15 interesting facts about wombats
1. Wombats are marsupials. Marsupials live on the Australian mainland and the islands closest to this mainland. It turns out that the closest relatives of the wombat are koalas and kangaroos, which are also unofficial symbols of Australia. The female wombat has a pouch, or otherwise a bag. In this part of the body, a newborn cub develops. In the mother's bag, a small animal receives protection. After all, he is born very tiny and defenseless, and the cub can become a victim of a bird of prey or a predatory mammal. For about 6-8 months, the cub stays in the mother's pouch. Then he leaves the pocket, but still does not go far from his mother.
2. Wombats are nocturnal animals. Wombats love to rest in the shade during the day, and at night they become very active. These are animals that prefer to seek food at night. They live in excrement-marked territory. They consider an area of up to twenty-five hectares to be their land. At night, they prowl on it, looking for berries, grass, mushrooms, mosses, rhizomes, which serve as the main food for the herbivorous wombat. This animal is not much afraid of enemies, because at night it has to be afraid only of the Tasmanian devils and the wild dingo dog, but there are not so many of these predators on Australian land.
3. Wombats run fast. Wombats are amazingly fast runners. If they are in mortal danger, then they can run for some time at a sprint speed. For about two minutes, they can run away from a dog even at a speed of sixty kilometers per hour. Then the speed drops to 40 km / h, but still remains very high. They do not have to run very often, but at such moments they can knock down even a person who inadvertently finds himself in the way of an animal hurrying about his business.
4. A wombat can live in an apartment with a person. There are so many wild animals that people breed now: crocodiles, pythons, lynxes, but it turns out that in many countries they began to keep wombats in houses. Indeed, in appearance they are very cute and fluffy animals, reminiscent of a beautiful and kind bear cub. In fact, this is a wild animal, and even when he lives in an apartment, he retains his natural instinct and wildness. A wombat can easily bite a guest and even the owner if he doesn’t like something. He breaks furniture, things, spoils dishes in the house. People are trying to train him, but this fluffy animal has little quick wits, and therefore he perceives an attempt to tame him very aggressively.
5. People think that wombats are small animals, but this is not entirely true. There is a persistent assumption that the wombat is a cute little animal. But actually it is not. For example, in adulthood, these animals can reach the size of a large shepherd. Often in the wild there are quite large individuals weighing forty kilograms. Of all parts of the body, they have a particularly large head. Old wombats are especially large. For example, a huge 40-kilogram wombat named Patrick lived in the zoo, he died at the age of 32.
6. Wombats poop "bricks". The wombat has an amazing gut structure. Food is digested in the stomach of this animal and exits the intestines in the form of angular cubes. Nature made excrement of this kind for a reason. After all, the wombat loves to mark his territory where he lives. He doesn't want outsiders coming in. And cubic excrement, unlike round ones, doesn't roll off. They lie on the ground for a long time, emit specific smell, which is understandable to all other inhabitants of the area. This smell tells them that they should not linger in this territory, it is alien.
7. Three types of wombats live in nature. The wombat is not an animal species, but a genus. This includes as many as three species of these animals, they all live in Australia. Wombats include: the common wombat (Vombatus ursinus), the southern hairy-nosed wombat (Lasiorhinus latifrons) and the northern hairy-nosed wombat (Lasiorhinus krefftii). They inhabit different parts of the mainland; each has its own habitat. Outwardly, they also differ, but their love for plant foods, nocturnal lifestyle and the presence of a bag unite them. Other types of wombats used to live here as well, but they died out.
8. Wombats are great diggers. All wombats are great diggers. These animals have strong paws with large and sharp claws. They use them to dig tunnels and caves. Sometimes one wombat makes such a large tunnel that it resembles a whole labyrinth, from which only the owner of the hole can find a way out. On average, one hole has the length of twenty meters; the depth of an underground dwelling is three meters or more. Sometimes a wombat digs the ground and unexpectedly intersects with another individual's hole. As a result, the underground dwelling begins to be used by two wombats, between which there is no fight. During the day, these animals rest in underground caves, and at night they come out of them to search for food.
9. Wombats digest food for two weeks in a row. This wild beast eats a variety of plant foods. He especially loves young shoots of grasses. The wombat chooses the tasty part of the plant with its lips and cuts off the ground part of the grass or bush with the help of strong front teeth. The animal has an excellent sense of smell, so it senses from a great distance where delicious grass, berries or mushrooms grow. These animals eat a lot, and their food is digested in the stomach for a very long time. In order to digest what they eat, the fluffy glutton needs fourteen whole days. Although these mammals are big gluttons, they drink very little liquid. They get most of their water through plants and berries.
10. When there is a threat, the wombat starts butting. Wombats are amazing animals. As soon as they do not fight for life: with sharp claws, fast running, during the day they hide in holes. But if they still failed to hide or escape from a predator, they use their secret weapon created by nature. The wombat can butt and bellow like a bull. He has no horns, but he butts excellently. He uses such tactics of struggle especially often when protecting his shelter. This animal does not invite other wombats into its house, and if they try to enter someone else's hole, then the mooing and butting owner soon puts the enemy to flight.
11. Man is the main enemy of the wombat. Among all the enemies of the wombat, the main one for him is a man. Humans have reduced the wombat population in the wild in Australia. Motorists rush along the highway so fast that they often crush the poor animals to death. Hunters go with a dog to a wild rabbit, but instead, an unfortunate wombat falls under the teeth of a hunting dog. Frequent forest fires which happen through the fault of people cause great damage to the animal population. People are changing the climate, it is becoming arid and the amount of fresh and juicy food is decreasing. In the sparsely populated areas of the smallest continent of our planet, these creatures live much better.
12. Wombats always have pouches facing backwards. As already mentioned, wombats are marsupials and they need a bag for breeding and raising their cubs. All marsupials have pouches, but only wombats have them facing backwards. Nature took care that these wonderful diggers did not get the soil into the pouches. After all, they do not stop digging holes and tunnels even when the cub is sleeping in the mother's bag. There is always one baby in the bag, since this animal with two nipples always gives birth to only one cub. Therefore, his mother takes care of him especially strongly.
13. Forests often burn in Australia and many animals hide from fire in wombat tunnels. The Australian mainland often burns and forest fires constantly occur in it. Wild animals have a hard time. They try to escape from the fiery wall, but there is nowhere they can hide. The fire moves rapidly and kills representatives of the local fauna. But, fortunately, animals often meet burrows dug by wombats on their way. They hide in them and thereby save their lives. It is cool in the underground dwelling, and the tunnel wall reliably protects from the flame.
14. Many millions of years ago, other types of wombats lived on the earth. In the prehistoric period of our planet, huge wombats lived here. Now these are extinct species of animals. For example, the diprotodon wombat weighed almost three tons and had the height of more than two meters. These huge mammals also lived only in Australia. Outwardly, they looked like a cross between a rhinoceros and a hippopotamus.
15. The northern wombat is the smallest in amount of all species. The northern wombat is an endangered species of animal; he lives only in the northern part of Australia. As of 2021, no more than 115 individuals remain in the wild. This is very little, although for thirty years there has been a program to increase the population of these animals. However, representatives of this species are the most demanding in terms of food, climate and living conditions. Zoologists are trying to help restore the number of northern wombats, but so far they have not been able to fully succeed.
There are amazing marsupial animals living in Australia – wombats. They are the closest relatives of koalas, they know how to dig holes and outwardly look like some kind of mixture of a bear and a hamster. These animals weigh from twenty to forty kilograms, depending on the species. In the wild, they live for about fifteen years, but in the zoo they live up to 25 years. However, in some zoos there were centenarians who lived to be 34 years old. Today we have prepared for you a selection of the most interesting facts about wombats so that you can get to know these cute and unusual inhabitants of Australia better.
