Where does Kiwi (the bird) come from?
The kiwi comes from New Zealand and lives nowhere else in the wild. This small flightless bird is so closely tied to its country that New Zealanders themselves are known around the world as Kiwis.
A bird in a land of birds
Before people arrived, in the 13th century or earlier, New Zealand's only native mammals were three species of bat, and birds filled many of the roles that mammals play elsewhere. The kiwi took to the forest floor. It is the smallest of the ratites, a group of flightless birds, and its tiny wings are hidden under hair-like feathers. Its bones hold marrow, like a mammal's, and it is the only bird with nostrils at the tip of its long beak, which it uses to sniff out worms and grubs.
Five species, one icon
There are five species of kiwi. The brown kiwi lives on the North Island, the great spotted kiwi only in the top half of the South Island, and the rowi is down to a single natural population. About 70,000 kiwi are left. On the mainland stoats cause about half of all chick deaths, and dogs are the biggest danger to adults. Where predators are controlled, numbers are rising. To Māori the kiwi is a taonga, a treasure, and its feathers are woven into cloaks for people of high rank.
Why people think of Australia
Australia is New Zealand's big neighbour, and it has flightless birds of its own: the kiwi is related to the cassowaries there. For a long time scientists assumed the kiwi's closest relatives were the moa, the giant flightless birds that shared New Zealand with it. DNA studies showed otherwise: its nearest kin are the extinct elephant birds of Madagascar. A small fossil relative found in New Zealand, described in 2013, was probably able to fly, which suggests the kiwi's ancestors flew to New Zealand on their own.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org ↗ · doc.govt.nz › kiwi ↗ · doc.govt.nz › facts ↗
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