Her husband is research professor in the School of Biological Sciences. As amusing as their play can be to observers, kea behavior has its downside. Unlike most other parrots, young keas display a seemingly endless appetite for destroying large objects. Fledglings and juveniles spend many of their waking hours in demolition, ripping into old carpeting and discarded furniture, or even attacking parked automobiles. Although not included in the magazine excerpt, Bond and Diamond in their book discuss the kea's destructiveness as an essential element of their foraging behavior.
Keas are generalist feeders consuming everything from nectar and plant buds to insects and carrion.
They have long been accused of attacking and killing sheep. While attacks on sheep are rare today, wildlife officials report losses to some herds of several sheep per year. Overall, the book provides a comprehensive account of the keas' contradictory nature, along with the problem of species survival in human environments everywhere. They present the keas' story from historical and contemporary perspectives and include observations from their years of field work. They note that the keas have a flexible lifestyle that probably evolved in response to the alpine habitat's unreliable food resources that has allowed the bird to survive the extermination of much of its original ecosystem.