What do Beyoncé and wombats have in common?
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The reputation of their booty precedes them.
Though Beyoncé’s butt generates far more attention, wombats can use theirs as a deadly weapon. Their heavily armoured booty can crush the skulls of unwanted intruders in their burrows and I think that is worth talking about. So how and when can we find such bootylicious wombats for some nature appreciation?
Before you see a wombat, you might first notice their encrypted messenger system. In the form of neatly constructed cubes, wombats poop out 80-100 pellets per night and delicately place them around the bush. On a rock, a log, anywhere nice and obvious, this exterior design feature is used as a form of communication to speak a secret wombat language that we are yet to understand.
Wombats poop out 80-100 pellets per night and delicately place them around the bush. On a rock, a log, anywhere nice and obvious, this exterior design feature is used as a form of communication to speak a secret wombat language that we are yet to understand.
Another obvious sign that wombats are around is their hobbit-like home entrances, a large hole that marks the start of their burrow system. So obvious are these burrows that they can even be detected from space.
Like many species that are difficult to observe, wombats eluded naturalists for quite some time. Remarkably, it wasn’t until a schoolboy in Geelong Grammar School’s Timbertop Campus made friends with wombats in the 1960s that their burrows were thoroughly documented for the first time.
Peter Nicholson crawled right into their burrows and recorded his observation on their behaviours and habits. To this day, his endeavours remain among the most direct observations that we have on wombat behaviour.
Their burrowing habits also explain their backwards facing pouch. As with all marsupials, the baby wombats spend time drinking mum’s pouch milk until they are ready to for big-kid life. Once old enough, wombats eat grass, roots or plants, forming the majority of their diet.
Although they can be locally common, there are three wombat species in Australia and one is critically threatened with extinction. The northern hairy-nosed wombat occurs in a tiny range in eastern Queensland and is restricted to around 80 mature individuals.
The common wombat, which occurs through south-eastern Australia suffer from sarcoptic mange, introduced to Australia around 200 years ago.
Known as scabies in humans, the condition is caused by mites that burrow and lay eggs in the skin. It can cause blindness and deafness in wombats but can be easily treated in wild animals with a burrow flap that can be installed to apply the medicine without needing to touch the wombat. If you see a sick or itchy wombat in your area, you can visit http://mangemanagement.org.au/ for mange management advice.
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