Short-tailed bats Morepork Weta Kauri Snails Puriri Moths New Zealand Native Frogs Kakapo

Short-Tailed Bat (Mystacina tuberculata)
New Zealand has just two native land mammals – both of them bats, and both of them found nowhere else in the world.  There used to be three species, but one is now extinct.

Best guess is that our bats have been around for 70-80 million years.

The smaller of the two remaining species is the endangered short-tailed bat, which is divided into three races. The northern race is found in Northland and Little Barrier Island; the Volcanic Plateau race is in the central North Island; and the southern race is found on islands off Stewart Island.

They have a very varied diet, and a various ways to gather their food. Sometimes they are aerial hunters, using high-pitched sonar squeaks to locate and catch moths and other insects.  Sometimes they crawl along branches and tree trunks, searching for insects, succulent fruits and nectar from blossoms.  And oddly, sometimes they forage on the ground, folding their wings underneath their forearms and using them like front legs to scurry through the leaf litter hunting insects and crustacea.
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Morepork (Ninox novaeseelandiae)
New Zealand’s only surviving native owl is the morepork.  The larger native laughing owl is thought to be extinct.

Although morepork are nocturnal, they can sometimes be seen perching in a shady spot during the day.  Unlike the laughing owl, the morepork has adapted well to the arrival of people in New Zealand and is common throughout the country. 

Its plaintive call, "more-pork", can be heard from urban parks and pine plantations, as well as its natural habitat of native bush.

Morepork are effective nocturnal predators.  Unlike most birds, both eyes look straight ahead, and their head can swivel 270 degrees each way, giving an excellent field of vision. Their path through the forest is almost silent thanks to downy edges on their large flight feathers that dampen the sound.  This gives them the stealth advantage when swooping down on unsuspecting insects, small birds and mammals.
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Weta

One species, the rare giant weta, Deinacrida heteracantha, is the size of a mouse and holds the record as New Zealand's biggest endemic insect.

Weta are fierce looking relatives of grasshoppers, locusts, katydids and crickets.  New Zealand has about 100 different kinds, split into two families – cave weta and true weta.

In the absence of most small land mammals, weta evolved to occupy the niches these animals fill elsewhere.

Although described as omnivorous, different weta species enjoy different diets.  For example, tree weta and giant weta are mostly vegetarian. Ground weta and tusked weta are almost entirely carnivorous.  While cave weta are omnivorous scavengers.

At night weta emerge from their hiding places to feed.  You can sometimes hear the peculiar rasping sound they make by rubbing their hind legs against ridges on the side of their body.  When threatened, weta raises its spine-studded hind legs and make a rasping sound to frighten off attackers.
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Kauri Snail (Paryphanta busbyi)
The carnivorous kauri snail (Paryphanta), comes out at night to feed on earthworms, slugs and small snails.  It envelops its prey, suffocating and crushing it as it withdraws back into its shell.  It then devours its meal with the help of its tongue-like radula.  This looks like a ribbon covered with thousands of tiny rasping teeth, something like a cat's tongue.

Kauri snails are found only in northern New Zealand.

The shell of the kauri snail grows to a diameter of 75-millimetres, and is shaped like a flattened spiral. Stripes and spirals pattern the rich brown and ochre-coloured shell.

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Puriri Moth (Anetus virescens)
Of the more than 1500 different moths in New Zealand, the biggest and most spectacular is the puriri or ghost moth of the North Island.

The female’s wingspan can be up to 15-centimetres, its pale velvety-green colour very ghost-like.

Puriri moth caterpillars feed on the wood of puriri trees and many other species including maire, manuka, wineberry, southern beech, oak and apple.  They dig burrows up to 30-centimetres long.

The caterpillar stage can last five years.  When the adult moth finally emerges, on warm humid evenings from September to November, it lives for only a couple of nights, long enough to breed.  It does not feed, as its mouth parts do not work, but an unlucky puriri moth will make a fine meal for a morepork.
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New Zealand Native Frogs (Leiopelma spp.)
New Zealand’s three species of native frog are all ancient and primitive - on Earth before humans, yet only "discovered" in 1852.

All three species are rare, nocturnal, silent and tiny in comparison with other frogs.  Each measures no more than 5-centimetres in length.

New Zealand’s frogs are very important scientifically because, like kiwi and tuatara, they have remained virtually unchanged for millions of years.  They are the only living representatives of ancient amphibian groups long since disappeared.  Fossil records show the only change is that today’s frogs have shrunk a bit over the millennia.

The three species occupy a wide range of habitats, from forest streams to rocky areas at high altitudes.

One special feature of New Zealand’s frogs is their fingers, which are fully or partially unwebbed.  Another is their lack of croak - no vocal sacs means the best they can manage is a weak squeak.  Unlike other frogs, our three retain their tadpole tail-waggling muscles, even as adults.  And eggs are laid in clusters of up to 11 in damp shady places, under stones or logs, not under water as with other frogs. Tadpoles develop fully within the gelatinous egg, emerging once they are mini-frogs and able to live independently. 

The frogs eat insects, spiders and other small invertebrates, including worms and slugs.
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Kakapo (Strigops habroptilus)
The critically endangered kakapo, New Zealand's large, flightless, nocturnal green and yellow parrot, is one of our rarest birds.  Although once numerous, the ground nester succumbed to the mammal predators that arrived with humans, its eggs and chicks decimated by rats, cats and stoats.

Although a notoriously slow breeder, intensive management has successfully seen kakapo numbers rise from fewer than 50 to 86.

The vegetarian kakapo eats a wide variety of fruits, seeds, leaves, stems and roots.

Kakapo are lek breeders.  This means male kakapo gather together to loudly advertise their presence to females, in a booming courtship competition. Males establish a track along a ridge, with a series of shallow bowls in the dirt.  From these bowls they puff themselves up and begin to utter loud low-pitched 'booms' that resonate through the dark for hours on end. Females choose a partner from the various competing males, trekking up to their ridgetop bowl to mate.  Having done the deed, the male plays no further role in the care of eggs or chicks.
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