New Zealand Animals

New Zealand Animals and we will include birds,insects, fish, fauna and flora in this section are varied and unique due to the fact they either landed or were landed. By this we mean, as New Zealand was born volcanically from the depths of the sea floor there was no species migration other than that planned or facilitated by settlers or travellers to New Zealand. Also New Zealand has had a very rigorous Agricultural inspection system to prevent unintended visitors impacting the New Zealand Animals.

I still vividly remember the smell as the Agricultural Inspectors would pass through each and every plane touching down on New Zealand soil spraying insecticide and waiting a few minutes before allowing the passengers to disembark.

Things are a little more civilized now... no sprays... no smell.

New Zealand's national emblems or symbols are the Kiwi, a nocturnal, flightless bird, and the Silver Fern.

Here are links to more information about some of the unique fauna and flora of New Zealand:

New Zealand Animals - Birds, Fish, Insects, Fauna & Flora

Unique flightless birds like the Kiwi, the Takahe and the Weka; the world's heaviest insect and a 'living dinosaur'.  Eighty to one hundred million years ago the vast supercontinent named Gondwana, comprised of what is now New Zealand, Australia, Antarctica, India, Africa and South America - broke up. It is believed New Zealand was a submerged part of Gondwana, then with the break up and subsequent volanic activity arose out of the sea, probably in the original "long white cloud" leaving New Zealand and New Zealand Animals in what amounts to isolation in a time capsule - helping to preserve the unique wildlife Native New Zealand Animals.

-New Zealand is an ‘ultimate storehouse for discontinued zoological models’. - Time magazine

Another of the interesting New Zealand Facts is that there are no snakes and indeed there are no poisonous species in New Zealand, except for one spider named the Katipo.

The question still remains... without a land bridge, how did several species of flightless birds arrive in New Zealand... but none of the poisonous reptile or marsupial species from nearby Australia?

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