nickbaker.tv

[Henning]

Hi Nick!

I thought to myself –There really ought to be a marsupial in Nick's Wierd Creatures. Just to let people see as many different animals as possible. And it's a large and suprisingly diverse group of mammals.

There really are some magnificent and unique adoptations among the possums of australia but they are so much part of the common knowledge that they hardly can be called weird. So I have been doing a bit of research on this one. First I thought of numbats www.arkive.org/species/GES/mammals/Myrmecobius_fasciatus/ and quoll www.arkive.org/species/GES/mammals/Dasyurus_maculates/ but I wanted to find something more strange. The are really nice but exotic in a kind of cute way, which wasn't what I was looking for. I wanted to find an oddity that not so many people had heard of.

After quite a bit of googleing about I think I have found my contestant for the weirdest marsupial, Planigale Ingrami - the long-tailed planigale. I had never heard of it but it fits so nicely. It is the worlds smallest marsupial, almost as small as the smallest among shrews and bats. It has an odd skull shape adopted to it's needs. It sits as a squirrel according to different sorces on the internet and best of all, and most obvious, it is a marsupial! It carries it's young in a pouch! Look it up and see what you think if it's not allready on your list that is.

All the best!

/Henning

[climid]

i was fortunate enough to see this in a zoo, i think the word small doesnt even apply here, this mamml could sit on my finger nail and it would cover his behind, ive seen shrews bigger than him. although it would be intersting to see them in weird creatures they are incredibly hard to film and find. i agree though that they would be interesting to see on televsion although (numbats are cooler!)

[Scott]

Tree-kangaroo? Or how bout the Antechinus?

[Josh]

Marsupial mole.

[climid]

when i was in australia i was reading a book about the marsupial mole and te hot spot for finding them is red rock (that big red thing on post cards). turns out the rock is embeded very deeply into the sand and when moles pass under it they hit it and surface.

[Josh]

Ayer's Rock? Seems logical, there's an obstuction in their path. There are probably a lot of geckoes hanging around the rock too.

[climid]

never thought of it but geckoes would be there too.

[Josh]

geckoes are one of there favourite foods. Strange marsupial- a potoroo, looks more like a rat than the kangaroo it is.

[Marie]

Not all marsupials have pouches, the main differences between marsupials and eutherians is that marsupial young are born at a very early stage of development and then move to either a teat which is located on the mothers belly, or more commonly in a pouch. Eutherian young develop fully within the mothers womb therefore go through a much longer gestation. A popular example of a pouchless marsupial is the short tailed opossum.

I love marsupials, I think they're amazing!!!

[Josh]

My absolute favourite animals is the Common Wallaroo, macropus robustus.

[climid]

[Scott]

Tree Kangaroos. Now those are weird.