Kakapo the "booms" (see below for a recording) and "chings" of their mating calls, they will often loudly "skraark". The kakapo has a well-developed sense of smell, which complements its nocturnal lifestyle. It can distinguish between odours while foraging, a behaviour reported in only one other parrot species. The kakapo has a large olfactory bulb ratio (longest diameter of the olfactory bulb/longest diameter of the brain) indicating that it does, indeed, have a more developed sense of smell than other parrots. One of the most striking characteristics of the kakapo is its distinct musty-sweet odour. The smell often alerts predators to
Flightless bird more species of flightless birds (including the kiwi, several species of penguins, the takahe, the weka, the moa, and several other extinct species) than any other such location. One reason is that until the arrival of humans roughly a thousand years ago, there were no large land predators in New Zealand; the main predators of flightless birds were larger birds. Ratites belong to the superorder Palaeognathae birds, which include the volant tinamou, and are believed to have evolved flightlessness independently multiple times within their own group. Some birds evolved flightlessness in response to the absence of predators, for example on