The hairy-nosed wombat

The common wombat

Wombats live in burrows that they dig themselves. We can see near their galleries soil that they left while digging. Each burrow leads to one main room that can have many entries of up to 10 meters long. Wombats never leave their territory.

3. Diet:

Wombats usually eat grass, mosses, roots and the bark of some trees. They search for food at nighttime.

4. Behaviour:

Wombats live all their lives in their own burrow. Except the females which live in the same gallery as males during the reproduction period. They have to run fast in order to get away from dingos.

5. Breeding:

Wombats are marsupials. As with kangaroos, females have a pouch where she keeps the newly born young. It is facing the back to prevent the young from being hurt while the female is digging. Females give birth to young of about three centimeters long and weighting about one gram. The young stay in their mother’s pouch for nine months where they are fed by their mother’s milk.. When they get out of the pocket, wombats stay in the burrow for up to 12 years.

6. Status:

Dingos are the natural predators of wombats. Farmers usually don’t like wombats as they dig tunnels and burrows in their fields and eat grains sown them. These are the two reasons why Australian people hunt wombats. Wombats also compete against other human’s owned animals such as sheep, cows and rabbits to find food as they eat the same things.

During the dryness periods, wombats find it harder to find food and that is why they pay less attention to dangers such as cars and get killed on roads.

Wombats are very rare because of these reasons.

7. History: