Hololoot’s CryptoZoo: The Mina Parrot 🦜
Found everywhere from cruising atop a pirate’s shoulder to deep in the tropical rainforests of Australia, to in fact just about every warm climate on Earth, there’s a bird whose diversity of habitats is matched only by the vibrant diversity of its forms.
We’re talking about parrots; a bird you’ll find breeds of in just about every color of the rainbow, from bright yellows to rich purples, and just about any size, from 8cm to over a meter. But don’t let their showy looks deceive you: they’re also one of the smartest birds in the animal kingdom, able to learn over 400 words and live for over a hundred years.
This week we explore a very particular parrot from a very particular ecosystem. With a penchant for collecting and an incredible, unique ability to maintain the exact same size for its entire life — this extraordinary bird is unlike anything else in the CryptoZoo.
Please welcome, the Mina Parrot 🦜
After a history of dealing with pets that chewed through wallets and needed massive amounts of food to simply stay healthy, two pioneering cryptozoologists by the names of Evan Shapiro and Izaak Meckler set out to find a low-maintenance pet that they could share with the world — a pocket-sized friend anyone would feel comfortable taking care of.
Their search took saw them hacking through dense jungles, diving the ocean’s depths, and traversing through valleys and mountain-tops — but each animal they encountered was unable to offer the kind of low-maintenance companionship they were looking for. One day, on the verge of giving up on their quest, in an unassuming rainforest, they discovered something incredible: the miraculous Mina Parrot.
There, in a patch of rainforest deep in the metaverse that would make you think you’d ingested the wrong type of mushroom, they found a technicolored oasis teeming with birds all of the exact same color, weight, and shape.
Awestruck by their find, they spent months observing the parrot, and as time went on, they only became increasingly amazed. They watched as the parrots — rather than grow with age — maintained an exact weight and size from birth through to full maturity; a weight the pair recorded to be a meager 22 grams. For most birds braving the wilds of the forest, this light weight would be a death sentence. But for the Mina Parrot, this nimble body was a blessing, allowing it to sustain itself on next to no food at all.
This unique and unexplainable phenomenon, as outlined in their field reports, turned out to be only the first in a string of discoveries that set the animal completely apart from the rest of the kingdom.
Season to season, the pair of Cryptozoologists watched the parrots do something very curious indeed. Each parrot would gild their nests with their own plumage, meticulous in ensuring that every one of their lost feathers was captured and kept. As time passed, their old feathers weathered and shrunk until what was left from their youth became near imperceptible.
Yet, as Shapiro and Meckler discovered, anyone with the right tools could take one of these feathers and use it to get a perfect snapshot of not only the DNA of the bird but the conditions of the rainforest and the bird itself during that time. In fact, anyone looking to clone an exact copy of the bird in that exact state would be able to use that specific feather to do so.
The parrots had also developed an incredible way to exchange information with other creatures in the forest. As an example of this, the pair of ornithologists watched as the birds were able to prove to other animals that they knew the valuable location of a food source without ever giving up its location. This turned out to be a powerful bargaining chip that allowed them to remain undisturbed by larger prey that would otherwise make a light snack of the bite-sized parrots.
Nowadays, the bird can be found in homes across the globe and its pocket-sized dimensions make it a great travel companion. As the bird proliferated around the world, an all-new curiosity around the bird emerged. No matter where the birds went, the feathers of one served as not only as an accurate record of its life but of every other parrot’s across the globe. The feather of a Mina Parrot in Northern America would — for some inexplicable reason — hold the same history in it as one in Asia.
Anyone familiar with the bird will tell you of its logic-defying attributes and, thanks to the efforts of Shapiro and Meckler, anyone can now own one. If you’re interested in owning a piece of their history, download a feather here yourself. If you want your very own Mina Parrot, however, you’ll be excited to learn that you’ll be able to get one for yourself through the CryptoZoo. Stay tuned to our socials for more details.
The CryptoZoo is one of Hololoot’s genesis AR NFT collections, featuring zoomorphic representations of some of the most popular cryptocurrencies in the world. These crypto-themed critters can be collected and viewed in Hololoot’s AR viewer and will play a crucial role in the upcoming CryptoZoo P2E game.
In the CryptoZoo game, players become zookeepers tasked with building their own zoo and caring for the crypto pets within it, earning token rewards that correspond to the AR NFT they’re using.
Several members of the CryptoZoo collection are available now on the Hololoot marketplace and secondary marketplaces like Element.
Read about the other CryptoZoo residents:
