Animal of the Week May 7, 2012 -- y'alright cock

Female greater vasa parrot in mating plumage (forground)

Back in the mists of time, before the Baiji was declared extinct, before Tony Blair's Labour government was elected for a third term, before Boris Johnson became Mayor of London, before a million other sadnesses, animal of the week began because I wanted to find out what the "other" poisonous mammal was. As someone very interested in animals, particularly mammals and birds, I was stunned I had never heard before of a solenodon. Just recently I had a similar zoological epiphany when I discovered (on the internet -- not in an adventurous exploratory sense) Coracopsis vasa (the greater Vasa parrot).


I'm was extra surprised not to know about the vasa parrot, because it is from Madagascar and has weird sex (for a bird). And if there are two things sure to pique my interest, they are weird sexual behaviour and living on and island (cf  my favourite Amanda Donahoe film, Castaway).

Perhaps one of the reasons these birds are overlooked in the natural history programmes is their slightly odd mating behaviour. While many are aware that dogs and wolves can become locked together during coitus in a copulatory tie, you rarely hear David Attenborough discussing this. And dogs are cute: by the time the vasa parrot female is linked to her mate (usually for half an hour sometimes for much longer) she has lost all the feathers on her head, which has turned bright yellow -- the couple, I imagine, bear a striking resemblance to copulating skeksis from the film The Dark Crystal.

Skeksis from The Dark Crystal

What makes the copulatory tie particularly special in these birds is that the presence of a penis-like organ is unique among parrots. Indeed, very few birds have such an organ: other notable exceptions include ostriches and ducks, which like the vasa parrot mostly keep their organ inside and only protrude it when mating. Most other birds exchange gametes through a cloacal kiss.

The mating system among these birds is also unusual because they are polygynandrous, with a female mating with several males. If kept in captivity, breeding is more successful if a single female is kept with two or more males. During the breeding season the females become very vocal and occasionally violent with reports of them killing males housed with them.


Despite the slightly adult themes of this AOTW, I'd like to dedicate this week's animal, squawking away on a distant island in their own wild rumpus, to Maurice Sendak, author of Where The Wild Things Are.