marsupial

Marsupial

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such as the giant tortoises of the Galapagos, the lemurs of Madagascar or the koalas of Australia.

he and other scientists are dreaming up ambitious plans to resurrect long-dead animals from pigeons to Tasmanian tigers and wooly mammoths.

such as the Tasmanian tiger. These genomes exist in the form of computerised data, but they could serve as a blueprint for altering the DNA of a cell from a closely related species. For instance,

Farmer Chris Jessen raises miniature cattle and also owns a miniature kangaroo on his hobby farm.

So how long will it be before we see a revived version of the passenger pigeon (extinct in 1914), the Tasmanian tiger (extinct in 1936),

6 Crazy Facts About Cicadas Bird species raccoons possums foxes and whatever can get their mouths on these things can eat their fill

Kangaroos like all marsupials a sub-type of mammalâ give birth to relatively undeveloped young that develop further in the mother's pouch.

A female kangaroo gives birth to a baby or joey once a year after about a month of gestation.

The tiny hairless and blind newborn immediately crawls into its mom's pouch (all female marsupials have one) where it nurses

Kangaroos are herbivores and they eat a wide variety of plants including grasses shrubs tree leaves and shoots.

Ecologically kangaroos are Australia's equivalent of bison deer and cattle in North america. Kangaroos get much of the moisture they need from their diet

which means they can go for long periods of time without drinking water. Like cows kangaroos have chambered stomachs to help with digestion.

They regurgitate grass and shrubs and chew them again before swallowing. They also have specialized highly teeth.

and they can weigh between 40 and 200 pounds (18 to 100 kilograms) depending on the species. The Eastern Gray Kangaroo is the heaviest marsupial in the world

and the Red Kangaroo is the largest. Their hind legs and feet are much stronger and larger than their arms (or forelimbs.

Kangaroos are the only large animals that hop as a primary means of locomotion. A male's jump can be 10 feet (3 m) high and 30 feet (9 m) long

Kangaroo tails are muscular long and thick at the base which helps them balance and turn when they're hopping.

Kangaroos are highly social. They often live in groups known as mobs troops or courts which can range in size from 10 to more than 100 kangaroos.

Males box with each other to establish dominance. When a kangaroo senses danger it alerts others by loudly thumping its feet on the ground.

Kangaroos also make grunting coughing hissing and clicking noises. Kangaroos are native to Australia. They are good at adapting

so they can live in a variety of habitats in fact they're often found in public parks gardens and even golf courses.

The Red Kangaroo is found in arid and semiarid regions where they eat green plants.

Their populations shrink during droughts because their food supply literally dries up. The Western Grey Kangaroo lives in open woodlands shrublands grasslands and even pasturelands in Australia from the Indian ocean to western Victoria and New south wales.

The Eastern Grey Kangaroo lives in forests woodlands shrublands and grasslands in eastern Australia and Tasmania.

The Antilopine Kangaroo is found in monsoonal tropical woodlands in the northern part of the continent.

Least concern There are no major threats for these kangaroo species although they may be affected by land development loss of habitat wildfires and hunting.

Australian laws protect the Eastern Grey Kangaroo and the Western Grey Kangaroo. Red Eastern Grey and Western Grey kangaroos can be hunted with a permit for their hides meat

and to control their populations. The kangaroo's family name Macropodidae in Latin means big feet which they certainly have.

The word kangaroo comes from an aboriginal group s word for the Gray Kangaroo gangurru.

The word was recorded first as Kangooroo or Kanguru in 1770 by British explorer James Cook.

Male kangaroos are called bucks boomers or jacks and females are called does flyers or jills. Females can get pregnant immediately after giving birth.

A mom s pouch will then hold both joeys but she makes two types of milk one for the older joey and one for the younger.

Kangaroos have great hearing and like a cat they can swivel their ears to catch tiny sounds.

Kangaroos can't walk backwards but they are good swimmers. Kangaroos burn less energy the faster they hop at least up to their cruising speed of 20 mph (32 kph.

The Western Gray Kangaroo has the nickname the stinker because it smells like curry. Other resources r

#Fun Facts About Koalas Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Mammalia Order: Diprotodonta Family: Phascolarctidae Genus:

whose distinguishing characteristic is that females give birth to relatively undeveloped young that then live in pouches that contain mammary glands where their young live until they are old enough to emerge.

Koalas are largely nocturnal. Koalas are solitary animals that typically have a certain territory. Males mark this with a scent gland that they rub against trees A full-grown adult male weighs around 30 pounds (12.5 kilograms)

and about 2. 6 feet (81 centimeters) in length while a female weighs up to 22 pounds (10 kg)

and grows to 2. 4 feet (73 cm Koalas vary in size regionally though: Those from the northern parts of the animal's range are much smaller

and have gray fur while those from southern Australia have longer fur that is a browner color due to the colder climate in

which it dwells. Koalas live in trees and eat primarily eucalyptus leaves. These leaves are very fibrous low in nutrition

and contain a toxin that must be filtered out by the animal's digestive system. Their strong jaws also help koalas chew their tough food.

Koalas have an excellent sense of smell that can differentiate between different types of eucalyptus leaves and signal the amount of toxin in the leaves.

Koalas also have excellent hearing though poor eyesight so they have to recognize predators by sound according to the Australia Zoo.

Koalas have strong limbs and long sharp claws that help them climb tree trucks. Koalas'have five fingers one

of which is an opposable thumb which helps them grip tree branches. Their thickly padded tail helps them sit for hours in trees.

Though koalas generally don't make noise the male has a loud call during breeding season that can be heard about a kilometer away.

Koalas can make other sounds from snores to screams. Female koalas give birth after about 35 days of gestation.

Baby koalas are called joeys. They are only about 2 cm long when they are born and are blind and furless.

When born the joey climbs into its mother's pouch and remains there protected and nursing for about six months.

A sphincter muscle keeps the joey from falling out according to the Adelaide Zoo. When it emerges from the pouch the joey remains with its mother for six more months riding on her back feeding on both milk and eucalyptus leaves.

The koala is weaned usually by the time it is a year old. The average lifespan of a koala in the wild is between 10 to 14 years.

Â Where koalas live: Koalas are found in the eastern half of Australia in the states of Queensland New south wales Victoria and South australia as well as several small islands.

The fragmentation of habitat and population numbers differ from state to state. Â Conservation status:

Least Concern There are far fewer koalas in Australia today than there were when European settlers first arrived.

In the early 20th century they were hunted to near extinction for their fur according to the Adelaide Zoo.

Though they are subject to threats particularly habitat encroachment and fragmentation as well as disease fire drought and road deaths the koala is considered a species of least concern by the IUCN because of its comparatively large population and wide distribution.

The rate of decline is different between different koala populations. Many koalas live on private property which makes establishing protection difficult.

In April 2012 the Australian government listed koalas as a threatened species facing threats from both urban expansion and climate change.

Â Odd facts: The word koala derives from an ancient Aboriginal word meaning no drink since they rarely ever drink water

because they get 90 percent of their hydration from gum leaves. Because of their low metabolism and the effort it takes to digest their food koalas remain motionless 16 to 18 hours a day

and spend most of that time sleeping according to the Adelaide Zoo. Like humans koalas have fingerprints.

They are the only other mammals besides primates to have them. Koala fur is waterproof.

It also protects them from both high and low extreme temperatures. Though there are more than 700 species of eucalyptus in Australia koalas eat only 50 of them.

Â Other koala resources: Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary Adelaide Zoo-Koalas Sea world-Koalas National Koala Conservation and Management Strategy Government of Australia IUCN-Koala Australia Zoo

#Fun Facts About Leopards Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Mammalia Order: Carnivora Family: Felidae Genus:

Panthera Species: Panthera pardus Subspecies: P. pardus pardus (African leopard; P. pardus delacouri (Indo-Chinese leopard;

P. pardus fusca (Indian leopard; P. pardus japonensis (North China leopard; P. pardus kotiya (Sri lanka leopard;

P. pardus melas (Javan leopard; P. pardus nimr (Arabian leopard; P. pardus orientalis (Amur leopard;

P. pardussaxicolor (Persian leopard) Â Basic leopard facts: Leopards are the smallest of the big cats averaging 28 inches (71 centimeters) at shoulder height

#Fun Facts About Tasmanian devils Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Â Mammalia Order: Dasyuromorphia Family: Dasyuridae Genus:

The animals are sized dog with a stocky and muscular build. They can reach 30 inches (76 centimeters) in length

and weigh up to 26 pounds (12 kilograms). They have black fur with white patches at the throat and rump.

They are generally solitary creatures but sometimes come together to feed on a carcass. Tasmanian devil Pictures Unlike other members of their Australian marsupial family they are active during the day

though they are nocturnal hunters. The devils gained their name from European explorers who heard their loud screeching noise

According to researchers the Tasmanian devil's large head and neck allow it to generate one of the strongest bites per unit body mass of any land predator 1200 pounds (540 kg) per square inch

Tasmanian devils eat meat from snakes birds fish and insects. Their prey can reach up to the size of small kangaroos.

Â Â They use their excellent sense of sight and smell to hunt prey. They aren't picky eaters

Like other marsupials their tails swell with stored fat. Female devils give birth after about three weeks of pregnancy to 20 or 30 very tiny young called joeys.

Tasmanian devil habitat: At one time devils were abundant across the continent of Australia but now they only live on the island of Tasmania.

In the 1800s farmers tried to eradicate the ferocious marsupials because they thought the animals were hunting livestock and valuable fur stocks.

Endangered Tasmanian devils have been protected since 1941 but their total population has decreased by more than 60 percent in the past decade.

Odd facts about Tasmanian devils: Devils are known to eat animal cadavers by first ripping out the digestive system

Tasmanian devils have few natural predators but smaller individuals may fall prey to eagles owls and spotted tail quolls.

#Fun Facts About Zebras Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Mammalia Order: Perissodactyla Family: Equidae Genus:

Equus Species: Equus quagga (Plains zebra) Equus zebra (Mountain zebra) Equus grevyi (Grevy's zebra) Subspecies: E. quagga burchellii (Burchell's zebra) E. quagga boehmi (Grant's Zebra) E. quagga borensis (Selous'Zebra) E. quagga chapmani (Chapman's Zebra) E

or hadrosaurs were large herbivores that filled the same ecological niche as deer or kangaroo today.

The overall body shape resembles a kangaroo though it also has wings like a bat.

He painted a kangaroo green attached fake wings to the helpless creature and had exhibited it to the public The 1909 hoax

The largest living branch of the mammalian family tree holds the placentals mammals that keep fetuses alive with placentas as opposed to marsupials such as kangaroos

Although many vertebrates became extinct during this period mammals that are familiar to us today including apes cattle deer rabbits kangaroos wallabies bears

Ten years later a group of researchers and conservationists gathered in Washington D c. today (March 15) for a forum called TEDXDEEXTINCTION hosted by the National geographic Society to talk about how to revive extinct animals from the Tasmanian tiger and the saber-toothed cat to the woolly mammoth and the North american passenger pigeon.

poll options 50 161=Tasmanian tiger; poll options 50 162=Woolly mammoth; poll options 50 163=Gastric brooding frog; poll options 50 165=Saber-toothed cat;

A few years ago another group of researchers isolated DNA from a 100-year-old specimen of a young thylacine also known as Tasmanian tiger.

Here's a look at some of the wackiest animal mothers. 1. Kangaroo adopters The roo riding around in a kangaroo's pouch may not be her own.

Female kangaroos sometimes adopt baby kangaroos though it might be accidental. Such an accidental adoption doesn't happen often

but when it does a mother kangaroo will care for a changeling roo for the rest of its pouch life

and nurse it for several months afterward during the young-at-foot stage when the juvenile kangaroo permanently exits the pouch.

A Pouchful of Cute While there have been a few cases of marsupials fostering babies in captivity such cases are less common in the wild.

or megafauna such as marsupial versions of lions rhino-size wombats giant kangaroos and flightless birds but about 90 percent of that megafauna disappeared during this time.

#Why Koalas Hug Trees The mention of a koala bear often conjures up an image of an adorable spoon-nosed creature cocking its head to one side while clinging to a tree.

Now scientists have figured out why the iconic Australian marsupials hug trees: The trunks help the koala bears keep cool according to a new study.

It can be a really useful way of getting rid of heat on a hot day said study co-author Michael Kearney an ecologist at the University of Melbourne in Australia.

Tree huggers Given that koalas spend so much time in trees the marsupials live in Australia's woodlands where they munch on leaves

which measures temperature based on thermal radiation at the tree trunks the koalas were hugging. The trunks were considerably cooler than the ambient air temperature sometimes by as

She also noticed the koalas clinging to acacia trees even though they normally eat eucalyptus leaves.

See Images of the Tree-Hugging Koalas As it got hotter the koalas went farther down the trees

Stay cool Koala bears pant to keep cool letting evaporated moisture from their mouths carry heat away from their bodies.

When the team modeled koala bear heat transfer they found the tree-dwellers save half the water they would have used panting

Koalas get most of their water from their diet but because eucalyptus leaves are laced with a toxin the koalas can eat only a limited amount before the toxin harms the animals Kearney said.

So tree-hugging could be critical to their survival on hot days by allowing them to cool off without wasting precious water through panting Kearney said.

Climate change planning Koalas'food (and hugging) trees will change their range with the hotter and drier weather brought by climate change Bill Ellis a wildlife researcher at the University of Queensland in Australia who was involved not in the study wrote in an email to Live Science.

But the new study suggests that food may be a smaller consideration in preserving koala habitat than previously thought he said.

As long as we plant trees koalas will eat perhaps the other trees we plant just need to provide the right mix of shelter

but nonnative trees might be the future for koalas as long as they also have the right fodder.

Farther north in the koala's range the air is muggy and it feels hotter so scientists should see how tree-hugging plays out in in different locations in the koala's habitat Ellis said.

Humidity means that the power of evaporation for cooling is reduced Kearney said. So tree-hugging may be even more important up north where evaporative cooling doesn't work as well he said.

tree squirrels ground squirrels and flying squirrels. These three categories are broken further down into many squirrel types such as Albino Mountain Tree Antelope Spotted Grey American Red Douglas Fox Pygmy Northern Flying Southern

Flying squirrels make their homes in tree holes or nests that are built into the crooks of branches To get from tree to tree

or from a tree to the ground flying squirrels spread the muscle membrane between their legs and body and glide on the air.

The Namdapha flying squirrel is endangered critically. Squirrels have four teeth in the front of their mouth that constantly grow throughout their lives.

How Koalas Do it With a diet based on eucalyptus leaves that are very fibrous and low in nutrition

and calories koalas live a pretty lazy life spending between 18 and 22 hours a day asleep.

or do koalas maintain an exciting sex life? Found throughout the eucalypt woodlands of Australia koalas are quite solitary animals.

Each individual sets up a home range which can span a few acres to hundreds of acres.

Though these home ranges can overlap a bit the marsupials rarely run into each other. If two territorial males do encounter one another things can get ugly

The fights that the males have are pretty ferocious up in the trees said Bill Ellis a koala researcher with the University of Queensland in Australia.

The bellows researchers have found are produced by a structure in the animal's larynx provide information about the size of the koala

But when Ellis and his colleagues looked at the paternity of newborn joeys in the wild they found that size wasn't everything turns out the female koalas mate with a different male each year.

Like kangaroos and most other marsupials male koalas have headed a double penis and females have two vaginas (a third birthing vagina later forms to bring the new joey into the world

Of these more than 330 were killed unintentionally including wolves foxes skunks opossums raccoons bobcats and black bears.

The mammal model also fails with some marsupials and invertebrates like fruitflies. The problem is

I hope the texture is like the fur of an Australian brush tail possum. 1: 20 commenter says I do not understand how this guy still has a job...

@Tarabethidaho who correctly guessed that this creature is a cuscus! Cuscuses are marsupials native to the far northeastern corner of Australia as well as New guinea and a few other islands stretching as far as Sulawesi.

Cuscus is applied the word to a few species of possum in this area as opposed to the more common possums native to the rest of Australasia like the brushtail possum.

This one in particular is spotted a common cuscus which is found throughout that small cuscus range.

Other cuscuses like the Sulawesi bear cuscus are limited to particular islands. It's about the size of a big housecat and lives in the dense foliage of trees from rainforests to hardwood forests to eucalyptus forests.

Hi cuscus! I will name is'Adorable 'and love it and hug it and take very good care of it!

The olinguito as its name suggests is highly similar to another member of the raccoon family the olingo an arboreal nocturnal animal that looks more like a combination of a possum and a monkey than a raccoon.

Even still this is the same problem as resurrecting the Thylacine or Wooly Mammoth both being worked on today.

Literally every insectivorous animal in the northeast--songbirds carnivorous birds (hawks owls) opossums foxes cats shrews snakes spiders and even dogs--will gorge on cicadas.

which most of the world's creatures (aside from a precious few like the Virginia opossum and the dormouse) were unable to adapt to the new climate

I just wish possums would get a little wiser when it comes to crossing the road too.

The striped meat-eating Tasmanian tiger was a marsupial the size of a large dog. Though experts largely agree the last one died in a zoo in 1936 some people hold out hope.

I live in Georgia where we have an ample supply of (common) possums. I had the occasion to rescue some baby possums which

I later learned was illegal to do (without a wildlife rehab license of some sort). I'll tell you baby possums are really fun to play with

and fully grown possums are not the disgusting filthy vicious animals you may think. Their behavior is roughly comparable to cats:

they keep themselves clean but don't have much personality or a complex behavioral repertoire and

(I'm not referring to wild possums but the ones I rescued and raised). They can be trained to use a litter box.

or domesticate possums and I would defer to a true expert. I just regret that an interesting and fun animal that is at the opposite extreme of being endangered is illegal to own.

and filled the same ecological role that kangaroos or deer play today. But no one had suspected that they

Each person was shown a picture of a familiar object--such as a chair a pumpkin or a kangaroo--in one eye.

the word for the suppressed object (pumpkin when the object was a pumpkin) the word for a different object (kangaroo

Since their potential Australian prehistoric megafaunal dispersers became extinct around 45000 years ago why haven't Australian cycads begun to evolve smaller seeds that would be dispersed more readily by flying birds or possums for example over the interim?

and opossums in buckthorn invaded areas and significantly fewer white-tailed deer. Magle hypothesizes that the carnivores could be drawn to buckthorn areas

The rest was horse impala hartebeest wildebeest waterbok eland gemsbok duiker giraffe kangaroo lamb pork or beef.

In Australia for instance the koala is especially vulnerable to wildfires that consume the tree canopy as the animals are slow-moving

Greenwood's colleagues successfully applied Capflank to samples from koalas kept in museums. Capflank is at its most efficient though with fresh DNA.

#Kangaroos win when aborigines hunt with fire: Co-evolution benefits Australias martu people and wildlifeaustralia's Aboriginal Martu people hunt kangaroos and set small grass fires to catch lizards as they have for at least 2000 years.

A University of Utah researcher found such human-made disruption boosts kangaroo populations--showing how co-evolution helped marsupials

and made Aborigines into unintentional conservationists. We have uncovered a framework that allows us to predict

hill kangaroo populations because the animals can hide from predators like dingoes in older bush grass

Counts of kangaroo scats showed kangaroo populations were largest at moderate distances from Martu settlements.

At those distances there also were moderate levels of both kangaroo hunting and burning to expose lizard burrows.

As people spend more time hunting in a region kangaroos densities actually increase but only up to a threshold after

And there are indications mammals like brushtail possums and hare-wallabies also benefit. Unintentional Conservationists and the Dreamtimecodding and colleagues conducted the study in a 60-by-35-mile area within Western australia's Little Sandy Desert where the native Martu people hold title to a vast expanse of land.

There they use. 22-caliber rifles to hunt hill kangaroos a midsized species (3 feet to 5 feet long) named Macropus robustus also known as the euro or common wallaroo.

or indirectly over time in ways that alter each other's evolution--an ecological mechanism that he says explains how moderate levels of burning by the Martu actually bolsters kangaroo populations.

The'conservation'of kangaroos is an outcome that evolved he says. It would be wrong to assume that Martu were intentionally managing a resource.

'But they are well aware their fires benefit kangaroos and other wildlife. In fact they see humans as part of a larger ecosystem that has spiritual components--the dreamtime place of creation where ancestors roamed.

Kangaroo Populations Highest Where Human Disruption is Moderatethe study's key finding is that kangaroo populations are highest where human disruption is moderate not most intense or minimal.

In other words the kangaroos are most abundant at moderate distances from the community--a 40-to 80-minute drive--where hunting is more common than in areas closer to the community and father from it.

Indeed kangaroo population levels close to the village--where they were hunted first--are the same as at great distances from the community where there is little hunting and bush burning.

The study doesn't suggest that hunting kangaroos helps the animals but that any harm to kangaroo populations by hunting is outweighed by

what they gain from a landscape with small patches of different ages of post-fire vegetation.

It's just that the Martu tend to hunt kangaroos in the same areas where they burn the grass to hunt lizards.

Codding says the new study looked at kangaroo populations in all five stages of post-fire spinifex grass vegetation as described by the Martu.

and bush raisin eaten by the Martu and hill kangaroos. The two final stages occur five to 15 years after fire:

and kangaroo) and foraging for bush fruits Codding says. The researchers also monitored how long Martu hunters were away from their camps and

They also walked two predetermined 0. 6-mile lines in each hunting area counting the density of kangaroo scat in patches of vegetation in each of the different post-fire growth stages.