WOMBAT
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| What
looks more like a small bear but is about the size of a big dog? A
Wombat found only in Australia. The wombats are however, not at all
closely related to bears. They are much closer relatives of pouched
mammal kangaroos. The wombats have stout legs, long fur dark brown to
brownish-grey hair, ears short and rounded and almost no tail. Because
they are very short and hidden!
They are two kinds of wombats. The common wombat measuring just over a metre long found in Tasmania and forest areas of the southeastern Queensland and the hairy-nosed wombat whose ears are longer and more pointed than the common wombat. Found in southeastern Australia and in parts of South Australia and Western Australia. The female wombat’s pouch has a rear opening and two teats. One baby is born at a time in late autumn, carried in the mother’s pouch for seven to eight months and it is independent by the following summer. Wombats live in tunnels they dig in the ground. Apparently they lie on their sides to dig their burrows with their front feet which are strong, with five toes bearing wide, shovel-like claws pushing the dirt out with their hind-feet. Because of their skill as burrow builders, wombats have been sometime called ‘animal bulldozers’. The burrows are in the shape of a low arch and can be up to 30 m long, but usually they are much shorter than this with a nest of bark and fern frond 2 m to 4 m from the entrance. A wombat usually stays in its tunnel all day and hunt for food during the night.
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Wombats eats plant roots of any kind, bark, grasses
whose leaves have silica skeletons and therefore its teeth are worn away
very quickly. To cope with this, its teeth continue to grow throughout
its life like all marsupials.