• FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Numbats? Dunnarts?

    These names aren’t all Australian colloquialisms for “dumb”… are they??

    Also… no love for the Cult of Quoka? I mean seriously, look at these guys? How is anything that cute?

  • JayJLeas@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    I was shocked an Aussie to learn that my American boyfriend had never heard of bilbies…

  • loaExMachina@sh.itjust.works
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    8 months ago

    What’s funny with all these small, narrow-snouted bug-eating mammals is you can never guess what bigger mammal they’re more closely related too by a pic alone because this body plan is present in all therians, possibly because it was the best suited to survive the KT-extinction. So while you’d be tempted to call all of them rodents, you’ve got tree shrews closer to primates, tenrecs closer to elephants, and possums closer to kangaroos than they are to mice.

    Edit: Also I checked those from the pic and they’re all marsupials, like possums.