“You are being shagged by a rare parrot”
A friend sent me this hilarious video:
When I first watched the video on YouTube, I was saddened. I mean, I was saddened after I finished cleaning up the various bodily fluids I’d ejected while laughing hysterically. Why? Because the YouTube description gives the strong impression that this little parrot is the last of his kind:
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine head to the ends of the earth in search of animals on the edge of extinction.
In New Zealand the travellers make their way through one of the most dramatic landscapes in the world. They are on a journey to find the last remaining kakapo, a fat, flightless parrot which, when threatened with attack, adopts a strategy of standing very still indeed.
Fortunately, YouTube is wrong. The kakapo is on the edge of extinction (and the edge of seventeen, looks like to me), but not quite there. The good folks in New Zealand have a protected breeding program in place to help the birds survive.
There are only about a hundred kakapos in existence. TerraNature says:
One of many, and the strangest peculiarity of the kakapo is its mating ritual known as lekking. It is the only parrot or flightless bird with a lek mating procedure.
In breeding seasons which occur every 3 to 5 years coincidental with abundant seeding/fruiting (masting) seasons, male kakapo occupy a network of meticulously kept tracks connected to bowls in display grounds that resemble an archaeological site of a lost civilisation. These areas are thought to have been continually used for hundreds or possibly thousands of years.
In order to attract females, the male makes a loud, low-frequency booming call, a deep sound somewhat similar to a foghorn, that resonates through valleys and carries as far as 5 kilometres. Some lekking areas have been found strategically located next to rock faces, which causes amplification of the sound.
The kakapo is the only parrot with an inflatable thoracic air sac. The male puffs up his entire body to the size of a basketball, and will remain in this state throughout the night.
He booms while sitting in a half-metre-wide bowl in the ground, rotating his body to broadcast the courtship to the whole area.
The booming rate is as much as 15 or 16 times a minute, and may continue for 17 hours. The courtship calling will extend for a period of up to four months in a breeding year.
I’m wondering if the BBC camera team wandered into a lekking area. Notice that Mark Carwardine, the object of the parrot’s affections, is wearing a green shirt. I’m thinking the little parrot dude had been hanging out all night in his lekking bowl, booming away, when suddenly here comes….ohmygod! It’s the biggest, greenest lady parrot in the whole frickin’ world!
On the other hand, it could just be an avian example of what we were talking about in that other post.
9 Responses to ““You are being shagged by a rare parrot””
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janicen says:
That is very funny!
October 3rd, 2009 at 11:50 pm EST -
Kookaburra says:
Oh my, I have tears running down my face! The little guy does look like he has Victorian whiskers, too funny.
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LabRat says:
Have you read Douglas Adams’s original Last Chance to See? For my money, it was far better than, say, the last two books of the Hitchhiker’s “trilogy”.
The kakapo was in quite a bit more desperate shape when he originally wrote it than it is now, thankfully. Which is one reason, I’m sure, Dr. Carwardine (who was also the zoologist of the original) is so good-natured about it now.
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Hedgepig says:
LabRat, Douglas Adams’s Last Chance to See is my favourite of his books. I think it was his favourite too actually. While I don’t think DNA had any feminist consciousness to speak of, his writing was curiously lacking in misogyny. Although I might be blinkered about that because I’m so fond of his books and because he’s dead.
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orlando says:
I believe Stephen Fry is retracing Douglas Adams’s steps from Last Chance to See (which Adams did with Mark Carwardine, so it’s a return journey for the zoologist) for the BBC. Anyone who hasn’t read the original book should rush out and do so, it’s one of my favourites of all time. And I’m delighted to see the project getting another chance to get some attention.
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yttik says:
That’s pretty funny!
If anyone has any difficulty trying to understand why women do not have an equal playing field, try to imagine having that parrot affixed to your neck, humping away day after day. It’s not easy running for political office or sitting in a corporate board room while you try to ignore this thing that has it’s claws in your neck.
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Comment of the week, by god | Reclusive Leftist says:
[...] one is from yttik, and it requires a little bit of context. She was commenting on the parrot-on-man shagging video, which I had also wryly proposed as an example of the Dicks Gone Wild phenomenon under discussion [...]
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bluelyon says:
It’s the guy’s green shirt. We used to own Yellow-naped Amazons and the male was particularly enamored of me. But he would really go into his love dance when I wore my green jacket with blue collar. It was hysterical.
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Sis says:
Everything, including this, after yttik’s comment is superflous, but I thought I’d just put my two pfennig worth in to say it has nothing to do with colour or horniness. It’s dominance displaying.
