WAS THE MOA TAMED?

Greymouth Evening Star, 19 June 1926, Page 6

WAS THE MOA TAMED?

AN INTERESTING THEORY.

Most of us are familiar with the story of how the natives of Patagonia domesticated the giant sloth, one of the most formidable animals that ever trod the earth. Now comes the belief (writes Kenneth Impett in the Melbourne “Herald”) that men just as wild as the Patagonians, the ancestors of the Maori race, tamed in some inconceivable way the greatest of birds, the New .Zealand moa. ihe theory, of course, cannot be positively proved, as all living testimony was destroyed; but the person whose knowledge of the subject is greater than any other —Mr W. W. Smith, lor many years curator of the Beautiful Pukekura Park at New Plymoutn, .New Zealand—finds sufficient evidence to justify him, he believes, in making this remarkable statement. Mr Smith, though now an old man, is an active personage, who has made frequent expeditions to collect the remains of moas, and many scientific collections, of the Dominion are enriched by his careful labours. He has for ever dispelled the old belief that the moa became extinct before the Maoris reached this country, for he found the disused Maori earth ovens in close association with great deposits of moa bones, and, • lying with them, the jade axes and other weapons used for the killing and cutting up of the monsters. He has had through his hands skeletons of moas which perished in the mountains, overtaken by suddenly arriving snow, and skeletons of moas extinguished by sudden floods in the swamps. Wherever skeletons were found, he searched, or caused search to be made, and without exception, always encountered little heaps of brightly polished stones, some two and more inches long, the stones having been swallowed by the birds to serve as millstones for the grinding up of their food. In the South Island of New Zealand are caves in which moa-hunters dwelt for ages, and on the walls can be clearly discerned their rough, rude drawings. The sketches depict the moa as it was in life, its legs and so on, all indicating an intimate knowledge of the bird and its habits. From what he has seen in these caves Mr Smith is satisfied that the natives domesticated the moa as we domesticated fowls! There were several species of moas, from the giants standing fourteen and sixteen feet in height to much smaller ones, and naturally it does not follow that the larger birds were always those successfully managed in this way. The theory, although quite new, is not in the least inconceivable.

The only survivor of the moa m the world to-day is the kiwi, the small, wingless, long-beaked bird which, with a single blow from its powerful feet, can rip open the flesh of the largest dog. As scientists were at first unable to convince the rest of the world that there had been such birds as the moa, so there was once a general sniff of disbelief in the existence ol the kiwi. Mr Smith, however, has tamed the kiwi as one would poultry. The kiwi, it may be here stressed, is both timorous and fierce, mortally afraid of man and all his works, running madly to destruction in the presence of the first fire it finds in the bush. However, Mr Smith has a fjne narrative ready if one is fortunate enough io engage him in earnest conversation.

Having secured a hen kiwi, he sought a mate for her. The female is larger than the male, and this fastidious lady, not liking her lover, attacked, and almost killed him, ignoring his advances completely. A second was sought and he suffered almost as sound a thrashing before the termagant admitted him to her good graces. Then they settled down to peaceful company, and, in due course the hen laid two eggs. To receive these the hen-pecked little male dug a deepish pit, and then, when the eggs came, buried them for about a third of their depth, and sat on them day and night for four whole weeks. Madame Kiwi disdainfully took no notice of the development. Suddenly a downy kiw r i, as small as a man’s fist, with a preposterously long beak appeared, followed a day later by a second from the other egg. Like all wingless birds the baby kiwis ran about to feed just as soon as they were hatched ; but the mother bird now assumed charge of them, the poor father being reduced to such a ruckle of bones that it took him all his time to feed himself back to prosperity.

As Darwin used to stand in the w’oods and let the baby squirrels gallop up and down his back, so Mr Smith would sit in the gloom of the place where the kiwis had been hatched, and allow them to march all over him, prodding him the while as if he were the stump of an old tree. The question at present worrying Mr Smith is if he can domesticate the smaller of the moas with his limited opportunities, why should not the Maoris, with two or three centuries of knowledge, have tamed the moa ?