Last Chance to See

by Douglas Adams

The ways in which the kakapo goes about mating are wonderfully bizarre, extraordinarily long drawn out, and almost totally ineffective. Here’s what they do. The male kakapo builds himself a track and bowl system, which is simply a roughly dug shallow depression in the earth, with one or two pathways leading through the undergrowth toward it. The only thing that distinguishes the tracks from those that would be made by any other animal blundering its way about is that the vegetation on either side of them is rather precisely clipped. The kakapo is looking for good acoustics when he does this, so the track and bowl system will often be sited against a rock facing out across a valley, and when the mating season arrives, he sits in his bowl and booms. This is an extraordinary performance. He puffs out two enormous air sacs on either side of his chest, sinks his head down into them, and starts to make what he feels are sexy grunting noises. These noises gradually descend in pitch, resonate in his two air sacs, and reverberate through the night air, filling the valleys for miles around with the eerie sound of an immense heart beating in the night. The booming noise is deep, very deep, just on the threshold of what you can actually hear and what you can feel. This means that it carries for very great distances, but that you can’t tell where it’s coming from. If you’re familiar with certain types of stereo setups, you’ll know that you can get an additional speaker called a sub-woo...