The kea is a crow-sized parrot that lives in the New Zealand mountains, considered playful comic or vicious killer. This account looks at the kea's contradictory nature, the behavioural flexibility and the problem of species survival in human environments everywhere. Keas live only in the Southern Alps, they are bold, curious and ingeniously destructive. They have a complex social system that includes extensive play behaviour, and have the unusual ability to learn and create new solutions to problems they encounter. The work compares the kea's behaviour and ecology with that of its closest relative, the kaka of New Zealand lowland rainforests, giving an insight to the origins of the kea's unusual adaptability. It concludes that the kea's high level of sociality is a key factor in the flexibile lifestyle, and that the bird has survived.