the first place, hard to hate on the current museum keepers.
- AbrahamParangi 4y ago
- metadat 4y agoSee also the annual kākāpō population report: https://www.doc.govt.nz/our-work/monitoring-reporting/national-status-and-trend-reports-2019-2020/kakapo-2019-2020/ https://www.doc.govt.nz/our-work/monitoring-reporting/nation...
- AbrahamParangi 4y ago
- kemayo 4y agoIf you're like me, you may mostly recognize kākāpō from a video that has gone viral a few times of one attempting to mate with a documentary cameraman's head: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T1vfsHYiKY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T1vfsHYiKY
- rdc12 4y agoThat clip never gets old, Sirocco (the birds name) sure has some attitude.
- ceejayoz 4y ago“Gee, I wonder why they’re going extinct.” “Ah, that’s why.”
- jrootabega 4y agoNothing wrong with a few false positives from the males, evolutionarily speaking! I'd say the species that's in trouble is the one whose males HAVEN'T tried copulating with some other species or inanimate object.
- CPLX 4y agoWorth noting as well is the involvement of Douglas Adams in the whole affair. The documentary linked in that clip is called “Last Chance to See” and is an outgrowth of an earlier collaboration between Adams and the BBC, which also included a book by Adams that I highly recommend. The Kakapo is a prominent character. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Chance_to_See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Chance_to_See
- ghostly_s 4y agoWouldn't it be more sensible to send the conservation specialists across the world rather than the irreplaceable one-of-a-kind artifact?
- jiveturkey 4y agoLabor and even facilities aren't free. Not that Perth doesn't have something, but perhaps in London they have world-class facilities and expertise. You really think they didn't consider doing the work where the cloak sat? I doubt they shipped it parcel post. The end result is that the cloak will be on public display. TFA says that the museum where it will be shown isn't finished construction yet. The cloak will be on display at PMAG in Scotland, until the new museum construction is done (2024). After that, I imagine in the future it might even do a world tour, as many irreplaceable antiquities do.
- wutbrodo 4y ago> You really think they didn't consider doing the work where the cloak sat? We're talking about the British deciding where to store other cultures' artifacts? What makes you think a sober look at the quality of conservation facilities would be the deciding factor? (Though it's important to note that the thread's premise is wrong, as the article refers to Perth, Scotland, not Perth, Aus)
- jiveturkey 4y ago> We're talking about the British deciding where to store other cultures' artifacts? No, unless I misinterpreted my parent. We're talking about where the British are /restoring/ other culture's (culture singular) artifacts. And who said the British decided it?
- postingawayonhn 4y agoI believe the cloak was in the UK the whole time. Are you getting confused about the references to Perth? They're talking about Perth, Scotland.
- qq66 4y agoLOL of course it's in the UK
- mad_tortoise 4y agoThe British Museum, the biggest collection of stolen goods in the world.
- vertis 4y agoWhile I was thinking the same thing, it's not clear to me that this particular example was stolen. I'm also torn, because one the one hand the plundered items the British Museum and other UK museums hold should be returned. On the other hand, being outside locations where they might be destroyed[0] e.g. Iraq,Syria, and also the sheer budget and technique to preserve things are both arguments to keep the collection the way it is. The preservation vs plunder is a long running argument[1]. Modern techniques enable digitizing[2], but that wasn't available previously. Digitizing is a path forward that's less controversial (though still isn't quite the same). Then there is the Kohinoor[3]. Let's chalk that one under colonial plunder. [0]: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22530125-000-can-we-save-history-from-isis-vandals/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22530125-000-can-we-s... [1]: https://merip.org/2018/05/preservation-or-plunder-the-isis-files-and-a-history-of-heritage-removal-in-iraq/ https://merip.org/2018/05/preservation-or-plunder-the-isis-f... [2]: https://www.thedailybeast.com/can-we-digitize-history-before-isis-destroys-it https://www.thedailybeast.com/can-we-digitize-history-before... [3]: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-17/indians-want-kohinoor-diamond-back-from-king-charles-iii/101430400 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-17/indians-want-kohinoor...
- runako 4y agoThis argument definitely doesn't hold water for Māori artifacts. Or is the thinking that New Zealand doesn't have the budget or technique to preserve artifacts like this? Or that curators won't fly to New Zealand to work on extremely rare artifacts like this?
- 4y ago
- Taniwha 4y agoFor those wondering how to pronounce "kākāpō" in Te Reo the macrons over the vowels make them longer
- sacrosancty 4y agoAs with the German umlaut and the Chinese pinyin tone marks, it's also easiest to ignore ;) New Zealand has a few generations of people who pronounce Maori words by ignoring the macrons and with more English-like vowel sounds. It's as if the language has changed but there are perfectionists trying to spread popularity of the official pronunciation too.
- eythian 4y agoIf you ignore German umlauts, you can end up with words that sound quite different. The same goes with the Māori macron, it can outright change the meaning of a word. If you can't type them easily, you can double the vowel (Maaori), which also makes the sound change more obvious.
- drewzero1 4y agoSimilarly in German, if you can't type an umlaut you can add an e after the affected vowel. (Äpfel -> Aepfel)
- Taniwha 4y agoYeah in Māori - kākā, kāka, kakā, and kaka are all different words
- sacrosancty 4y agoThat's what redundancy in language is for. You hear this kind of vowel and emphasis mistake all the time in non-native English speakers and we can mostly work out what they mean from context.
- csunbird 4y agoAlso, there is a meme video about those parrot species, a male parrot mistakes a zoologist to be a female parrot, and attempts intercourse with him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T1vfsHYiKY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T1vfsHYiKY The shaking parrot head emote with rainbow coloring in Slack is from this video :) Edit: Realized that someone already posted the video here below in the comments.
- peanut_worm 4y agoThe native Hawaiians did something similar and killed almost all of their honeyeaters to make feather cloaks
- BitwiseFool 4y agoIs it possible to extract DNA from the feathers of this cloak in order to create some sort of genetic repository?