{"id":178266,"date":"2025-12-11T02:34:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T02:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/178266\/"},"modified":"2025-12-11T02:34:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T02:34:09","slug":"critically-endangered-weta-thriving-as-breeding-programme-numbers-surge-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/178266\/","title":{"rendered":"Critically endangered w\u0113t\u0101 thriving as breeding programme numbers surge"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\u014ctorohanga\u014ctorohanga Kiwi House wildlife manager Matthew Ronaldson. Photo \/ RNZ<\/p>\n

\u201cBasically, it\u2019s an ice cream container with some soil in it that the female adult Mahoenui giant w\u0113t\u0101 can lay her eggs in after breeding.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then it\u2019s a waiting game.<\/p>\n

\u201cEggs can take anywhere from 10 months to two years to hatch, so we put a 10-month time limit on them and put the date when we expect them to hatch, and the last lot we actually had hatch right on time.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou end up with hundreds and hundreds … I think we were just over 400 juveniles or w\u0113t\u0101 that hatched last time, and that was from half of the egg fields we have in here now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AA critically threatened Mahoenui giant w\u0113t\u0101 at the \u014ctorohanga Kiwi House. Photo \/ RNZ<\/p>\n

Ronaldson is expecting up to 600 Mahoenui giant w\u0113t\u0101 to hatch this summer.<\/p>\n

The w\u0113t\u0101 are thriving too.<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess having a greater food source, these animals have grown bigger than what either iwi or DoC [Department of Conservation] have seen at the Mahoenui Reserve.<\/p>\n

\"AA young Mahoenui giant w\u0113t\u0101 in a milk-bottle cap. Photo \/ RNZ<\/p>\n

\u201cEven when we brought in our second cohort of adults, they came in a younger age, eighth and ninth instar, and they have grown bigger than the previous cohort, and we even had offspring that were bigger than the mother [when adult].\u201d<\/p>\n

Fully grown w\u0113t\u0101 have been through 10 development stages or instars.<\/p>\n

Adult females weigh about 25g and are about the size of a mouse.<\/p>\n

W\u0113t\u0101 handler Danielle Lloyd said that was a far cry from where they started.<\/p>\n

\"W\u0113taW\u0113ta handler Danielle Lloyd explains how juvenile insects are released inside a bamboo tube. Photo \/ RNZ<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you do have hatches in there, they are really, really small \u2013 they hatch from an egg the size of a grain of rice.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are bright, fluorescent green when they hatch, so if you\u2019ve got grass in there as well, it can be a bit hard to find them, so we have torches, magnifying glasses if we need them.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to search through the entire thing to see what\u2019s in there, and because they are in an ice cream container, they like to hide just under the rim on the outside.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AA female Mahoenui giant w\u0113t\u0101 lays her eggs in a container of soil. Photo \/ \u014ctorohanga Kiwi House<\/p>\n

She\u2019s trying to wrangle a female going by the name of Bugg-Tsunade.<\/p>\n

\u201cGenerally, in the eighth instar, we\u2019ll give them a name more often than not based on their little personalities, so this one\u2019s Bugg-Tsunade.<\/p>\n

\u201cI actually named her after an anime I like because she\u2019s quite feisty and I named her after a feisty character.<\/p>\n

\" A Mahoenui giant w\u0113t\u0101 nymph. Photo \/ RNZ<\/p>\n

\u201cOne was called Bugg-Wonky. She had a wonky leg that she was able to fix through her instar changes, which they can do.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then we\u2019ve had a Bugg-Chunky as well, and that was because she devoured all the food we put in there almost every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lloyd used to be terrified of giant w\u0113t\u0101, but not any more.<\/p>\n

\"AA Mahoenui giant w\u0113t\u0101 that is about five months old. Photo \/ RNZ<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir feet are, I guess, quite prickly, is the kind of word, on your skin, but they\u2019re really light and you don\u2019t really feel them on you.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can kind of feel them digging into you with their tarsus [final segment of their leg] when they walk.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it doesn\u2019t really faze me anymore; but I guess if you\u2019re not used to it, you probably would be a bit freaked out because it can feel like it\u2019s stabbing into you a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Ronaldson said there was nothing to fear.<\/p>\n

\u201cI actually find them extremely gentle. Once you get the hang of them and they get used to being handled, as long as you\u2019re gentle and calm with them, they\u2019re generally calm and gentle with you.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou may actually catch us talking with them, calling them sweetheart and all sorts of cute names, but we do become quite attached to them, our animals, and they\u2019re just like little puppy dogs really.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u014ctorohanga Kiwi House is aiming to eventually hatch 3000 Mahoenui giant w\u0113t\u0101 and see them come off the critically endangered species list.<\/p>\n

– RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u014ctorohanga Kiwi House wildlife manager Matthew Ronaldson. Photo \/ RNZ \u201cBasically, it\u2019s an ice cream container with some…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178267,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[806,18532,12939,28622,273,5133,111,139,3591,69,9527,33229,147,1515,67015,113980],"class_list":["post-178266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-as","tag-breeding","tag-critically","tag-endangered","tag-environment","tag-martin","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-numbers","tag-nz","tag-programme","tag-robin","tag-science","tag-surge","tag-thriving","tag-wt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}