What do you know about wombats?
Unless you grew up in Australia, probably not much.
I built this fun website to change that!
Wombats are large marsupials with thick furry bodies. They waddle on stubby legs, so some Aussies call them “kegs with legs.” They’re about the size of a medium Labrador retriever.
Where to find wombats
Wombats are native to southeastern Australia and its islands. You can find them in forests, mountains and grassy heathland in the Australian states of New South Wales, Victoria, and Tasmania. There are also two tiny clusters of wombats in Queensland.
Part backhoe, part bulldozer
Wombats are exceptional diggers, often frustrating farmers by plowing right through fences. They use their two-inch-long sharp claws and always-growing teeth to dig and gnaw through anything in their way. Up to 10 wombats live together, building extensive networks of burrows and connecting tunnels. They spend up to three-quarters of their time underground.
Please pass the roughage
Wombats eat grass, sedges, herbs, bark, roots and tubers. They have a special stomach gland to digest their food. That can take 8–14 days, but slow metabolism helps them survive in arid climates.
how to speak wombat
When you meet a wombat in the wild, as long as you don’t scare it, it probably won’t make much noise. You might even be able to get close enough to hear it chewing!
But wombats do have their own vocabulary, including hissing and growling when threatened, grunting, clicking, a hoarse cough, and a call that sounds like a squealing pig.
More wombats, please
Ready for reproduction? Female wombats, called jills, have two lateral vaginas, each with a uterus, connected to one opening. Male wombats, or jacks, have a penis with two prongs. Wombats do a complicated courtship dance with circles and figure-eight patterns. Jills have one baby joey every two years.
Like other marsupials, joeys are born after just three weeks’ gestation and then live in a pouch for five or six months until they are the size of a human infant, 7.7 to 14.3 pounds. Unlike other marsupials, a jill’s pouch faces her tail to keep dirt from getting inside while she is digging.
