What is it that has a bill like a duck, and feet like a duck, and lays eggs like a duck and yet isn’t a duck? It is the platypus, one of the strange Australian animals, found nowhere else in the world. Scientists have named the platypus, ornithorhynchus; but its common name is duckbill. It is really not a bird at all but a furred animal with habits very much like those of a water-loving mole. It spends practically all of its life swimming and diving: and burrowing into the mud. It digs up worms and shell-fish from the river bottoms: stores them in its cheek pouches: and rises to the surface to eat them while it swims. Nature provided the platypus with a soft and very sensitive bill, well adapted to groping about in mud. Its webbed toes and flat tail make swimming easy, and its velvety fur sheds water.
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| Far left a bandicoot. Next are platypus. Center right, the skeleton of a echidna and on the far right is a Tasmanian devil. |
The Platypus makes a snug nest for its babies just underneath the ground in the bank of a stream. The babies have to stay in the nest until they are able to swim; for the only entrance to their house is through long tunnels in the bank, which finally open under the surface of the water. Unlike any other furred animals except echidnas, the babies of the platypus are hatched from eggs. The eggs are tough and leathery like snake eggs; and the newly-hatched young are small, weak and naked.
The echidna, next to the duckbills in the case, is often called the Australian porcupine because of the quills on its back. When the echidna is afraid, it rolls itself into a spiny ball with head and legs protected. In the mornings and evenings it is busy digging into ant hills with powerful claws and long slender snout. Although echidnas never have any teeth, they manage to gather up quantities of ants with their long sticky tongue. Like the platypus, the echidna lays eggs and its newly- hatched young are helpless: but the echidna spends its life on dry rocky soil instead of in the water.
On the same side of the case with the duckbills and echidnas are some of the largest of Australian wild animals, kangaroos. They look as if they had grown too rapidly; for their hind legs are so much larger than their front legs. They use their clumsy tail like a third hind leg to rest upon when they are sitting. Kangaroos never walk or run but travel swiftly over the plains by great hops or leaps. Their principal food is grass, shrubs and leaves; and their favorite grass is a small spike variety now called the kangaroo grass.
The babies of even the largest kinds of kangaroos are smaller than house mice and are very weak when they are born. The mother kangaroo carries her new-born helpless baby in her pouch, which is a fold of skin on the outside of her body. In that pouch the baby kangaroo lives for several months until it grows strong enough to take care of itself. Even after the young kangaroos have grown almost too big for the pouch, they often seek its protection if they become frightened or weary.
Australians call the baby kangaroo a ‘'joey”. Young females are called “flying does”; and the older males “old men”. The great red kangaroo of southeastern Australia is noted for its size, strength, speed and endurance. The smaller kangaroos or wallabies furnish most of the kangaroo leather, meat and furs that go to London markets. A kangaroo which differs greatly from the others is the rat kangaroo. It is much smaller, though not nearly so small as a rat; and it runs instead of leaping. Most kangaroos cannot bend their tails easily; but the rat kangaroo wraps its tail around the grasses which it carries thus to its nest.
On the opposite side of the case from the kangaroos, duckbills and echidnas are several other strange Australian animals. Look for a woolly bear-like animal with only one baby on its back. It is these, and not true bears, that teddy bear toys resemble. Koalas, (the real name for these clumsy big-eared creatures), do not belong to the bears but are more closely related to phalangers and wombats. Adult koalas spend much time climbing slowly about in tall eucalyptus trees in search of tender leaves, the food they like best.
The flying phalanger at the upper end of the case looks so much like our flying squirrel that people often call it the squirrel flying phalanger. The skin between the fore leg and the hind leg is extended and catches the air like a parachute. Although phalangers are distantly related to opossums, they really do not deserve that American Indian name; yet they often get it. One great difference between phalangers and opossums is in the number of babies. An opossum mother usually has from six to twelve at a time, while a phalanger has only one or two each year.
Other strange Australian animals are the rabbit bandicoot, the banded marsupial anteater, the wombat and the Tasmanian devil. Fisher.
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