MAN’S WORLD

- Joe Bennett reveals the handedness

Woo hoo. Here’s a first. Here’s something for the science textbook. Here’s a discovery I bet no-one has made before. Are you ready? Here goes. My pūkeko are left-handed. Now pick yourself up off the floor and read on. A pair of pūkeko have taken up residence in my garden this winter and I have grown fond of them.

Pūkeko are undervalued, perhaps because they are common. We reserve our love for rarer beasts such as the pūkeko’s lumpish cousin, the takahē.

The takahē all but went extinct because of the pests we’d introduced and it hangs on today only because we nurse and coddle it. But there’s no need to nurse or coddle the pūkeko. It has adapted to all aspects of human settlement except the motor vehicle. And even in spite of its appalling road traffic accident stats, it flourishes.

I’ve heard the pūkeko criticised for being poor eating. I realise we are as self-centred a species as any other but that seems a tad harsh. Bravo, pūkeko, say I, on your unpleasing flesh. And bravo too on your very pleasing appearance.

I spy on my specimens daily. When they are nervous they flick their tails up and down, flashing a bunny-white rump. And if nerves turn to fear they take to the air, a little heavily, and squawk as they go and perch on the topmost branches of a ribbonwood, awkwardly, because of their feet.

Those feet are the pūkeko’s signature feature. They are giant feet, clown’s feet, made for walking across the top of swamps rather than perching in trees. When at ground level, pūkeko set each foot down with exaggerated caution as if the land were mined. I stand minutes on end at the window to watch them walk.

The admiration is not mutual. When the pūkeko see me they flee. But I have tried to bribe my way into, if not their affection, at least their partial trust, by throwing them gifts of food. I tried carrots at first. They were not interested in carrots. But then I tried apple. Yes, they were interested in apple.

When a slice of apple lands nearby, the pūkeko leap in alarm and scuttle for cover. But they have learned that my missiles are edible, and when they are confident that any danger is past they creep back out on those giant feet and snatch the apple up with their beaks then scamper back to a safe place, like filching schoolboys. It is hard not to smile.

When most birds eat an apple they peck at it and if the apple moves, they follow it. For they have no way of holding it still, having swapped their hands for wings a long way back in the evolutionary cycle. But pūkeko, like parrots, have overcome this problem by using their feet as hands.

The great long toes of the pūkeko’s foot stretch out to grasp the apple and the pūkeko pecks away at its leisure. It’s pretty to watch and efficient. And in the couple of months or so that I have been watching my two pūkeko, I have yet to see either of them use his right foot. Therefore I think it is fair to conclude that my two pūkeko, and possibly all pūkeko, are left-handed. You read it here first.