Interlude: Monotremes, Marsupials, and Other Mammals

PLATYPUS, Tasmania

I was much more interested in the mammals of Australia than I was the mammals on last year's South Africa trip. There the mammals that interested me the most were zebras and giraffes and then only because I considered them mobile habitat for oxpeckers. I just felt that even though we were seeing "wild" animals, they were very familiar ones that I'd seen since I was a little kid in a zoo and besides, we were seeing them in refuges--gigantic refuges in some cases, the size of Rhode Island--but refuges nonetheless as we tooled around in safari vehicles on asphalt roads. I felt like a case could be made that it was just Six Flags Great Adventure writ large.

But Australia is different. In Australia, you could be tootling along a mountain highway in Tasmania when your guide sees something on the side of the road, slams on the brakes, and yells out ECHIDNA! What's an echidna you ask? Echidnas, of which there are, depending on who you talk to, 2 or 4 species, all pretty much alike, are the only other members, along with PLATYPUS, of the monotreme order--mammals that lay eggs. And there one was, rooting around in the grass on the road shoulder, in some out of the way spot in northern Tasmania.

ECHIDNA, Tasmania

So that aspect, the sense that the animals really were wild, I liked. Plus, the animals there are not the storybook animals you've grown up with. Not lions and tigers and bears but WOMBATS, WALLABIES, and PADEMELONS.  KANGAROOS are not restricted to national parks; you see them in any open space and there are a number of different species. There really is a TASMANIAN DEVIL (we saw them at Mountain Valley but no pictures),There are marsupial mice, marsupial possums, and of course the cuddly KOALA which is a story by itself. 

PLATYPUS

We saw our first platypus almost by accident. We were on the way to the spot where they are supposedly easy to see when we stopped at park to look for a Rufous Night-Heron. In the river  that ran through the park, Karen pointed out the platypus and said, "Well, that saves us a drive." 

PLATYPUS, Atkinson Park, Tasmania

KANGAROO

We saw at least three kinds of Kangaroos, Common, Eastern Grey, and Klumholtz's Tree Kangaroo. In Tasmania, where we saw our first Kangaroos, they are known as FORESTER KANGAROO and are sponsored by Subaru. (Only half that sentence is true)

FORESTER KANGAROO with joey

Two above are Eastern Grey Kangaroo, somewhere in the Tablelands, I believe

PADEMELON

Until we saw PADEMELONS at Mountain Valley, I had no idea they existed. They are the smallest of the macropods and the one found is Tasmania is endemic. There are also Agile Pademelons and Pretty-faced Pademelons on the mainland. 

Tasmanian Pademelon

Pademelon at O'Reilly's

It isn't easy to keep the petting zoo vibe away; the animals are adorable, gentle, and in need of help. Pademelons are like deer in NJ, road kill waiting to happen. But while the mother may be killed, the joey in the pouch often survives. Karen and her fellow guides are required to stop at every road kill and examine it for a joey. If there is one, they take it back to Inala, a privately-owned sanctuary, where the joeys are hand-raised. Because Pademelons don't become imprinted on humans, they are returned to the wild once they are hardy enough to survive on their own. They do return to visit, but only because they know it is a source of food. In the meantime, feeding time is always fun.

WALLABY

One day in the Tablelands, Kim took us to Great Gorge Park in Mareeba, where the MAREEBA ROCK WALLABY has its tiny range, a pinpoint on the map of Australia. Here too the animals are tamer than tame and you can buy wallaby pellets and the animals will grab your hand and feed voraciously while fending off competitors with a kick. Even I fed one, though I didn't much like having it dig its claws into my hand to keep me from pulling away.

With joey, at Mike's knee

WOMBATS

WOMBATS can be elusive and shy, so we were surprised at Cradle Mountain, after searching for one the trails, to see it out int he open on the shore of a pond. 

It moved around a little, trying to stay out of the way of a couple of children who found it too cute not to bother. I took a couple of photos from a decent distance, but when it started to try to get under a building, we all left it alone.

Fun fact: wombat excreta is cubic. Because of their long digestive cycle and a lack of sphincter muscle, wombat poo is very dry and comes out more or less like big dice. It is not true, despite the popular myth (popular in Australia anyhow) that they have square anuses. 

We walked through a field of wombat poo our first evening at Mountain Valley as the sun set. Very romantic.

OTHER MARSUPIALS

One of the features of Chambers Rainforest 

Lodge is a mammal night time show. A couple of trees are smeared with honey and the mammals come out to be photographed. The STRIPED POSSUM that I saw was unconcerned with having its picture taken. By the way, it is "possum" in Australia, leaving out our initial "O."

After a long day birding, I wasn't really that inclined to sit outside to see what critters would show up so I missed a few, including the Sugar Glider which to this day I don't know what kind of animal it is. I did, however, manage to photograph the smallest marsupial we saw, the ANTECHINUS, a marsupial mouse.

A few days later, at the Cathedral Fig, we were looking for Chowchilla when we saw an animal snuffling through the underbrush. It turned out to be the unhappily named MUSKY KANGAROO-RAT, yet another animal I'd gone 67 years without being aware of. Not only was Kim excited to see the little guy, but he said it was a good sign for Chowchilla as they liked the same habitat as the Kangaroo-Rat. A few minutes later we had both male and female Chowchilla. Amazing. 

OTHER MAMMALS

 In Cairns, Kim took us to the library. We didn't go inside. The trees at the front of the library are roost for SPECTACLED FLYING FOX. Bats to you and me.  They hung from the tree by the thousands. Thousands. Occasionally one would awake and, depending who was watching, either fight with the bat next to it, or have sex with it. Or maybe both, who knows? Just as we had had enough of photographing bats, kerplunk, a baby bat fell out of one of the trees and landed in a plant a few feet away from us. Thus ensued another thousand or so photographs. The baby bat looked very much, to me, like a little monkey, not a fox. 

Speaking of canines, we did see a DINGO in the Tablelands while looking at Bustards, but if we took a photograph of it, and I think we did, either it didn't come out, or I can't find it.   

Most of the time there were 6 in our party but we traveled around in a vehicle that supposedly seated 8 people, plus it had room for all our luggage. One day, as we were leaving Brisbane, we stopped for a quick lunch at the local Costco. Costco in Australia looks exactly like Costco in the US and, except for an unappetizing dish called an Aussie Meat Pie, has exactly the same food, including very good pizza. It was, no doubt, the least Australian hour we spent but we did see our biggest mammal of the trip there. Kim figured that if he folded down all the seats in the vehicle and stuck the extremities out the windows, he still wouldn't have enough room to transport it.