While whiling away my time in Wellington waiting for the Satriani concert, I thought I'd pop in to Te Papa, our national museum. And it occurred to me that the Kakapo, our native ground dwelling parrot, is wearing DPM!
Given the recent change (here in the UK at least) from DPM to Multicam, do we know if the parrot is planning to change it's feathers? I think we should be told.
Thanks Drax, I'll look it up. New Zealand is pretty unique in that we had no large predator mammals, so so long as our birds could hide from the Haast Eagle (biggest eagle ever, going on the bones) the ground was quite safe. Unless you were a Moa, and too jolly big to hide. Then you had to worry about, well, the Haast Eagle.
Now we know where the pattern comes from. And the whole time I thought engineers at the MOD developed it!
ReplyDeleteNah, just copied from nature. Like Velcro!
DeleteGiven the recent change (here in the UK at least) from DPM to Multicam, do we know if the parrot is planning to change it's feathers? I think we should be told.
ReplyDeleteUmm...we'll look into it for you...
DeleteMaybe they're not as endangered as we think, perhaps they're just really good at hiding!
ReplyDeletePerhaps!
Delete(Actually, no - they're big, fat, slow and stationary eggs and young chicks are no match for Polynesian rats and European stoats. Bother it.)
Smashing!
ReplyDeleteYou might find this old post of mine of interest - there's a link in it about natural camo: somethng about which I'm extremely interested...
http://admiraldrax.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/106-camoflage-theory.html
Thanks Drax, I'll look it up. New Zealand is pretty unique in that we had no large predator mammals, so so long as our birds could hide from the Haast Eagle (biggest eagle ever, going on the bones) the ground was quite safe. Unless you were a Moa, and too jolly big to hide. Then you had to worry about, well, the Haast Eagle.
DeleteAnd then along came the humans...and the rats that came with them...(and later, their stoats and possums...)
Delete