But that’s no longer the case. In 1977, scientists discovered a hidden population on southerly Stewart Island—including the all-important females that were missing elsewhere. Twelve years later, New Zealand’s Department of Conservation launched a Kakapo Recovery program and relocated the surviving birds to predator-free sanctuaries.

Almost three decades later, the kakapo—once thought extinct—is one of the most thoroughly studied animals on the planet. Every single one of the last 153 kakapos on the planet is known to researchers. Every one carries a radio transmitter, so scientists know its position, as well as its movements and sex life.

And soon, a team led by Andrew Digby from the Department of Conservation and Bruce Robertson from the University of Otago will sequence the genomes of all of these birds. By the end of this year, the kakapo will become the second species on Earth for which we have a complete genetic record—the first being the Spix’s macaw, another critically endangered parrot.* Forget hipsters and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs: The exemplar of the quantified-self movement is a green, bumbling, oblivion-defying parrot.

The first kakapo to have its DNA fully decoded was a female called Jane. The decoders—Jason Howard and Erich Jarvis from Duke University—were working on a broader effort to sequence the DNA of all 10,000 bird species. They chose the kakapo as one of their focal species at the encouragement of Howard’s daughter, who had become enchanted with the parrot after reading a children’s book about it.

When Digby heard that that one kakapo had been sequenced, he thought: Why not all of them? “We only need to do 124 more and then we’ve got the entire species,” he says. (At the time of the study, there were only 125.) It would be like having the entire library for the animal, rather than a single book.

DNA will only tell you so much about an animal, but it becomes especially powerful when combined with all the other kakapo data around. For example, their entire genealogy is known because their sex lives are automatically detected and recorded.

When these birds mate, their transmitters detect a distinctive movement—a small, hour-long jiggle. (You can see a dramatic reconstruction in the video below, as Sirocco the kakapo tries to mate with the head of zoologist Mark Carwardine—a literal headfuck that turned him into an instant celebrity.) If a male’s transmitter detects that signature jiggle, it pings all the other transmitters nearby. If one of those belongs to a female, and is also recording a jiggle, it probably means that the two owners are mating.

The islands where the parrots live are studded with data loggers, which suck up the information from any passing kakapo and transmit it to the recovery team. “Every morning, we have a record of all the matings the day before,” says Digby. “These birds don’t have much privacy unfortunately.”