1. If you want to get a glimpse of the origin of the mammal dynasty, you have to go to Australia. Echidna lives in South Australia. They have hair, while only mammals have hair. They are like hedgehogs or porcupines. Echidnas have keen eyesight and hearing, but mainly rely on smell when foraging. When they smell the smell of their prey, they will use their strong front toes to open the prey's nest, use the beak-like mouth to penetrate into the cave, and then use their long tongue to lick the prey. My favorite is termites and ants. Echidna is not viviparous, but oviparous. The eggs are hidden under the hair of the abdomen. After the echidna hatches, it will attach to the mother's belly and eat the mother's breast milk.
2. There is another surviving egg-laying mammal in Australia, the platypus. As the name suggests, its mouth is like a duck's beak, but it is not as hard as a bird's beak, and its texture is similar to rubber. It forages in water and uses its mouth to sense its prey. Weak current. The newborn platypus is like a larva, with a small spike on the beak, which is used to break the eggshell like reptiles and birds. Most mammals' milk comes from the nipple, and the more primitive mammals ooze milk from the skin. , Echidna and platypus belong to the latter, they are the only surviving oviparous mammals, descending from oviparous reptiles and descending from viviparous mammals.
3. There is another special mammal in Australia - marsupials. What is special about them is their way of reproduction. They do not use eggshells to protect young children, but use pouches to provide shelter for young children. The grey kangaroo is lighter than a cube of sugar when it is born. It has to crawl into its mother's pouch to eat its first breast milk. The composition of breast milk changes with the development of the baby kangaroo. When it is about nine months old, it will You can go to the outside world. Koalas only eat eucalyptus leaves, which are hard and indigestible, so they eat almost all the time they are awake, which is why they have large cheeks.
4. There is another marsupial living in the cold alpine zone of Australia - the hairy-nosed wombat. They eat grass and other plants and have powerful forelimbs for digging holes and making nests. Facing backwards, you won't splash wombats when plucking snow for food. Nummeaters live in the woods, licking termites with their long, mucus-filled tongues, and with this tool they can eat up to 20,000 termites a day. Honey minks are specialized mammals whose tongues evolve into brush-like tools for feeding nectar and pollen. Possums are small in size, but have a huge appetite, eating almost anything, storing up fat to survive starvation. The possum loves to eat larvae, thanks to its keen sense of smell, bark-biting teeth and long sticky tongue.
5. In the dry and hot central region of Australia, there lives a large family of kangaroos, which includes kangaroos, rock kangaroos and wallabies. The big red kangaroo is the largest in the family, and their biggest concern in such a hot environment is heatstroke. They only sweat when they are active, and try to stay in the shade of trees at other times. They have a way to cool themselves - lick their forelimbs, there are a lot of blood vessels under the skin, the saliva evaporates, and the blood can cool down. Rock kangaroos can jump on cliffs because of the thick wrinkled skin on the soles of their feet and the ability of their toes to grip a variety of surfaces. Adult rock kangaroos can obtain moisture from their food, but small rock kangaroos have difficulty doing it, and large rock kangaroos can vomit The water in the stomach is used to quench the thirst of the cub in a way similar to "tongue kiss".
6. Marsupials appeared about 100 million years ago. At that time, Australia and South America were still part of Gondwana. After ten million years, Gondwana began to separate, so there are many marsupials in South America. kind. Webbed possums live in the rivers of the Amazon jungle. They only come out at night. They move in the dark with their front paws and tentacles. They use their keen sense of smell and hearing to search for prey. prey, it is the only aquatic marsupial.
View more about The Life of Mammals reviews
