Ten facts you probably didn’t know about Australian wildlife.
- The koala’s closest, and decidedly less sleepy relative, is the half guinea pig, half tank otherwise known as a wombat.
- Every snake in Tasmania is venomous. So, if you’re bitten, there’s no point in wondering if it’s one of those harmless ones.
- Most rabbits in Australia are descended from just 24 which a Victorian man brought over for shooting practice in 1859. There are now over 300 million of them, and they cause over $6 million worth of damage to crops and property every year.
- Australian camels are thought to be the purest, most disease free-breed in the world, and they are exported to Saudi Arabia.
- If you weighed all the termites in Australia, they would outweigh all the cattle and kangaroos put together.
- There are 461 species of flies in Australia. You will probably meet all of them if you go to the Northern Territory at the wrong time of year.
- Saltwater crocodiles can only travel at 3km/h on land. You can outrun them, but it’s probably not a race worth entering.
- The word kangaroo comes from an indigenous Aboriginal language and allegedly means “I don’t understand”.
- The platypus and the echidna are the only two egg-laying mammals in the world, and when settlers first described a platypus, it was widely thought to be a hoax by an incredulous scientific community in London.
- Unusually for a member of the dog family, dingoes do not bark.
Copyright David Whitley
