#south island education system smth else

[andromedasummer]

ik I'll just google them but WHITE KIWI EXISTS?? there is a white version of that funny birb???

theyre not a SPECIES per say. so, there are five whole officially recognised kind of kiwi!!!

North Island Brown Kiwi:

Tokoeka (Southern Brown Kiwi)

Rowi (Ōkarito Brown Kiwi, the rarest!)

Little Spotted Kiwi

And the Great Spotted Kiwi (Roroa!)

(info on them here)

and then, there's Manukura

First of three white kiwi born in the same wildlife park. She's a North Island Brown Kiwi and her parents both had recessive albinism genes. The conservation and breeding staff had no indication that anything with their genes was different and fully expected a typical north brown kiwi from her egg until she hatched in 2011 and gave everyone a MASSIVE shock. They ended up having two more white kiwi after her (including Mapuna, her little brother!)

"Manukura was born in the Pukaha / Mount Bruce National Wildlife Centre. The bird was born in May 2011 with a rare genetic condition that made it all white, instead of brown

She was named by Rangitāne leader, Mike Kawana; her name is the Māori word for 'chiefly status'." (Wikipedia)

People thought she was a boy at first! Then when she was 1 they realized their mistake. She was beating up male kiwi.

Manakura died in 2020 after having surgery. she stopped eating for a month because she was unable to pass an unfertilized egg and they tried to remove it and then had to remove parts of her ovaries. She's very sorely missed, there were storybooks about her. I believe the other white kiwi live on, which is wonderful.

There are some white Kiwi in the wild! But most Kiwi that dont live in protected parks (where they're bred to increase population) are killed by stoats or rats. It's like a solid 90% of them that pass unfortunately. It's part of the reason Predator Free 2050 is in motion (removal of all introduced vermin harming our native birds and trees. This includes possums, ferrets, stoats and rats which are responsible for 25% of extinct flora and fauna species here in NZ since arriving on boats when colonization began)

Here is another white kiwi dancing in front of one of the many predator monitoring cameras within the sanctuary it lives in.

And if you're asking "Wow, Liv, you know a lot about native birds in NZ" the answer to why that is, is my dad worked for DOC until my mid twenties and as a small autistic child it made conservation efforts the center of my world. So naturally that meant details about Kiwi, Kakapo, Kaka, Huia, Moa etc were locked away in the "INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT PRIMARY INFORMATION" part of my brain along with how to tell a male and female mallard apart, what to do in an earthquake and how to notice and prevent hypothermia and survive until finding help in deep bushland