On the hunt
NATIONAL: Kupe the pig is using his sensitive nose to save our national bird, sniffing out rat and possum trails to help identify the best places to set traps.
Forget truffles, Kupe the pig is using his sensitive nose to save our national bird.
The Captain Cooker goes bush in the North Island’s Coromandel Range with kiwi predator control volunteer Ally Davey and her dog Kiki several times a week.
Kupe sniffs out rat and possum trails and that helps identify the best places to set traps.
He also finds pest carcasses – they can be up to 5 metres from the trap if they have been scavenged and dragged away.
Kupe’s work helped identify what type of pests had been killed so the Moehau Environment Group could gauge what was happening in the area, Davey said.
‘‘He has a really good nose, so he’s really good at smelling possums and rats. No truffles here, I’m sorry.’’
When Kupe picks up a scent, he sits like a dog and pants – it is his way of pointing, she said.
‘‘He just scents them instantly and then he’ll sit there and he’ll sort of mark it.’’
There was no special operative training for Kupe. It was instinctive.
‘‘Of course Kiki the boxer does that as well, so I think Kupe just learns off her.
‘‘Because when he goes to the beach, when I take them for a walk, he’ll try to do a break-dance move like Kiki does.
‘‘He thinks he’s a dog.’’ Kupe also sits and shakes hands on command and tags along for a morning run with Davey and the dog.
The pet porker also loves the beach. He plays in the waves and swims in the ocean.
When he was a piglet, he used to go paddle boarding, but he had outgrown that now, Davey said.
‘‘He’s way too heavy. I can’t push him on the paddle board now.’’
A chance meeting nine months ago brough Davey and Kupe together.
‘‘We found him and about nine brothers and sisters, and no mum, just wandering along the road.
‘‘We just stopped the car and I instinctively jumped out.
‘‘They all scattered off the road and he just laid down and played dead, so I picked him up. He was probably the size of my palm, really tiny.’’
Kupe got a ride home in the pig dog box on the back of the truck and was hand-raised.
When he was about 6 weeks old, he joined the trapping team on two- or three-hour runs.
Davey said she picked him up off the road because pigs were known to kill kiwi in their search for food.
‘‘I thought, maybe if I save one, that might make a difference to one kiwi, so I brought him home.
‘‘Then I thought, well, he’s got to have exercise, I don’t like to leave him in his pen, so I’ll just see what he’s like when he comes with me, and he just loves it.’’