All animals → Kiwi

Kiwi

Apteryx spp. · easy

A kiwi is a bird built almost entirely around smell. Alone among birds it has nostrils at the tip of its bill rather than the base, and it feeds by probing damp soil and leaf litter, sniffing audibly for worms and grubs. Its eyes are small and its night vision unremarkable; it also has bristles around the face that function something like whiskers.

It is flightless, wingless to the point that the remnant wings are hidden under shaggy feathers that look more like hair, and it has marrow-filled bones rather than the hollow ones flight requires. Body temperature runs lower than most birds, closer to a mammal's.

The egg is the famous part. Relative to body size it is among the largest of any bird — so large that the female can barely eat in the days before laying, and the chick hatches fully feathered and able to fend for itself within a week.

Kiwi are endemic to New Zealand, where they evolved with no ground predators. Introduced stoats, dogs and cats take a very high proportion of chicks, and most surviving populations now depend on predator control, fenced sanctuaries, or programmes that raise chicks until they are big enough to fight back.

Where it lives

Worml lists the kiwi as native to New Zealand. Its habitat is temperate and subtropical forest and scrub.

Ranges here are reduced to whole countries for playability and exclude introduced populations — see about the data for what that simplification leaves out.

In the game

Kiwi is rated easy. To solve the round you need to name the single country it lives in. How scoring works →

Play today's puzzle →