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Tuesday 29 August 2006
Eastern Quoll
The
Eastern Quoll (
Dasyurus viverrinus) is a carnivorous marsupial of Australia, where it is extinct on the mainland of Australia, and only extant on Tasmania. With the size of a small cat, the Eastern Quoll hunts at night on insects and small rodents and fruit. The dens of the eastern quoll are usually in caves and hollow logs or trees. They are threatened by illegal poisoning by humans and feral cats and dogs and the destruction of their habitat. They are under tight legislation in Tasmania as a threatened species.
Picture of the Eastern Quoll licensed under GFDL
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Saturday 26 August 2006
Platypus - unlike we have ever seen before, until now...
The
platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) is a member of the order of monotremata, the egg laying mammals. It is very strange: a venomous, duck-billed, egg-laying mammal (?!). It is unlike we have ever seen, until now! Recent
fossil discovery of an extinct species named
Akidolestes, a half shrew - half platypus species, challenges conventional wisdom about how placental mammals split from earlier egg-layers. The platypus has a low body temparature compared to other mammals, it is only 32°C compared to 38°C. The platypus is one of the closest relatives of ancestral mammals, although it is not itself a link in the chain of mammalian evolution. Its branch is quite separate from any other one known to man. The recent fossil discovery of
Akidolestes gives hope to get more insight in the separation of this branch.
Image:
Author striatic http://www.flickr.com/photos/striatic/17367/
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0
Resources:
National geographic news
Wikipedia on the platypus
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Thursday 03 August 2006
Numbat
The
Numbat (Myrmecobius fasciatus) lives in the Southern and Western parts of Australia. Before the English name of the
Myrmecobius fasciatus was changed to 'Numbat', its common name was the "Banded Anteater". This was a misnomer, because the Numbat primarily feeds on termites.. It synchronizes its day with termite activity which is temperature dependent. The Numbat hunts on the termites by waiting until they become active and when they do it uses its excellent smell to determine specialized galleries just below the surface on the way to the feeding sites of the termites. It then uses its claws to get to the termites. The Numbat cannot do any harm to the termite mound, because it only has little claws, unlike for example pangolins. In the 1970's, the population of numbats on Australia declined to about a 1000 animals, by the deliberate release of the Red fox on Australia. Its conservation status is still 'vulnerable'.
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