Following on from my recent post introducing the Cassowary, I thought I'd start a series about some interesting and in many cases endangered native Australian animals. I will make a donation to a wildlife charity equivalent to the combines SBD / Steem rewards I receive for these posts, so I hope to get some Whales supporting me.
Introduction
I was born in Australia and spent countless hours exploring the bush ( I live on the East coast just North of Brisbane). I love that our wildlife is different than most of that found on the other continents as Australia is an island nation.
It has been isolated from other continents for many millions of years and this is why we have so many unusual species that are only found here. Most of our indigenous land based furry animals are Marsupials, a type of mammal that feeds their babies milk but the have a pouch, in which their babies do most of the development which a placental mammal does before it is born.
We also have the only 2 Monotremes,
Image Credit : By Stefan Kraft - Selbst fotografiert am 20.9.2004 im Sydney Aquarium
the Platypus
and
the Echidna See this Video of an Echidna (I dont know why it wont insert and play here) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dd/French_Island_Echidna.ogg
They look and live completely different lives but are the only animals on the planet that lay an egg , hatch it in a pouch and then feed the baby on milk secretions.
Conclusion
I will create a series of posts about some of wonderful Australian wildlife over the next couple of weeks. I have previously posted Part 1, the Cassowary was which was the inspiration for this series as a way to help me support Rainforest Rescue and I was able to make a AUD$25 donation toward saving the Daintree Rainforest from my Steemit post reward.
Some of the animals I will shine the spotlight on will include the Koala , Emu , Kangaroo and of course the Tasmanian Devil.
If you have an Australian animal you'd like to know more about please let me know in the comments below.
Sources and Links
http://www.australia.com/en/facts/australias-animals.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsupial
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monotreme