Australian Wildlife

melpisces

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Yes those claws mean business!! It is amazing how quickly and effortlessly they can climb a tree.

They are def. not a bear - some people get quite precious about them being called 'Koala Bears' - they are just 'Koalas'.

Alas she is gone, would have wandered off during the night to somewhere without barking dogs and pesky magpies.

Funny thing about the magpies - we have a family of them in our front tree, they don't give us any trouble as they are used to us, but they were very unhappy to have a koala in 'their tree' they were swooping it, squarking like mad and making a huge fuss - I did try to tell them that the koala would have no interest in their young uns and are definatley vegetarian, but to no avail, continue the carry on they did and warded off our neighbourhood koala..

By the way - their young ones would be more described as teenagers now, perfectly capable of looking after themselves - silly things!!

Glad you liked the pics :thumbsup
 

dacjohns

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big brown horse said:
Right, they are marsupials.

ETA: Panda "bears" too.
Not sure what you are trying to say. Pandas are members of the order Carnivora and many authorities place both the red and giant panda in the family Ursidae, the bears. Pandas are not marsupials.
 

Beekissed

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Nice to have an Aussie on the forum! Welcome, Melpisces! :welcome Feel free to show us more of the wildlife there....your country has always fascinated me with the weird and wonderful wildlife! :)
 

bibliophile birds

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i loved seeing the wildlife when i was in Australia a few years back. there was one day where we went on a picnic and ended up surrounded by kangaroos, one of which had a joey in it's pouch. it was amazing. (it totally made up for the fact that the first 5 kangaroos i saw were roadkill on my way from Sydney to Orange... and another that destroyed a car at the Perth road rally. roos are apparently worse for becoming roadkill than opossums, raccoons, and skunks all rolled into one.)

i got to hold a young koala at the Sydney zoo. they are amazingly strong and quite hefty.
 

big brown horse

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dacjohns said:
big brown horse said:
Right, they are marsupials.

ETA: Panda "bears" too.
Not sure what you are trying to say. Pandas are members of the order Carnivora and many authorities place both the red and giant panda in the family Ursidae, the bears. Pandas are not marsupials.
All this time I thought they were marsupials!! I stand corrected! Thanks for setting me straight. :)

Anyhoo, she sure was beautiful. I agree, more photos please!
 

punkin

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Yes, please more photos.

Sometimes I want to see more than raccoons, squirrels, bluejays and crows.
 

dacjohns

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Occamstazer said:
Dacjohns, the Red Panda is under Ailuridae, not Ursidae. It was a fairly recent reclassification :)
How recent? My mammology textbook (2004) puts in in Ursidae although it acknowledges that some authorities place it in Procyonidae. It also mentions that the giant panda has been considered for its own family, Ailuropodidae.

It looks like the classification was still going on when the textbook was published. I can buy it being in its own family.

We getting off track for Australian wildlife aren't we?
 

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