In 2012, a kākāpō named Sirocco soared to international fame after being caught on camera displaying his unusual sexual proclivities. In a YouTube video that has been viewed over 27 million times, the BBC posted incriminating footage of Sirocco.
Titled ‘Shagged by a rare parrot’, the description reads, ‘Imagine being the first ever guy in the world to be filmed being sexually harassed by an endangered bird.’
- “Viewers have been absolutely hooked.” Over 100,000 tune in to watch rare New Zealand parrot raising her chicks
- New Zealand’s flightless birds are retreating to 'moa graveyards' – and it could save them from extinction
The video is, indeed, damning. Sirocco, charged with sexual energy and wearing the weight of the world’s reproductive challenges on his shoulders, can be seen engaging in a vigorous act of coitus with a BBC presenter’s head.
Sirocco is perhaps the most peculiar of an already peculiar species. Hand-raised by rangers due to respiratory issues, he imprinted on humans at an early age and swore off mating with his own kind.
- Meet the strangest wonders of the avian world – including one that asks humans for help and another that smells like a cow
- How did some birds lose their ability to fly?
Scientists, with their endless curiosity and creativity, decided to make the most of Sirocco’s unique sexual preferences. And so, the ejaculation helmet was born.
The maxim seemed to be: if Sirocco desires a human head, then a human head he shall have.
Armed with determination and ingenuity, Department of Conservation veterinarian Dr Kate McInnes designed a dimpled semen-collecting latex helmet. The rubber headgear is, for all intents and purposes, a hat of condoms designed to collect the sperm of the kākāpō.
Dr McInnes was inspired to make the helmet after being informed of a similar helmet that was made for a species of kestrel, an endangered bird of prey found in the forests of Mauritius.
According to McInnes, conservationists there would don the helmet and ‘the boy would bonk the head and they could collect the sperm’. Simple, she thought.
However, there was one small problem. The Mauritius kestrel weighs just 250 grams, compared with the kākāpō, which weighs in at a hefty 4 kilograms.
‘I wasn’t prepared to have a 4-kilo kākāpō sitting on a little hat on my head,’ said McInnes. Being a New Zealander, McInnes decided that a rugby helmet would be the most suitable option to withstand the heft of a thrusting kākāpō.
With steadfast resolve, she sourced a rugby helmet from a local store and quickly began working on her master project. And so it was in the backyard of her Berhampore house in Wellington one sunny afternoon that an ejaculation helmet was remodelled from a rugby helmet.
Then, McInnes, with her homemade rugby ejaculation helmet in tow, set off to the forest to commence her experiment in the name of conservation.
‘We took [the helmet] down to the island and we went and visited Sirocco, and he got very excited by the whole business. And so, for about three nights in a row, I was out there in the evening with him bonking my head. He’s quite heavy. He goes on for a very long time. He grunts the whole time he’s doing it,’ she said.
- “The sight of them writhing around in slippery foam will stay with me for a while.” This mating ritual could be Earth’s weirdest
- The deadliest mating rituals on the planet
Unfortunately, the helmet didn’t work. You see, while the kākāpō approaches intercourse with vigour and intensity – engaging in the act for close to an hour (unlike most other bird species that only require a few seconds) – enthusiasm alone is not a reliable indicator of success.
McInnes is unsure whether the helmet was a conceptual failure or not, but after seemingly endless hours of having her head mounted by the world’s heaviest parrot, not a single drop of semen was produced.
The fact that the ejaculation helmet failed is neither here nor there; it’s the courage to persevere that speaks volumes.
Today, the helmet resides in Wellington’s Te Papa museum, next to ‘Chloe’, a motorised decoy female kākāpō, which was another failed breeding aid.
The kākāpō is not just a curious bird with peculiar mating habits; it has become a symbol of conservation and an icon of the fight to save endangered species in New Zealand.
In 2010, former prime minister John Key even went so far as to dub the kākāpō the nation’s ‘official spokesbird for conservation’.
This is an extract from Nature's Last Dance by Natalie Kyriacou (published by Legend Press Ltd).
