50 Fun Facts About Kiwi (Bird)

Kiwi are the only birds in the world with which feature at the very tip of their long beaks?

Nostrils at the beak tip let a kiwi sniff out prey hidden under the soil, and the bird snorts loudly to blow the dirt back out.

Kiwi are about the size of which farmyard bird, yet lay eggs roughly six times bigger?

Chicken-sized though she is, a female kiwi carries an egg that can reach a fifth of her own body weight.

Most birds have hollow bones, but kiwi bones are filled with what, just as in mammals?

Marrow fills a kiwi's bones because a bird that never takes off has no need for a light, air-filled skeleton.

During which conflict did the nickname Kiwis for New Zealand's soldiers come into general use?

World War I spread the name, and by 1917 New Zealanders in general were being called Kiwis in place of older labels such as Enzedder.

Which branch of New Zealand's military has a red kiwi, a flightless bird, in its roundel?

The air force officially adopted the kiwi in 1970, after complaints that the silver fern in its roundel was hard to spot and could be mistaken for a white feather.

Kiwi feathers lack the tiny hooks that lock most plumage together, so they look and feel like what?

Hair is the usual comparison, because the loose, shaggy plumage is warm and fluffy but could never hold a bird in the air.

Relative to body mass, the kiwi has the smallest of which organ among all the world's birds?

Eyes matter so little to a kiwi that completely blind birds have been found living in the wild in good physical condition.

Kiwi shoe polish, named after the flightless bird, was actually first made in which country?

Australia was home to founder William Ramsay, who named his Melbourne-made polish in honour of his wife's homeland.

What must a female kiwi do in the final days before laying, when her huge egg leaves no room?

Stop eating is all she can do, since the egg crowds out her stomach; for the month before that, she eats three times her usual amount.

Before humans, which were New Zealand's only native land mammals, leaving the forest floor to kiwi?

Bats, just three species of them, left the jobs done elsewhere by horses and wolves open to birds, reptiles and insects.

Which animal is the biggest killer of adult kiwi, drawn by a scent it finds irresistible?

Dogs of any size, breed or training can kill a kiwi with nothing more than a playful push, because the bird's chest is so easily crushed.

Which predator, imported to control rabbits, kills about half of all kiwi chicks in many areas?

Stoats stay a danger until a chick weighs about a kilogram, the point at which a young kiwi can usually fight one off.

Which favourite kiwi food, pulled from the soil, can grow to over half a metre long in New Zealand?

Earthworms break easily, so a kiwi pulls gently and then waits, motionless, for its catch to relax its grip on the tunnel.

DNA studies found which extinct giant of Madagascar to be the closest relative of the kiwi?

Elephant bird DNA upended the old assumption that kiwi were closest to the moa that lived alongside them.

Which body part, found on almost every other bird, is completely missing from a kiwi?

A tail is missing in every kiwi species, and only a small bony stub called a pygostyle is left where one would be.

In which country did New Zealand soldiers carve a giant kiwi into a chalk hillside in 1919?

England still has the Bulford Kiwi on Salisbury Plain, cut after riots to keep restless troops busy; its beak alone is 150 feet long.

After leaving the twenty-cent piece in 1990, the kiwi moved to the back of which New Zealand coin?

One dollar coins have carried the bird since 1991, and currency traders have nicknamed the country's money itself the kiwi.

Which of New Zealand's national sports teams is known as the Kiwis, after the bird?

Rugby league took the name; the union side are the All Blacks, the hockey players the Black Sticks and the basketballers the Tall Blacks.

The kiwi's scientific genus name, Apteryx, comes from Ancient Greek words with which meaning?

Wingless is nearly true: the leftover limbs are so small that they vanish completely beneath the bird's shaggy plumage.

The Māori name kiwi is generally thought to be an imitation of which night-time forest sound?

The bird's call gave it the name: the shrill whistle of a male southern brown kiwi is usually written down as kee-wee.

Kiwi are the smallest members of which group of flightless birds, alongside rheas and cassowaries?

Ratites take their name from the Latin for raft, a boat with no keel, because their flat breastbones lack the ridge that anchors flight muscles.

DNA and fossil evidence suggest the small ancestors of the kiwi most likely reached New Zealand how?

By flying is the leading theory: a fossil relative from Otago was smaller than any living kiwi and seems to have been built for the air.

Which bird lays the world's largest egg, yet the smallest for its body size, the reverse of a kiwi?

Ostrich eggs weigh only about 2% of the mother, a tenth of the share that a kiwi egg takes up inside its mother.

Kiwi parents rarely feed their chicks, so what nourishes a newly hatched kiwi for its first days?

Its yolk sac does the job, because a kiwi egg is about 65% yolk, close to double the share found in most other birds' eggs.

In brown kiwi, who alone keeps the egg warm for well over two months?

The father takes over as soon as the egg is laid, and by the time it hatches he has lost a great deal of his body weight.

To soothe skin stretched tight by her enormous egg, a female kiwi may soak her belly in what?

Cold water eases both the inflamed skin and the load; her belly bulges so far that it can touch the ground as she walks.

A single kiwi may keep up to fifty of which daytime shelters dotted across its territory?

Burrows give a kiwi a choice of beds, and great spotted kiwi go further by digging mazes of tunnels with more than one exit.

What grows around the base of a kiwi's beak and helps the bird feel its way through the dark?

Whiskers like a cat's are one of the reasons the kiwi is sometimes described as an honorary mammal.

Which vital sign of the kiwi is unusually low for a bird and sits much closer to a human's?

Body temperature in a kiwi runs at 37 to 38°C, against 39 to 42°C for most birds, which may be why its eggs take so long to hatch.

Māori tradition placed the kiwi under the protection of which god of the forest and its birds?

Tāne Mahuta is why the kiwi is known as the hidden bird of Tāne, and some Māori still regard themselves as the bird's guardians.

Māori weavers traditionally used kiwi feathers to make which prized garment for people of high rank?

Cloaks known as kahu kiwi are still made today, using feathers from captive birds and from kiwi found dead, because the birds are no longer hunted.

Kiwi have unusually big brains, shaped like those of songbirds and which other clever birds?

Parrots are a flattering comparison, though nobody has yet shown kiwi behaving in ways anywhere near as complex.

In the fable of the kiwi leaving the canopy, which bird refused and was marked with a throat tuft?

Tūī feared the dark forest floor in the story, which a New Zealand broadcaster wrote in 1963 using figures from Māori tradition.

Which zoo became the first to keep a kiwi, in 1851, the year of the Great Exhibition?

London Zoo led the way, yet it took until 1945 for kiwi to breed in captivity anywhere.

Working from a skin alone, the artists of the first European picture of a kiwi posed it upright like which bird?

Penguin was the likely model for the plates George Shaw published in 1813, drawn from a skin by artists who had no idea how a living kiwi stood.

Manukura, a kiwi hatched at the Pūkaha wildlife centre, became famous for being which rare colour?

White all over thanks to a rare inherited condition, Manukura was believed to be a male for the first year of her life.

In Dony Permedi's viral animated short about a kiwi, what does the bird nail sideways to a cliff?

Trees fixed sideways turn the kiwi's leap into what looks, from its own point of view, like a glide above a forest.

In the New Zealand Christmas song Sticky Beak the Kiwi, what does the bird insist on pulling?

Santa's sleigh gets a kiwi in the 1961 song whenever presents are delivered south of the equator; a 14-year-old sang the original.

Which American zoo apologised in 2023 after visitors were filmed petting a kiwi under bright lights?

Zoo Miami had been showing a kiwi named Paora in bright light four days a week, to the fury of people back in New Zealand.

Most female birds have just one working organ of which type, while a female kiwi has a pair?

Ovaries come as a working pair in kiwi, and when a female lays two eggs in one clutch each side supplies an egg in turn.

Which weapons do rival kiwi slash each other with in territorial fights that can prove fatal?

Their claws are razor sharp, whereas the beak is a finely tuned scent organ that is far too delicate to risk in a fight.

Scientists once thought kiwi ancestors were aboard when New Zealand split from which supercontinent?

Gondwana drift was the leading explanation from the 1970s, until DNA work in the 2000s pointed to ancestors that turned up much later.

Five little spotted kiwi moved to which island near Wellington in 1912 went on to save the species?

Kapiti Island now holds about 1,200 of the birds, and its surplus has stocked sanctuaries around the country.

Which kiwi species, found near Ōkārito on the South Island's West Coast, was only named in 2003?

Rowi had dwindled to about 165 ageing adults in the 1990s before a hatching programme lifted the population to around 600.

Which fenced Wellington sanctuary returned little spotted kiwi to the North Island mainland in 2000?

Zealandia released about 20 of the birds, the first to live on the North Island mainland since the 19th century.

The little spotted kiwi's Latin name honours which Victorian scientist who coined the word dinosaur?

Richard Owen was honoured in the name Apteryx owenii in 1847, when John Gould described the bird from a specimen shipped to Europe.

Which giant New Zealand raptor, the largest of its kind ever known, probably preyed on kiwi?

Haast's eagle weighed up to 18 kilograms and mainly hunted moa; daytime hunters like it may be one reason kiwi took to feeding after dark.

Which island south of the South Island has tokoeka, kiwi that sometimes forage in the midday sun?

Stewart Island tokoeka are unusual in another way too: they live in family groups, and the young stay for years to help raise siblings.

Which part of a kiwi, with skin as tough as shoe leather, makes up about a third of its weight?

Its legs are heavy and muscular, and an alarmed kiwi can use them to run about as fast as a person.

In which position does a kiwi sleep by day, often with its head turned back against its body?

Standing up is the rule, though a 20-centimetre beak makes tucking the head away look slightly ridiculous.