Designing a Semen-Collecting Helmet & Bird Perfume

Sirocco the kakapo looks for love in all the wrong places. Photo © Department of Conservation / Flickr

Would you let an endangered bird mate with your head?

Meet the kakapo: a flightless, nocturnal, chunky 8-pound parrot from New Zealand. Formerly found throughout New Zealand, kakapos were nearly wiped out by feral cats and are now restricted to only four small, offshore (and predator free) islands.

To demonstrate their reproductive fitness, male kakapos toddle up a mountain, dig a hole in the dirt, and then “boom” into it for up to 8 hours straight. These low-frequency calls can travel up to 5 kilometers. Upon hearing this enticing serenade, female kakapos have to clamber through the forest and up the mountain to find the males.

Ridiculous at the best of times, this mating strategy is especially ineffective when there are only about 100 birds left. So to help bolster genetic diversity and conserve the species, Kakapo Recovery started a captive breeding program. They noticed that some males were vastly more popular than others, and realized that is had something to do with how those males smelled. So researchers from Massey University are using a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer to analyze feathers from the successful males, in the hopes of figuring out just why these males have such scent appeal and, perhaps, developing a synthetic kakapo “perfume” to improve captive breeding success.

Speaking of breeding… one wild (but hand-raised) kakapo, Sirocco, developed an unfortunate habit of attempting to mate with people’s heads. Don’t believe me? Watch filmmaker Mark Carwardine get “shagged by a rare parrot” as actor Stephen Fry looks on.

Trying to make the best of an awkward situation, the Kakapo Recovery staff improvised a special helmet that would collect Sirocco’s semen. Unfortunately, Sirocco prefers seducing helmet-free heads, and he now receives special behavioral training to teach him to redirect his urges toward a stuffed owl puppet.