G’day mate! Welcome to AUSTRALIA. You’re
not going to find animals like this anywhere else in the world. They all live together
on this continent that looks like a giant island. Let’s take a closer look! Here are
11 amazing Australian animals. These cute cuddly Aussie critters are koalas.
Koalas are marsupials. Marsupials are a kind of mammal that are not fully developed when
they are born. When baby koalas, also known as joeys, are born, they’re not ready to
live on their own. So they live in their mother’s pouch for about 7 months. Newborn Koala Joeys
are about the size of a jelly bean! They eventually grow to be about 9 kilograms (around 20 lbs).
As baby joeys, they rely heavily on their mother for the first year of their life. Even
when they leave their mother’s pouch at 7 months, they come back to nurse. After a
year, they stop nursing and eat leaves. Eucalyptus leaves are their favorite. Adult koalas are
mostly solitary, and spend their days up in the trees, napping and eating. They’re nocturnal.
This means they’re more active during the night. This is a dingo! It’s known as “Australia’s
Wild Dog.” But they can also be found in Southeast Asia. Dingos are usually reddish
or golden in colour, and reach 15 kilos on average or about 35 pounds. Not all dingos
are pure dingo. They can and do breed with domestic dogs to form hybrids. You can recognize
a dingo by its large head with pointy ears, narrow chest and shoulders, and its big bushy
tail that helps it stay balanced. They typically live in family packs, but sometimes the young
males go off on their own. Dingos are hunters and mainly eat small animals like rabbits,
rodents, and lizards. But they’ll also eat plants! We call this kind of animal an omnivore.
Omni means all, and vore means eating (like when you have a voracious appetite). Put those
together, and you get - eating everything! Do you recognize this popular Australian native
animal? That’s right - it’s a kangaroo! Like the koala, kangaroos are marsupials.
Like other marsupials, baby kangaroos, called joeys, develop in a pouch. They are about
the size of a grape when born, and they travel up to the pouch on their own without any assistance
from their mom. When the kangaroo is large enough, it can leave the pouch and join the
other members of its family in eating grasses. Like cows, kangaroos regurgitate their food,
and re-chew it as part of their digestion. Kangaroos are the tallest marsupial, standing
over 2 meters tall. They live in groups. When they sense danger, they alert the others by
beating on the ground with their huge feet. They also can use their giant, strong feet
to kick any opponents. But kangaroos are mostly known for how well they can hop away. They
use their powerful back legs to jump - about 9 meters in one leap. In this way, they can
travel around 50 km per hour. It helps that they have such long strong tails that keep
them balanced while jumping. Look at them go! This strange Australian animal is the Tasmanian
Devil! These are the largest carnivorous marsupials in the world, reaching about ¾ of a meter
long and weighing about 11 kilograms. By now, you know that marsupial means they have little
pouches where their baby joeys finish growing up. They’re called the Tasmanian Devil because
they live in Tasmania, a large island just south of the Australian mainland. They’re
not really devils, but they do get pretty grumpy. Tasmanian Devils have sharp teeth,
and have one of the most powerful bites of any mammal on earth. They often eat the carcasses
of dead animals. Yuck! And they eat EVERYTHING! Even the hair and bones. Double yuck! Tasmanian
Devils are nocturnal. They sleep all day in a burrow or cave, and come out at night to
eat. They make a dramatic display if they are threatened - they howl, bare their teeth,
and spin around in circles. Behold! another Australian marsupial, the
wombat! They are about 1 meter long, with a pudgy appearance. They have squat little
legs and a very short tail. They spend much of their time in burrows underground, digging
with their teeth and claws. Like rats and other rodents, their long front teeth keep
growing. They must constantly chew on tough plants to keep their teeth ground down to
a normal size. And like other marsupials, wombats have pouches
where they raise their young. But their pouch faces backwards! This way, dirt doesn’t
get into the pouch as the wombat digs its tunnels. Pretty smart!
Wombats are nocturnal herbivores, emerging from their tunnels at night to eat a variety
of grasses, roots, and bark. Wombats have an unusual defence mechanism against their
most common predators - dingos and tasmanian devils. They dive into a tunnel and block
the opening with their backside. Their rear ends have tough cartilage, that makes it hard
to bite. Then the wombat can reach back and kick with its powerful rear legs, driving
the predator away. Wait a minute. Is that a kangaroo? No! It’s
a wallaby! It sure looks a lot like a kangaroo. Just like the kangaroo, wallabies are marsupials.
But they’re smaller. Wallabies are members of a family called macropodidae, which means
BIG FEET! Kangaroos are also members of this family. So how can you tell the difference
between a kangaroo and a wallaby? The kangaroo has more height between its ankles and its
knees - this lets it get more speed as it hops across the grasslands. Wallabies, in
contrast, have more compact legs. Wallabies usually have brighter coats. Some have reddish
markings around their shoulders. Kangaroos tend to be more dull in colour.
Still not sure? You can really tell the difference by looking at their teeth. The wallaby lives
mostly on leaves from the forest, so it has flatter teeth for crushing and grinding leaves.
Kangaroos tend to live in more open areas without trees, and eat more grass, so they
have ridged teeth that are good for cutting grass to eat. Eeeee! This might be the most adorable marsupial,
the Quokka. He looks like he’s smiling! The quokka is also a member of the macropod
family. They can hop, using their big feet. But they are much smaller than their relatives,
the kangaroo and wallaby. They’re about the size of a housecat. Awww! Like kangaroos
and wallabies, quokkas raise their joeys in a pouch. After about 8 months, the new quokka
can live on its own. Quokkas are vegetarian, and eat a wide variety of plants, including
grasses and leaves from shrubs and trees. Quokkas are very good at burrowing, digging
tunnels where they nap and can hide from predators. They can also climb trees. Most quokkas are
found on Rottnest Island, off the west coast of mainland Australia. They’re so photogenic!
But don’t be fooled by their cute pictures. Quokkas can and DO bite. We’ll just think
they’re super cute from a distance. This is the duck-billed platypus. The platypus
has a bill and webbed feet. That might make you think of a duck! But the platypus is NOT
a bird. It’s a mammal. What?! We’ve been talking about a lot of marsupials. But the
platypus is a different kind of mammal, called a monotreme. These are mammals that lay eggs!
This is very rare. In fact, there are only two known kinds of animals that do this. Do
you know the other?{show outline of echidna} We’ll talk about it in a moment, it’s
another Australian native! But for now, let’s focus on the weird and wonderful platypus.
The platypus lays one or two eggs at time. She stays with the eggs, keeping them warm.
They hatch in about 10 days. The babies are tiny - like a little bean. (So many of these
Australian animals sure are tiny when born!) They stay nursing with the mother for about
3-4 months until they can swim on their own. Full-grown platypuses grow to about 1 and
a half kilos - about 3 pounds. They hunt underwater, scooping up all kinds of food from the bottom.
They eat insects, shellfish, and worms - and since they don’t have teeth, they scoop
up a little gravel and use it to mash up their food. Now that’s a big bird. The emu is a VERY
large flightless bird found in Australia. The emu is the world’s second largest bird
- only the ostrich is bigger. It has long legs and a long neck and stands almost 2 meters
tall. Emus are speedy - they can sprint up to 50
km/hr - and they’re the only birds with calf muscles. They can jump more than 2 meters
straight up off the ground. Along with running away, emus have another unusual defense mechanism.
They can rattle their stiff tail feathers! This scares off predators like dingos. The
feathers of an emu don’t look like most birds. Most birds have feathers that lie very
close together, held together with barbs. But emu feathers have barbs that are very
far apart, and so the feathers don’t hook together. They stick out, looking more like
hair. Emus can also scare off predators by shouting! Well, sort of. The emu has a pouch
in its throat that it can inflate, and make deep booming, grunting, and hissing sounds.
Their calls can be heard up to 2 kilometers away. That’ll scare off a dingo! Here’s another large flightless bird living
in Australia - and the third largest bird in the world. Actually, it’s the third tallest,
but the second heaviest. Like the ostrich and emu, the cassowary does not fly. It has
tiny wings that couldn’t support its weight during flight. The female cassowary is about
twice as big as the male. - about 60 kilos (130 lbs). The cassowary has long, glossy
black feathers on its body, but hardly any feathers on their long necks that are multicoloured
- red, orange, blue and purple. Yeah - that’s not all that’s going on. The cassowary has
all sorts of interesting features. See that fold of skin in front? That’s called a wattle.
And on the tops of their heads is a tall horn called a casque. This may remind you of some
dinosaurs, like the parasaurolophus! Like other birds, the female cassowary lays eggs.
Then the father takes care of them. What a good dad! We should say, emu dads do this
too. But just because they’re good parents, don’t think these giant birds are pushovers.
Cassowaries can defend themselves. They have sharp claws and a powerful kick. They just
want to be left alone to graze. They mostly eat fruit. But they’ll also eat the occasional
lizard or snake. The echidna is the second kind of mammal that
can lay eggs. Remember the platypus is the other! The echidna usually lays just one egg
a year. It’s about the size of a grape. The mother echidna holds the egg in a pouch
on her belly. The egg hatches after about 10 days. The baby echidna is called a puggle,
and is very tiny. It grabs onto its mother’s fur, and laps up milk from special glands
in her pouch. There are actually two kinds of echidna - the long-beaked echidna, and
the short-beaked echidna.They are sometimes called spiny anteaters. That’s because they
do eat ants and termites. But they aren’t really closely related to the true anteaters,
which live in the Americas. The echidna is good at digging in the dirt to catch their
food. They stick in their snout and catch insects on their long sticky tongue. Echidnas
aren’t interested in fighting. You can tell just by looking at it - it doesn’t want
to be bothered. Look at all those spines! To defend against predators, the echidna rolls
up into an unwelcoming ball covered with spikes. Not so easy to bite now! Those are 11 amazing animals that live “down
under” in Australia! Which animal was your favorite? Which Aussie critter do you think
is the strangest? Let us know in the comments below! We want to know what you think!
Now it’s time to watch more Socratica Kids animal videos! Pick which one you want to
watch next. We guarantee you’ll love it! Animals are cool!
