Madi's Australian *Wilder*Life

Welcome to the Australian section of my Wildlife Sanctuary's tour . I hope you are enjoying yourself and maybe learning a little bit about these wonderful creature's of the Earth. The Australian wildlife is just that. Australian! *grin* A lot are marsupials (an animal that contains a pouch generally on their bellies to carry their young.) and some are mammals. Please sit back and enjoy.

KOALA'S

Koala's are marsupials which live mainly in specific trees by the name of Eucalyptus Trees. These trees are normally poisonous to other animals including humans. One thing for Koala's is that they will never have bad breath *grin*. Koala's carry their babies in pouches, much like Kangaroos. Sometimes a mother will ignore her baby leaving another mother to carry both it's child and that of the lazy parent. People get the idea that Koala's are bears, they are NOT bears. Koala's have a woolly coat, large fluffy ears, a bulbous nose and almost no tail. Koala's are very very territorial, mainly sticking to the one area or tree they are in. They have a slow metabolic rate because of their high fibre, low nutrient diet, and because these marsupials store little to no fat, they must adopt strategies to conserve their energy. One of these strategies is sleeping. Koala's are found only in certain parts of Australia and around 80% of these have been destroyed due to their local habitats being annihilated for our land development. If touched on the face, a koala will retaliate in an attacking manor because that is the way males fight..Attacking the face.

A photo by P.Wright

ADDITIONAL KOALA LINKS
Australain Koala Foundation

TASMANIAN DEVIL'S

Tasmanian Devil's are carnivorous marsupial's and are found only in Tasmania's forests and scrub area's, although they used to be found also on Australia's mainland. Devil's are nocturnal and are named by European settlers due to their eerie growl which starts sounding like a whistle and ends in a bark. Tasmanian Devil's have a reputation for their ferocity and the strongest jaws. The Devil can grow up to 4 feet long with a large head and is very strong for it's size, sometimes preying on animals larger than itself. Their diet consists of small mammals, reptiles and also they scavange on dead animals and devour their entire prey. The Tasmanian Devil's destruction is due to it's attack on poultry, livestock and other mammals.

ADDITIONAL TASMANIAN DEVIL LINKS
Tasmanian Devil

KANGAROO'S

European Explorer's saw these creatures and asked the Aborigine's "What are these animals?" and the aborgine's replied "Kangaroo" (meaning "I don't understand you") So the European's named these bouncing creature's Kangaroo's. Kangaroo's are generally called "Roo's" with about 60 different kinds and 12 relatives called 'Rat Kangaroo's'. The males are always larger, called a boomer than the females, called aflyer with the smallest species being a Warabi Rock Wallaby wieghing in at 2 pounds and the largest being a male Red/Grey weighing 200 pounds. Kangaroo's can sprint 40mph over a 1-2 mile distance and 20mph over 10 miles or more. Roo's need their tails for balance so if you lift a kangaroo's tail it will not be able to hop. The Roo is a shy, mainly nocturnal creature but some species will be active at dawn and dusk, they spend the day lazing about in the shade. They can live up to 20 years in captivity but last only about 6 years in the wild. In the last 12 months a virus has spread like an epidemic in Western Greys, Eastern Greys and in some of the Red's where they are going blind, permanently. Some have adjusted, but many die due to starvation and such.

ADDITIONAL ROO LINKS
Kangaroo's Haven
Chris' Joey Haven
Kangaroo Facts

CASSOWARY

The Cassowary is a large, flightless bird found in the swamplands and rainforest's of Australia and New Guinea. This bird can grow up to 2 meters in height, standing around 1.2 to 1.8m (roughly 4 to 6 ft). The weight can get as heavy as 60kgs (130lbs).

It has strong, powerful scale-covered legs with claws that are dagger-like and the Cassowary's kick is powerful enough to rip open a human's stomach or possibly even kill them. The Cassowary has a long skinny neck, very large eyes, and a prominent beak. It's loose body plumage is a dark brown, almost black, colour and the head and neck are bare and brightly coloured in red (The wattles hanging off it's neck), yellow (the Casque - bony crest on top of it's head), and blue (the bare skin covering the rest of the bird's head and neck). The Casque is sometime's used to dig up buried food's or to clear a path through the forest's tangles. The Juvenile Cassowary is very drab in colour (all brownish) compared to it's adult colours.

The Cassowary's diet consists mainly of fallen fruit's, insects, frogs, snakes, snails and many other small animals. It lives in the low swamplands and rainforests of Northern Australia where it is a shy and solitary bird. During breeding the female can lay a clutch of 4 to 10 eggs, and the male will then incubate them.

GENUS: Casuarius
FAMILY: Casuariidae
ORDER: Struthioniformes

SUGAR GLIDER'S

TAXONOMIC CLASSIFICATION

CLASS: Mammalia
SUBCLASS: Marsupialia
ORDER: Diprotodontia
SUBORDER: Phalangerida
SUPERFAMILY: Petauroidea
FAMILY: Petauridae

The Sugar Glider (Petaurus breviceps) is a marsupial native to Australia and Indonesia. A marsupial is an animal which carries their babies in a pouch.

This glider has a soft grey coloured body with a black stripe that runs straight down it's back. The eyes of a Sugar Glider are large and dark and it's ears are also large, erect and hairless. Their tail's are used for balance and steering when it's gliding and that's about all it's used for. It has a gliding membrane which is used much like a flying squirrel's membrane. If high enough, a sugar glider can glide as far as 150 feet. The Glider has some odd qualities such as a flattened, opposable thumb on each hand (aside from it's 5 fingers), they have 4 toes on their hind legs - 2 of those toes are fused together (syndactylous) to form a type of grooming comb. Also both the male and female have forked genitalea.

The Sugar Glider is a nocturnal arboreal creature, meaning it's most active after dark and they are mainly tree-dwelling. These marsupials are normal found living in groups of 20 to 40 gliders. A mature male has a bald spot in the middle of it's forehead and another on it's chest, these are his scent glands. A female has a pouch situated roughly around the area where one would expect a placental mammal's navel. A baby Glider is otherwise known as a Joey (like nearly all other Marsupial's young are called). An adult glider weigh's about 120-130g and are about 10-14 inches long with about 6-8 inches of that length being it's tail. Sugar Glider's make a wide range of sounds such as chirping, barking, chattering, crabbing and other indescribable odd sounds. They can live from between 5-7 years in the wild. The diet of these small creature's usually consists of sap and gum from various species of eucalyptus trees and insects along with other small vertebrates.

ADDITIONAL SUGAR GLIDER LINKS
Sugar Glider Network
Interesting Sugar Glider and Exotic Pet's site.
Sugar Glider Profile on the Animal Network
The GliderNet, info about the Sugar Gliders. Lots of good information.
Internation Sugar Gliders Association, Inc.

PLATYPUS
Platys ="Broad", pous ="foot" -
The Platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) is an egg-laying mammal native to Southern and Eastern Australia as well as Tasmania. This mammal plus the echidna make up the order Monotremata (a name applied to egg-laying mammals). This rather unusual looking monotreme has a ducklike bill and webbed feet. It's body is eggshaped and reaches a length of 36cm (14in). The tail of the Platypus adds an extra 13cm (5in) to it's overall length. With no apparent neck, the head is it's most unusual feature. The head is small and is accentuated by a ducklike bill. This bill is used for stirring up mud at the bottom of rivers in order to uncover it's meal. The platypus' meal consists mainly of insects, worms and shellfish.
The adult male has a hollow, horny spur on the inner side of the hind leg. This spur will excrete a toxic fluid in it's defense. These particular monotreme's are very very shy and nocturnal animals. You are indeed luck to have spotted one of these creatures in it's habitat. The Platypus is a wonderful diver and swimmer, but do not have much in the way of it's defense therefore they build long, winding burrows (usually dug by the females) deep into the banks of rivers and streams.

Hosted by www.Geocities.ws