Marsupials are mammals that do not give birth to fully developed young. Instead, the young are born at a very early stage, and then continue to develop while clinging to their mother’s body.
When the young marsupial is born, it is tiny, blind and hairless. Its limbs are not even properly formed, but somehow it still manages to crawl through its mother’s fur to find its mothers’ nipples. Many marsupials, including kangaroos and wombats, have large pouches of skin around their nipples. A kangaroo’s pouch is deep and forward-facing, so that the young kangaroo does not fall out. Wombats are burrowing animals, so they have backward-facing pouches to stop soil getting inside. Other marsupials hardly have any pouch at all. Their young simply hang on to the nipples until they are old enough to let go.
If a female marsupial has only one or two young, she can carry them in her pouch or, like the koala, on her back. Small marsupials, such as possums or bandicoots, which have several young at a time, must transfer them to a nest when they become too heavy to carry around.
Most (but not all) marsupials live only in Australia. For millions of years, until the arrival of humans, Australia was isolated from the rest of the world. On the other continents, marsupials tended to lose out in competition for food with the placental mammals (those mammals that are born fully developed) and so, with the exception of the opossum family in the Americas, they died out. In Australia, they had no other mammalian rivals and so they thrived.
Edentates are a group of mammals made up of anteaters, armadillos and sloths. The word “edentate” means “without teeth”, but only the anteaters have no teeth at all. Armadillos and sloths have a few very simple, grinding teeth.
Sloths live in the rainforest of South America. They spend nearly all their time hanging upside down in the trees, feeding on leaves. Sloths move so slowly that they may only travel a few metres every day. In wet weather, a layer of green algae grows on their fur, which helps to camouflage them among the trees.
Armadillos do not need camouflage they have a suit of armour to protect themselves. Made of bony plates, it covers the whole body, including the tail, head and limbs. Only the belly is soft, and some kinds of armadillo can protect even this part by curling themselves up into a ball.
Anteaters feed on both ants and termites, which they detect using their keen sense of smell. The tongue of the giant anteater can unfurl an amazing 60.
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