Kangaroos, Opossums And Kin - Part 3

In Kangaroos, Opossums And Kin - Part 1 and Kangaroos, Opossums And Kin - Part 2, I mentioned some about giant phalangers as kin -- however, the largest member of the family today is the koala, the Australian teddy bear.

It looks for all the world like a toy teddy bear, two and a half feet long, with ears seeming as if they were stuck on, and beady eyes. There is no tail.

The dense, woolly fur is blue gray in color and was used commercially for fur until the koalas were almost exterminated. They are pouched mammals, of course, not bears at all any resemblance, but closely related to the phalangers.

Koalas spend most of their lives in eucalyptus trees, on the leaves of which they feed.

All the toes are armed with sharp claws, and the fingers are divided into two groups, the split in the hand coming between the index and middle finger instead of between thumb and fingers as in our hand.

The great toe is thumb like. All of these features aid in climbing.

Koalas, although usually slow and deliberate in movement, are able to spring from one upright branch to another with surprising skill.

The baby is carried in the pouch at first. Then, it clings to the fur of the mother's back, riding piggy back until it is almost as large as the mother.

Koalas become quite tame and they are great attractions at zoos and parks.

Wombats are about three feet or more in length. Their bodies are heavy. They shuffle along on the flat of their feet.

Wombats have only two front teeth above and below, and these have enamel only on the fronts, like the incisors of rodents.

These marsupials have taken to living underground, a life for which their powerful limbs and long claws fit them.

Sometimes the burrows they dig go a hundred feet, but some wombats live in crevices of rocks and dig only a little.

They eat roots, as well as grass and leaves, and sometimes do damage to crops.

The bandicoots are like the kangaroos, phalangers and wombats in their feet, for the fourth toe is the largest and the second and third toes are joined together, with only the claws separate.

Instead of having only one lower front tooth on each side like the marsupials, bandicoots eat almost anything they find -- raiding gardens and cultivated fields is one of their specialties. This makes the farmers their enemies.

Like wombats, bandicoots dig burrows and live underground, coming out at night to search for food. A few species live in New Guinea and the nearby islands. However, most of the species are found in Australia and Tasmania.

The common bandicoots are rat like animals, with short tails. Some are covered with spines. Others have coarse, wiry hair, while one small species has soft, velvety fur.

Perhaps the most interesting member of this family is the rabbit bandicoot, or bilby. It is more than two feet in length, with long rabbit like ears, but unlike the rabbits, it has a long tail.

Another kind, the pig-footed bandicoot, has hoof like claws, and its tracks in mud are very pig like. Unlike many of its relatives, this bandicoot feeds almost entirely on leaves, bulbs and fruit.

If the bandicoots are hated for their habits, much more detested are the killers belonging to this order, the:

• Marsupial wolf (tiger)
• Tasmanian Devil

The first of these looks like a nightmare wolf and is about the size of a collie dog. A series of blackish stripes runs crosswise on its brown back and sides from the shoulders down to the base of the tail.

This tail merges into the body without a sharp break and tapers toward the end. The hair is short, but the head and teeth of this animal are extraordinarily like those of a wolf.

Like most marsupials, the females have pouches -- these open backward instead of forward.

Although once marsupial wolves were found in Australia, they have been restricted to Tasmania since historic times and are now extinct. The last known one died in 1933.

When white settlers came to this island they brought sheep with them. The "tigers," as the settlers called these striped animals found sheep good to eat and easily killed, so they began to raid the flocks with a ferocity like that of true wolves.

The settlers were roused by their losses. They trapped, poisoned and hunted the "tigers" until they were almost vanished from this earth.

The Tasmanian Devil is black, ugly and big-headed. It somewhat resembles the gluttonous wolverine of the northern world. It is more than three feet in length, the tail being about one foot.

On the chest, sides, and rump there are several white spots.

The hind quarters slope and appear weak and the bushy tail is shorter than the body.

Instead of walking on its toes, as the marsupial wolf does, the "devil" walks on the soles and palms of its feet, like a bear or skunk.

These ferocious killers are night loving, the bright sun seems to blind the Tasmanian devils. Animals as large as sheep are attacked by them, while chickens and geese are often taken. Their sharp claws, powerful jaws and strange cunning make it very difficult to shelter animals from these beasts. Before white men came, "devils" preyed on wallabies, rats, and lizards.

Only a few "devils" now remain in Tasmania, to which island they have been confined for thousands of years. Bones of this species are found on the Australian mainland, proving they once roamed there.

Pouched cats, or dasyures, found in Australia, Tasmania, and New Guinea, are smaller members of this carnivorous family. They look more like our little spotted skunks than cats, and are about a foot and a half in length, the tail above half of this.

They are grayish brown or blackish and spotted with white on the head and body. The snout is slender and pointed, the ears are large.

Dasyures feed on rats and birds. Near populated areas their habits of raiding chicken roots have made them greatly disliked. House cats, feeding on the same prey, and more cunning, have wiped out dasyures in many places. They may fight and kill their marsupial imitators, too.