50 Fun Facts About Australian Animals

Which is the largest of all kangaroo species?

It is also the largest land mammal native to Australia and the largest living marsupial.

What is a baby kangaroo called?

Males are bucks, boomers or old men; females are does, flyers or jills.

Roughly how big is a kangaroo joey at birth?

It crawls into the pouch and usually stays there for about nine months.

Along with the kangaroo, which bird appears on Australia's coat of arms?

The kangaroo also serves as the logo of Qantas and the roundel of the Royal Australian Air Force.

Kangaroos are the only large mammals to move primarily by doing what?

Elastic tendons in the hind legs store energy, so faster hopping costs little extra effort.

The word 'kangaroo' comes from a word in which Aboriginal language?

The word gangurru referred to eastern grey kangaroos in the Cooktown area.

What are the koala's closest living relatives?

It is the only surviving member of the family Phascolarctidae and is not a bear at all.

Up to how many hours a day does a koala sleep?

Its eucalyptus diet is so low in nutrition and so toxic that resting is the only option.

Which tree's leaves make up most of a koala's diet?

The leaves contain toxic compounds that deter most other mammals from eating them.

What did scientists in 1799 conclude when they first examined a preserved platypus?

The duck-billed, egg-laying, beaver-tailed mammal looked like several animals sewn together.

How does the platypus find prey underwater with its eyes, ears and nose shut?

It shares this sense with the echidnas, its fellow monotremes.

Where does a male platypus deliver its venom from?

It is one of the very few venomous mammals, and the sting is extremely painful.

How many living species of monotreme (egg-laying mammal) are there?

The platypus plus four species of echidna, all native to Australia and New Guinea.

What is a baby echidna called?

They stay in their mother's den for up to a year before leaving.

What distinctive shape are a wombat's droppings?

The cubes stack and don't roll, which helps wombats mark territory; the finding won a 2019 Ig Nobel Prize.

When first recorded in 1798, the wombat was said to look much like which animal?

Places like Badger Creek in Victoria and Badger Corner in Tasmania are named after wombats.

The devil became the world's largest carnivorous marsupial after which animal's extinction?

The last thylacine died in 1936, and devils themselves vanished from the mainland about 3,500 years ago.

What has devastated Tasmania's wild devils since the 1990s?

First seen in 1996, it led to the species being declared endangered in 2008.

The Tasmanian devil is notable for which physical feat?

Its large head and neck let it crunch through bone; it can also climb trees and swim rivers.

Where did the last known thylacine die in 1936?

Around 5,000 had lived wild in Tasmania before bounty hunting began in the 19th century.

What earned the thylacine its 'tiger' nickname?

Dark stripes ran across its back; its wolf-like shape earned it the name Tasmanian wolf too.

Which is the tallest native bird in Australia?

Only the two African ostrich species stand taller among living birds.

Which emu parent incubates the eggs and raises the chicks?

He barely eats or drinks for around eight weeks and loses a lot of weight.

How fast can an emu sprint?

The soldiers of the 1932 'Emu War' compared the birds to tanks for their toughness.

What weapons did Australian soldiers use in the 1932 Emu War?

The emus split into small, mobile groups and the cull was abandoned as uneconomic.

The laughing kookaburra belongs to which bird family?

Its laugh is a territorial call, often used as a jungle sound effect in films.

Which Australian bird has often been labelled 'the world's most dangerous bird'?

Statistically the ostrich is deadlier, killing two or three people a year in South Africa.

What is the horn-like helmet on Australia's big rainforest ratite called?

Made of keratin-covered skin, it grows with age and may act as a thermal radiator.

Which bird is famous for swooping cyclists and walkers in spring?

Fewer than 9% of magpies swoop, and they can recognise at least 100 different people.

Which is the largest bird of prey in Australia?

Its wingspan can reach 2.84 m, and pairs have been known to kill adult kangaroos.

Which Australian songbird is renowned for mimicking other sounds almost perfectly?

Attenborough called its voice 'the most elaborate, the most complex, and the most beautiful'.

The budgerigar ranks where among the world's most popular pets?

Only dogs and cats outrank the small Australian parrot.

On which island off Perth is the quokka best known?

'Quokka selfies' made the cat-sized macropod an internet star in the mid-2010s.

The quokka earned which internet nickname in the mid-2010s?

Chris Hemsworth, Margot Robbie and Roger Federer have all posed for quokka selfies.

The name 'dingo' comes from which Aboriginal language?

The first colonists at Port Jackson in 1788 recorded dingoes living with Indigenous Australians.

The dingo's closest relative is which animal?

Their lineage split early from the line leading to today's domestic dogs.

How old are the oldest dingo remains found in Australia?

The thylacine vanished from the mainland at about the same time, possibly because of the dingo.

What is the largest living reptile?

Males can reach 6 m and 1,500 kg; Australians call it the 'saltie'.

Which Australian snake is widely regarded as the most venomous in the world?

One bite holds enough venom to kill over 100 adults, yet it is shy and rarely met.

In which year was the 'fierce snake' rediscovered after nearly 90 years unseen by science?

It had been described in 1879 and 1882, then vanished from scientific records for nearly 90 years.

Which is Australia's largest lizard?

It can reach 2.5 m and is the fourth-largest lizard on Earth after the Komodo dragon.

How does the thorny devil drink?

Water touching any part of its body is drawn along grooves between its scales to its mouth.

What deadly neurotoxin does the blue-ringed octopus carry?

The same toxin is found in pufferfish; there is no antivenom.

The Sydney funnel-web spider is usually found within what radius of Sydney?

Its bite can be fatal if untreated; the male is the more dangerous sex.

The redback spider is also known by which name?

The female's black body carries a red stripe on top; an antivenom has existed since 1956.

Why were cane toads introduced to Australia in 1935?

They were brought from Hawaii to protect sugar cane and became a textbook invasive species.

The numbat, which eats almost only termites, is the faunal emblem of which state?

Once found across southern Australia, it now survives in a few small colonies.

The sugar glider glides using membranes called what?

They stretch from foreleg to hindleg; the animal resembles a flying squirrel but isn't related.

What does the genus name Macrotis, used for bilbies, mean?

The rabbit-eared bandicoot's name comes from Greek for 'big ear'.

Roughly what share of the world's 334 marsupial species live on the Australian continent?

Most of the rest live in South America; only the Virginia opossum reaches north of Mexico.