The animal scientists thought was a hoax
When the first PLATYPUS skin arrived in Britain in 1799, some naturalists suspected a trick: a duck's bill stitched onto the body of a small furry mammal. The scientist who examined it looked for stitches. It was real, and even stranger than it looked. The platypus lays eggs, the males have venomous spurs on their back ankles, and its rubbery bill senses the tiny electrical signals of prey on murky river beds. In 2020 researchers reported that its fur glows blue-green under ultraviolet light.
The ECHIDNA, a spiny anteater, is the only other kind of egg-laying mammal alive. Together they are called monotremes, and they are found only in Australia and New Guinea.
Cube-shaped droppings and jellybean babies
The WOMBAT is the only animal known to produce cube-shaped droppings. Scientists who studied it found that the walls of the end of its gut stretch unevenly, shaping the droppings into cubes, which wombats leave on rocks and logs to mark their territory — cubes do not roll away.
A newborn KANGAROO is about the size of a jellybean. It crawls through its mother's fur into her pouch and stays there, feeding, for months. Kangaroos, the WALLABY, the WALLAROO and the PADEMELON are all marsupials that carry their young this way. The KOALA is a marsupial too, and sleeps for most of the day because its diet of eucalyptus leaves gives very little energy and is hard to digest. Koalas also have fingerprints, and they are so similar to human ones that they can be hard to tell apart even under a microscope.
The army lost to the emus
In 1932, farmers in Western Australia complained that around twenty thousand EMU birds were eating their wheat. The government sent soldiers with machine guns. The emus scattered at speed, ran in all directions and proved very hard to hit, and after several weeks and thousands of rounds of ammunition the operation was called off. It became known as the Emu War, and it is usually remembered as a war the emus won.
The DINGO arrived in Australia with people thousands of years ago. To keep dingoes away from sheep, a fence more than five thousand kilometres long was built across the south-east of the country, one of the longest structures in the world.
A chocolate bilby at Easter
The BILBY, a small burrowing marsupial with long rabbit-like ears, is endangered, partly because of introduced rabbits and foxes. In Australia, chocolate bilbies are sold at Easter instead of chocolate rabbits, with some of the money going to protect them — our Easter page covers the rest of the festival. The NUMBAT eats nothing but termites, many thousands a day.
The KOOKABURRA is famous for a call like loud laughter, and the QUOKKA of Rottnest Island for looking as if it is smiling in photographs. The rest of the grid holds the QUOLL, the BANDICOOT, the GOANNA, a big lizard, the DUGONG, a sea cow that grazes seagrass, the BRUMBY, a wild horse, and the birds: the COCKATOO, the pink and grey GALAH and the bright LORIKEET.