Caring for the only known full kākāpō feather cloak in the world | Hacker News Reader

Caring for the only known full kākāpō feather cloak in the world

blog.britishmuseum.org

127 pointsThevet77 comments

The 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/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/Takah%C4%93

Yeah 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. :-(

The 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.

I 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/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#/media/File:Nestor_notabil...

You 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

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://slackmojis.com/categories/7-party-parrot-emojis

Thank you for the tip. I will keep an eye out for Sirocco's next tour.

Thanks for linking the picture of the chicks. I had it in my head that they were cockatoo-sized. Such cool birds!

I would describe them as penguin sized :)

If 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

That clip never gets old, Sirocco (the birds name) sure has some attitude.

“Gee, I wonder why they’re going extinct.”

“Ah, that’s why.”

Nothing 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.

Worth 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

Also, 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

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.

For those wondering how to pronounce "kākāpō" in Te Reo the macrons over the vowels make them longer

As 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.

If 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.

Similarly in German, if you can't type an umlaut you can add an e after the affected vowel. (Äpfel -> Aepfel)

Yeah in Māori - kākā, kāka, kakā, and kaka are all different words

That'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.

LOL of course it's in the UK

The British Museum, the biggest collection of stolen goods in the world.

While 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-s...

[1]: https://merip.org/2018/05/preservation-or-plunder-the-isis-f...

[2]: https://www.thedailybeast.com/can-we-digitize-history-before...

[3]: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-17/indians-want-kohinoor...

This 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?

No, I agree with that. I was more responding to the broader British Museum plundering in general (or receiving plunder).

There is some benefit to spreading historical artifacts around to protect them over the long term (i.e. we can't know what any place will look like in 1000 years), but only if there are multiples, and it still has to be given not taken.

I did say that I wasn't clear that this had been plundered (as opposed to purchased), but I'm not sure that matters either. It's a piece of cultural heritage and the British were unwelcome guests.

Similarly, the British say the Kohinoor[0] was transferred legally (surrendered). But if is made under duress and it doesn't seem valid.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koh-i-Noor

I agree with you. I enjoyed this Vox video about how the British Museum holds many artifacts that were stolen. [0]

https://youtu.be/hoTxiRWrvp8

Except most of the places that they took artefacts from are not warzones, or under threat of war. Egypy, Greece, Nigeria, Turkey, the US, India, China, South Africa etc etc all have the capabilities to take back and house their treasures safely. It is purely British arrogance to think that many other countries don't treasure these objects nor able to look after them.

I think preservation vs plunder argument is an easy copout for those that are keeping stolen goods.

Seriously, the argument is ludicrous. I'm open to the idea that stability is important, but Britain isn't even the best candidate for that. Brits who make this argument don't seem to be very aware of their own history, as they was bombed quite badly in the 40s, causing damage https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/collections/world-museum...

Even if you accept this premise, there are a good handful of other countries relatively untouched by war/instability that would be safer homes. The argument is a thin fig leaf.

It’s literally what kids say to each other in the playground when called out for taking things that aren’t theirs. “I’m just looking after it”.

The British Museum has absolutely no self-awareness:

> How do you set about conserving an extremely fragile Māori cloak, made from the feathers of a critically endangered parrot, while observing culturally appropriate practices?

Obviously, by locating it in a place over 10km from where most Māori live so actual Māori will never see it. It's like satire.

I think most Maori could make it 10 kilometers :p

Also, this is a cooperation with the NZ national museum, I'd expect them to know what they're doing

Maybe OP means 10,000 miles?

10,000km, but yes.

Obviously, that should be 10,000km. :-)

Wouldn't it be more sensible to send the conservation specialists across the world rather than the irreplaceable one-of-a-kind artifact?

Labor 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.

> 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)

> 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?

I 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.

See also the annual kākāpō population report: https://www.doc.govt.nz/our-work/monitoring-reporting/nation...

Is it possible to extract DNA from the feathers of this cloak in order to create some sort of genetic repository?

The native Hawaiians did something similar and killed almost all of their honeyeaters to make feather cloaks

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