Wombat marsupial

Wombat, (keluarga Vombatidae), salah satu daripada tiga spesies daratan besar marsupial Australia. Seperti woodchuck, rahimnya dibina dengan kuat dan hampir tidak berbulu dengan mata kecil dan telinga pendek. Wombat, bagaimanapun, lebih besar, berukuran panjang 80 hingga 120 cm (31 hingga 47 inci). Terutama pada waktu malam dan bersifat herbivora, mereka memakan rumput dan, dalam hal rahim biasa (Vombatus ursinus), kulit pokok akar dan pokok renek. Wombat dianggap sebagai perosak oleh petani kerana mereka menggali di ladang dan padang rumput yang diusahakan dan kerana liang mereka mungkin menyimpan arnab.

marsupial

> rahim, dan koala (Phascolarctos cinereus), terdapat banyak bentuk yang lebih kecil, banyak yang bersifat karnivor, dengan Tasmania

Rahim yang biasa mempunyai rambut gelap yang kasar dan pelindung hidung yang botak. Hal ini biasa terjadi di kawasan berhutan berbukit di sepanjang Dividing Range di tenggara Australia, dari tenggara Queensland melalui New South Wales dan Victoria ke Australia Selatan, dan di Tasmania. Pada zaman bersejarah bentuk kerdil hidup di pulau-pulau kecil di Selat Bass, tetapi bentuk-bentuk kerdil itu telah punah kerana pemusnahan habitat dengan merumput lembu.

The hairy-nosed wombats (genus Lasiorhinus) are more sociable. They make a grassy nest at the end of a large underground burrow 30 metres (100 feet) long that is shared with several other wombats. They have silky fur and pointed ears, and the nose is entirely hairy, without a bald pad. The southern hairy-nosed wombat (L. latifrons) is smaller than the common wombat; it lives in semiarid country mainly in South Australia, extending through the Nullarbor Plain into the southeast of Western Australia. The very rare Queensland, or northern, hairy-nosed wombat (L. barnardi) is larger and differs in cranial details; it is protected by law, and most of the population lives within Epping Forest National Park in central Queensland, where there are only 60 to 80 remaining. Two other populations of hairy-nosed wombats became extinct in the late 19th or early 20th century, one near St. George in southwestern Queensland and the other at Deniliquin on the Murray River in New South Wales; these closely resembled the Queensland species.

The skull of the wombat is flattened, and its bones are extremely thick. Unlike other marsupials, wombats have continuously growing rootless teeth adapted to a hard-wearing diet. The two incisor teeth in each jaw are rodentlike; there are no canine teeth. Wombats almost invariably bear one young at a time, which develops for five months or longer in a pouch that opens rearward. They become sexually mature at two years of age in the common wombat and three in the hairy-nosed wombats.

Contemporary wombats are related to the extinct giant wombat (Diprotodon) of Australia, which has been acknowledged as the largest marsupial in history. Some paleontologists separate giant wombats into two species (D. australis and D. minor) on the basis of differences in skull size. Other paleontologists, however, maintain that these variations can be explained by sexual dimorphism (the differences in appearance between males and females of the same species) and thus place all giant wombats in the species D. opatum. The largest giant wombats stood 1.7 metres (about 5.6 feet) tall at the shoulder and averaged 3 metres (10 feet) in length. At 2,000–2,500 kg (approximately 4,400–5,500 pounds), males weighed more than twice as much as females. Although many scientists contend that humans killed off the last giant wombats between 46,000 and 15,000 years ago, some scientists attribute its extinction to the increase in Australia’s aridity that accompanied the most recent global ice age.