Their young are born in an immature state after a relatively short developmental period in the mother's uterus. (This is called the gestation period.).
The newborn marsupial crawls into a pouch or onto a pouch-like area on the mother's abdomen. Here it attaches itself to one of her nipples and remains until it is well formed and has grown much larger.
There are some 250 kinds of living marsupials. These include the Australian and New Guinean insectivorous and carnivorous (insect and meat-eating) marsupials, the omnivorous (plant and meat-eating) bandicoots, and the herbivorous (plant eating) possums, koalas, wombats and kangaroos as well as the South American opossums.
Scientists have grouped them according to differences in their dentition. They are either polyprotodonts (with many teeth and always three pairs of incisors on the lower jaw) or diprotodonts (fewer teeth with only one pair of especially well-developed incisors on the lower jaw).
Characteristics of their pouch, fore and hind foot structure, nature of tail and whether they are tree-dwellers, burrowers or ground-dwellers, help to classify them further.
Mammals that can live on land and prey on other animals tend to look similar. The adaptations for chasing, catching and eating other animals are a compact body, four slender limbs, claws and a head with well-developed organs of sight, hearing and smell.
In other words, all the marsupial carnivores are superficially similar and resemble placental cats, shrews, dogs and other animals that share the carnivorous habit.
The Koala Bear The creature I have chosen is the koala bear. It is an Australian mammal that looks like a teddy bear, but it is not related to any kind of bear. Koalas have soft, thick fur; a large, hairless nose; round ears; and no tail. Their fur is gray or brown on their back and white on the...
Of the 295 species of mammals (including marsupials) 250 are unique to Australia. ... The need to be able to survive tough times has favored animals with lower metabolic rates "reptiles and marsupials. ... Before people arrived, large marsupials and flightless birds "'megafauna' "browsed in forests and savanna grasslands that contained many fire-sensitive species. ... Top predators in the megafauna era included a goanna-like lizard 23 feet long, a very large python and a lion-like marsupial. ... This may explain why the Centre was much lusher until recent times.So...
The Common Wombat (Vombatus Ursinus) a native Australian Marsupial, is a stout, sturdy animal with a large blunt head. It has small ears and a very short tail. It has short, stubby but very powerful legs with broad claws which it uses for digging. Wombats grow to about 1.3 meters in length and can w...
Through the thousands of years of the evolution of the Gorda, it has adapted to better survive within its environment. The Gorda has changed significantly over time and has adapted to its environment with new capabilities that include its miraculous soaring. The Gorda now, with its lighter weigh...
A mouse is a small rodent. The word mice or mouse is sometimes used to refer to any small rodent. The word mouse has no exact meaning in classification systems. There are numerous amounts of mice in the world, but for convenience they are often grouped as the Eurasian mice and the American mice. ...
