ANCIENT FAUNA

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 64, 18 December 1946, Page 4 (Supplement)

ANCIENT FAUNA

NEW ZEALAND’S INTERESTING STORY

THE UNIQUE TUATARA Most noteworthy of New Zealand’s animals is the Tuatara, commonly thought of as a lizard but actually being just as closely allied to crocodiles, birds and especially turtles and tortoises. A single species, with no living relatives, it forms one of the five great groups into which living reptiles are divided. ; In external appearance it resembles a lizard (but differs from the lizard in many ways),-and when full, grown is about 15 inches in length with a massive head and a spinous crest running along the neck, back and tail. It is greenish yellow to ■grey in colour, and the skin is loose, tough and scaly. In the head there is a third eye, the median or “pineal” eye. This is a perfect little eye, 1-50 inch in diameter, with lens and retina, underlying a transparent scale on the top of the head. Just how it functions is not known. Although the Tuatara was once plentiful on the mainland of New Zealand, it is now found only on outlying islands. It lives in a burrow, which it shares with a nesting petrel. Its food, which is caught alive, consists of spiders, insects, snaiis, and any small animals. Though its movements appear to be sluggish, it nevertheless can move in short, swift dashes, but is incapable of jumping even a small obstacle. Its habit of lying full length in water is thought to be a survival from the remote past, for many of its ancestors were amphibious in habit. This most interesting animal links the present with the long bygone geologic past. It is protected by law. Absence of Land Mammals Early visitors to this Dominion were struck by the absence of land mammals and reptiles, the. vertebrate fauna consisting virtually only of birds. Indeed, the only land mammals undoubtedly endemic to New Zealand are two species of bats, both of them rarely seen. The shorttailed bat (the other being the longtailed bat) is of especial interest, for it is a type distinct from all other bats.

Only three kinds of frogs are found in New Zealand, and they belong to a kind not found outside New Zealand, whilst the only reptiles besides that living fossil the tuatara are a few small lizards. Occasionally a sea snake from tropical waters gets stranded on some northern shores, but New Zealand itself is entirely free from snakes.

The fresh-water fish show peculiarities. There are only a few of them, and amongst these few are one of the longest eels in the world and a fish that normally spends the winter hibernating in the mud.

. Even the non-vertebrate animals (such ; as crayfish, insects and spiders) of New Zealand present' some remarkable features and include many archaic forms. The katipo spider is the only seriously venomous animal in New Zealand. But the remarkable thing about New Zealand spiders is the large number of them and the great proportion of water spiders. Outside of New Zealand spiders that live in sea-water are rare, yet New Zealand boasts of four or five species that are marine in habit.

New Zealand possesses one of the world’s largest earthworms (up to four feet in length) and some of the giants among insects. The fearsome wetas, of which there are about thirty different kinds, some of them very big, are really wingless crickets. , The stick insects are another very large insect found in New Zealand and some are almost as long as a pencil. Even the dozen or more native slugs belong to a kind not found elsewhere.

New Zealand is plentifully endowed with moths, but possesses very few butterflies. Many other instances.could be cited of the occurrence of small animals of primitive types. Best known is Peripatus, a small slug-like creature with many legs, found in decaying logs. It is a link between the insects and centipedes. A long-leg-ged variety of the latter, also a strange type, has frightened many an Auckland housewife when found in the sink.

Remarkable Birds Of more ready notice and popular interest are the birds. No other country can produce such a remarkable assemblage of peculiar birds as does New Zealand. No carnivorous animals reached New Zealand, and in their absence there was evolved a very great number of flightless birds.

Best known among the flightless birds is the kiwi, whose oddest feature is having the nostrils placed at the end of the beak. Its wings have decreased in size through disuse into mere vestiges, and in appearance it is, as Dr. Wallace, the famous naturalist, said, the most unbirdlike of all birds, having to all pui’poses neither, wings nor tail. Usually only one T egg is laid at a time, and compared with the size of the bird this is the largest egg known. The kiwi appears to locate worms (its principal food) by the sense of' l smell. It places its long bill lightly on the ground, hesitates or listens . for a second, then, if a worm is located, it plunges the bill into the soft ground about half its length or more. There is no guesswork; a worm is brought to the surface without fail and promptly swallowed. If nothing is below, the bill is lifted and tried elsewhere. A grunting sound sometimes accompanies these operations.When calling, the kiwi stands erect, throws back the head and with its long bill wide agape utters the long-drawn screeching cry. Oft in the stilly night is the cry re- , peated. ' The moas, which became extinct very recently, had even less of the wings left than the kiwi, most of them (and there were over twenty species) being almost devoid of the shoulder girdle. The kakapo and the weka both possess wings, fairly large in the kakapo and smaller in the weka, yet through disuse they cannot fly. In the kakapo, whose wings are really ample, this disuse has resulted in the bones being- materially affected, so that the keel of the breast-bone, instead of being highly developed is it is in every other parrot, has been reduced to a mere ridge. A facial peculiarity gives it an owl-like appearance, so that it is often called the owl-parrot. Other native birds have reduced powers of flight, and ! there are other extinct birds besides the moas that were .flightless. Auckland Island possesses a flightless duck, and the Chatham Islands possesses a whole series of flightless rails. . -

The penguins have the wing adapted for swiming; it acts as a paddle. Almost every species of these quaint birds is represented in New Zealand and neighbouring islands, and the earliest known fossil penguin comes from New Zealand rocks. There is every reason for believing that New Zealand was the ancestral home of the penguins. The cormorants or shags, those very useful and much maligned birds, are also well represented in New Zealand.

■ The pied shag is another unusual < bird. The habit of this bird of roosting in trees overhanging water makes it a familiar sight in many parts of New Zealand, especially on. /. stretches of indented coastlines washed by warm water. 1 North • Auckland, and the Bay of Plenty, the Marlborough Sounds and Stewart Island are the regions ,in which if is most plentiful. The huia, which has probably become extinct very recently, is the ; only known bird in which there is such a marked diversity in the shape of the bill in the two' sexes. The male’s beak is almost straight, while that of the female is longer and curved.

The above gives a brief outline of some forms of natural life peculiar to New Zealand.