The Kakapo is a large, flightless, forest-dwelling, nocturnal parrot, with a pale owl-like face, a large grey beak, along with finely blotched yellow-green plumage. Provided with short legs, large feet, relatively short wings, and a tail, it is the world's only flightless parrot, the world's heaviest parrot, and possibly one of the world's longest-living birds, with a reported lifespan of around 90 years. With the face like an owl, postures like a penguin, and a walk like a duck, the Kakapo is an unusual night parrot and one of the rarest birds on earth.

Endemic to New Zealand, and once found throughout the island country, the population of Kakapo started declining after the arrival of the Maori settlers who heavily hunted them for meat and feathers for use in clothing. Their problem intensified with the arrival of the Europeans, who cleared large areas of the kakapo's habitat and brought with them predators like cats, rats, and stoats that the kakapo had no defenses against. The predators almost wiped out the kakapo. They gradually disappeared from the North Island by about 1930, although persisted longer in the wetter parts of the South Island. Conservation efforts were not very successful until the implementation of the Kakapo Recovery Programme in 1995, when the entire known population was transferred to Whenua Hou or Codfish Island off the coast of Stewart Island, Hauturu or Little Barrier Island in the Hauraki Gulf, and the newly predator-free Chalky and Anchor Islands in Fiordland.

The kakapos are the only flightless parrots in the world, they cannot fly as their wings are relatively short for their size. However, they use their wings for balance, and to break its fall when leaping from trees, and waddles long distances on its sturdy short legs. The kakapos are flightless, but they are expert climbers. Using their powerful beaks, they pull up their relatively heavy bodyweight to the upper branches, and by flapping their short wings, they can jump to the ground from as high as 15 meters without any injury. Measuring around 24 inches tall, and weighing between two and four kg, the kakapo is world’s heaviest parrot, and unlike other land birds can store large amount of energy as body fat.

While the colour of the plumage is not too different between the males and the females, females are clearly distinguishable from the males with their narrow and less domed head, narrower and proportionally longer beak, more slender and pinkish-grey legs and feet, and a proportionally longer tail.

The kakapo has a strong sense of smell, and at the same time, has a musty-sweet odour, which helps them to find each other in the forest. However, the odour also helps their predators to find them. Nevertheless, when confronted by predators, they take a strange defensive action as they tend to freeze, with the hope of avoiding attention.

Although completely herbivorous, they have a varied diet as they forge the treetops for fruits, bud, flowers, and leaflets and also devour roots, bark, and seeds found on the ground.

The kakapo is the only parrot known to form leks or breeding territories where they establish their own mating courts.However, at the start of the breeding season, males often confront each other fiercely with raised feathers, spread wings, open beaks, raised claws and loud screeching and growling, for securing the best courts. Nevertheless, the courts consist of one or more saucer-shaped depressions or bowls dug in the groundwhere males make loud, but low-frequency booming calls for six to eighthours every night to attract females for mating. Females are attracted by the booms of the competing males, and choose a mate based on the quality of his display in which the male rocks from side to side and makes clicking noises with his beak, then turns his back to the female, spreads his wings in display and walks backwards towards her. The copulation continues for 40 minutes or more, after which the female returns to her home territory to lay eggs and raise the chicks, while the male continues booming in the hope of attracting another female. After the eggs hatch, the female feeds the chicks for three months, but they remain with the mother for some more weeks and leave the nest at approximately 10 to 12weeks of age. However, the kakapo only breeds every two to four years when trees bearing Rimu fruit produce a bumper crop. Unfortunately, less than 50 percent of the eggs are fertile.