Kiwi and Kea

When we were in Australia we did a fair bit of commenting about their wildlife, so here's a bit on New Zealands.
New Zealand is great in many ways, one is that unlike Oz it doesn't have any deadly spiders, snakes or other leathal critters. It only has nice things generally, and Chris and I both wanted to see their national pride, the Kiwi.
It's a flightless bird that has pathetic tiny wings the size of peas, it's ground duelling and nocturnal, and in recent years has been in decline.
We went to a bird sanctuary to check one out, and they are hilarious. They have huge round butts and really long beaks that have an amazing sense of smell (unusual for birds) to sniff out worms which they dig out with their beaks. They have marrow in their bones like us and they have whiskers like cats, to tell if they will fit in holes. Oh and they had a stuffed one that we touched and it's feathers feel like hair (would make a nice coat).
The main reason they are being killed off is the introduction of animals from other countries. Rats came over on ships and eat their eggs, and then it also comes back to rabbits once again - rabbits where introduced to NZ but as always they got out of control, so they introduced stoats (ugly ferret type thing) to kill the rabbits. But the stoat found a much slower and jucier prey...yeeees the kiwi!
The other cool thing we saw was a Kea, a big fat bird (parrot family) which is extreemely clever and cheeky. It's the only bird to live above the snowline, and probably also the only one with a fetish for rubber...they rip all the rubber bits off your car to shreads for fun. They also steal things from you and hide them. On our way to Milford sound one came and sat on the wing mirror and stared at me, when I got the camera out he cocked his head and tapped at the window. At this point Chris thought it was hilarious to open my window a bit! I screamed as the Kea looked at me and the camera with hungry eyes. Luckily the expletives stopped Chris from going too far and we escaped unscathed.

Lastly, we met a lizard that nobody is quite sure how long they live because they outlive their keepers, but probably about 300 years! They were around when the dinosaurs were here, they can hold their breath for and hour and slow their heartbeat down to 10 beats per minute. Are they the key to eternal youth?