North Island brown kiwi (Apteryx mantelli)

Species: North Island brown kiwi (Apteryx mantelli)

Status: Endangered (EN)

Interesting Fact: The North Island brown kiwi is more like a mammal than a bird, with fur-like feathers, muscular legs and even cat-like whiskers on its face.

Kiwis are the national bird of New Zealand, and are some of the most unusual of all birds. One of five kiwi species, the North Island brown kiwi is flightless and lives on the ground, where it shelters in a burrow during the day. Its long, thin bill has sensory pits at the end which can detect prey moving underground, while, uniquely among birds, the nostrils are located at the end of the bill, helping the kiwi to locate prey by smell. North Island brown kiwis typically mate for life, and the female produces one of the largest eggs of any bird relative to her own size. The male incubates the eggs, and the chicks hatch fully feathered and are soon able to fend for themselves.

The North Island brown kiwi has undergone a dramatic decline over the last century, largely due to predation by introduced mammals such as dogs, cats and stoats. Fortunately, this intriguing bird has been the subject of concerted conservation efforts, including predator control and the incubation of eggs and rearing of chicks in captivity. Kiwi sanctuaries have also been established to help protect it. Where active conservation has taken place, kiwi numbers have rebounded, giving hope that this national icon can survive into the future.

Find out more about kiwi conservation at Kiwis for Kiwi.

Read about other nocturnal species and about WWF’s Earth Hour on the ARKive blog.

See images and videos of the North Island brown kiwi on ARKive.

Do you have a favourite species? Why not join our campaign to find the World’s Favourite Species and nominate it today!

Liz Shaw, ARKive Text Author

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SATURDAY 23rd

MARCH   8:30  PM

EARTH  HOUR  2013

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Don’t miss it! For one hour only – your chance to show your support to protect our amazing planet!

This Saturday 23rd March, 8:30 pm local time marks the beginning of the 8th annual WWF Earth Hour. As we switch off our lights for one hour, we are asked this year to think about our energy usage and the desperate need to move from burning high-carbon fossil fuels to using clean renewable energy. This action is symbolic of the fact that ‘together our individual actions add up to make a difference collectively’.

7,001 towns and cities in 152 countries are taking part, so join us and millions of others on Saturday to show your support for the switch to renewable energy.

This aye-aye will be able to see us all the better in the dark …

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Last week saw the ExCel centre in London host the 5th annual Big Bang Fair, the largest celebration of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) for young people in the UK. The aim of the fair is to introduce young people to the wide range of career opportunities available in STEM subjects and quite simply show them how awesome STEM can be. Once again, the ARKive team were delighted to attend, and spent four fun-filled days engaging with the next generation of scientists.

Over the course of the event, 65,000 visitors descended upon the show floor to take part in all that the Big Bang has to offer, including 60 interactive activity stands and 88 workshop sessions from 180 different organisations. Along with the hordes of children, parents and teachers, the Big Bang Fair also welcomed a famous face or two, including David Cameron, Professor Brian Cox, TV Presenter Liz Bonnin and Business Secretary Vince Cable who opened the fair on Thursday morning. Of course, the two most exciting VIPs in attendance were our very own science superheroes Root and Flora, members of Team WILD’s elite conservation task force.

Root and Flora’s mission at the fair was to help the rest of the ARKive team recruit new members for Team WILD, an exciting new online game which aims to introduce young people to both environmental issues and potential job opportunities in conservation. Through the power of stickers (number distributed: 1,661), word quickly spread around the fair and the number of Team WILD recruits rose rapidly. The new team members soon proved themselves to be of a high calibre, achieving some very impressive high scores. Due to these incredible scores, Team WILD decided to award one special commendation to the top scorer in each of the four mini-games. These prestigious awards go to the following rookie recruits:

Jungle
Daniel Nichols: 1,237

Aquatic
George Murray: 2,278

Deforested
Elliott: 2,297

Savannah
James: 2,319

Massive congratulations to everybody at the fair who came along to take the Team WILD challenge. For those of you who didn’t get a chance to play on the day, or for those of you who want to try and smash your current high scores, why not head over to our Team WILD page and give it a go! If you need any convincing, Team WILD was described by one young fan as being ‘like Super Mario, but with animals’…what could be better?!

Missed out on The Big Bang Fair this year? Keep an eye on the official website for information about next year’s fair and for details on other similar events near you. See you all next year!

The ARKive STEM Team

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Earth’s most precious resource?

Water is essential to life on Earth. However, our insatiable demand is putting water, one of our most precious natural resources, at risk.

The enormous growth in the human population over recent decades is placing a huge strain on the world’s freshwater reserves, with our global consumption of water for food production, energy, industrial and domestic uses beginning to reach what are thought to be unsustainable levels. Similarly, rapid urbanisation, pollution and climate change are all exacerbating the problem, further threatening one of the world’s most vital resources.

World Water Day 2013

To draw attention to the importance of freshwater and the need for sustainable management of the world’s freshwater resources, the United Nations (UN) has designated 22 March ‘World Water Day’.

Held annually, World Water Day gives people all around the world the opportunity to take action to raise awareness on water issues and improve the management of the world’s water resources. In 2013, in reflection of the International Year of Water Cooperation, World Water Day is also dedicated to the theme of cooperation around water.

See how you can get involved!

To celebrate International Year of Water Cooperation, World Water Day is also dedicated to the theme of cooperation around water. This courting great crested grebe pair have clearly got the hang of the importance of sharing our finite freshwater resources!

Calling all budding young filmmakers in the UK!

Celebrate World Water Day at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust with the launch of ‘Hot Water’, a competition with a mission: Can young people create a film that will transform our water-wasting ways?

To kick things off on World Water Day, Cool It Schools is launching ‘Hot Water’. Young people from all over the UK are invited to create an inspirational, behaviour-changing film of TV advert length (no more than 50 seconds) that will aim to help put a stop to our bad water habits once and for all.

Find out more about the ‘Hot Water’ competition and see how you can enter.

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Scientists in Australia have successfully cloned embryos of a unique but extinct species of frog that gives birth through its mouth.

Gastric brooder

The subject of this ground-breaking research is the southern gastric-brooding frog, also known as the platypus frog, one of only two known amphibian species that swallows its eggs and broods its young in its stomach. Following this remarkable behaviour, this strange amphibian, once a native of Australia’s rainforests, would then give birth through its mouth.

Unfortunately, this intriguing amphibian species went extinct in 1983, although the reasons for its disappearance remain unclear, with loss of habitat, pollution and parasites all being put forward as possible causes. This new and exciting research by scientists at the University of Newcastle, Australia, has sparked the possibility that this unusual species, once thought lost forever, could exist once again.

The southern gastric-brooding frog went extinct in the 1980s

Lazarus Project

The team of researchers on the aptly named ‘Lazarus Project’ were able to recover cell nuclei from samples of frozen frog tissue which had been collected in the 1970s. These nuclei were then implanted into fresh eggs from a related, extant frog species, the great barred frog, after which some of the eggs developed into an early embryo stage. Although none of these embryos survived for longer than a few days, the results are both ground-breaking and encouraging, with the scientists believing that this research could eventually lead to the resurrection of the extinct frog.

“We are watching Lazarus arise from the dead, step by exciting step,” said University of New South Wales Professor Mike Archer, leader of the Lazarus Project. “We’ve reactivated dead cells into living ones and revived the extinct frog’s genome in the process. Now we have fresh cryo-preserved cells of the extinct frog to use in future cloning experiments.”

The golden toad is also thought to have gone extinct in the 1980s

Archer and his team are confident that the hurdles faced by the Lazarus Project are technological and not biological, and that the project will ultimately be successful.

“Importantly, we’ve demonstrated already the great promise this technology has as a conservation tool when hundreds of the world’s amphibian species are in catastrophic decline,” he said.

While bringing a biological curiosity back to life would, in itself, be a remarkable and exciting achievement, the work being carried out may also have wider-reaching implications. The southern gastric-brooding frog’s ability to shut down the secretion of its digestive acids has long fascinated scientists, and further research into this incredible trait could prove useful in developing treatments for gastric ulcers in humans.

The cloning of the southern gastric-brooding frog was announced a few days ago at the TEDx DeExtinction event in Washington, DC, which was attended by researchers from across the globe working towards resurrecting other extinct species including the woolly mammoth, dodo, Cuban red macaw and New Zealand’s giant moa.

Read more on this story at abc News – Frog that gives birth through mouth to be brought back from extinction and Mongabay – Scientists clone extinct frog that births young from its mouth.

View photos and videos of the southern gastric-brooding frog on ARKive.

Kathryn Pintus, ARKive Text Author

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