Classroom lesson 路 Wildlife馃嚦馃嚳 New Zealand

The kiwi - a bird that can't fly

New Zealand's nocturnal national symbol

A brown, fluffy kiwi bird with a long beak standing near a tree at night

Photo 路 Wikimedia Commons

What is it?

The kiwi is New Zealand's national bird - a small, round, brown bird about the size of a chicken. It has tiny useless wings hidden in its feathers, a long pointy beak, and works the night shift while everyone else is asleep. The country loves it so much that 'Kiwi' is also a friendly nickname for a person from New Zealand.

Tell me more

Kiwis can't fly. Their wings are so small you can barely see them - just little stumps under all that fluffy fur-like feathering. But they don't need to fly: long ago New Zealand had no land animals that could harm them, so kiwis got on perfectly well walking around on their strong little legs.

A kiwi has a superpower very rare among birds: a fantastic sense of smell. Most birds smell almost nothing. A kiwi's nostrils are at the very tip of its long beak, and it sniffs along the forest floor in the dark, listening and smelling for worms and bugs underneath the leaves.

Kiwi eggs are absolutely enormous compared to the bird that lays them. A kiwi egg can weigh up to a quarter of the mother's body weight. Imagine a human baby being born already the size of a four-year-old. Scientists have x-rayed kiwi mothers and you can see the egg taking up almost the whole inside of the bird.

Kiwis are mostly nocturnal, which means they sleep in the day and come out at night. If you visit a kiwi house at a zoo, the lights are usually dimmed and red - because in red light the kiwi thinks it's still night, and you get to see it walking around hunting.

In the classroom

Walk your class through this in 15 minutes.

Talk together

Discussion prompts

  1. 01Most birds can fly. What might be the advantage of being a bird that walks instead?
  2. 02A kiwi smells its way around at night. What sense do you rely on most? What if you had to use a different one?
  3. 03Kiwi eggs are huge compared to the mother. Can you think of other animals where the baby is unusually big or small?
Try this

Classroom activity

Mark a circle on the floor the size of a real kiwi (about a rugby ball). Now mark the size of its egg (about a small grapefruit). Hold them next to each other. Discuss: how would it feel if you had to carry around an egg that big inside you?