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Hey there! Squeaks and I have been learning all about Australia
and the wonderful creatures that live there.
Squeaks says his favorite was the kangaroo.
He’s learned that some of them have pouches,
and he’s imagining what he could carry if he had a pouch too.
Snacks, some toys, a notebook… Great ideas.
Though, if we went on a hike with a kangaroo,
that kangaroo would still have to carry a backpack.
The pouch on a kangaroo isn’t just any pocket.
Kangaroo parent’s pouch is a special place
for a baby kangaroo to stay safe as it gets bigger.
See… a baby kangaroo, called a joey,
is only about the size of a grape when it is first born.
I know! That’s way, way smaller than a baby human, or even a kitten or puppy!
That’s why the pouch is so wonderful.
The joey stays in its mother’s pouch for about four months.
It drinks its mother’s milk, and stays safe and warm
while it grows bigger and bigger… until it’s big enough to hop out on its own.
Ah, good thinking.
Squeaks noticed that our neighbor’s puppies didn’t hide out in a pouch.
Only some animals, like kangaroos, have pouches.
This group of animals is called marsupials.
And there are lots of different kinds of marsupials!
Like check out the wombat, another Australian marsupial.
It also carries its young in a pouch until the baby gets bigger!
And here’s an animal you might know…
You’re right, koalas are marsupials, too.
In fact, lots of the animals in Australia are marsupials!
All marsupials are kinds of mammals.
Mammals have hair and give milk to their babies.
Right, like dogs, cats, lions, and horses are also mammals.
They have fur and feed their young milk.
But most mammals carry their young inside their bodies
until the babies are big enough to survive on their own.
That right most marsupials carry their young in pouches!
Oh… well, if we want to see a marsupial, we’d need to go to a zoo.
See, most of the world’s marsupials live in Australia.
Great question! To answer that, let’s pretend to take a visit to Australia…
as it looked 300 million years ago!
That’s very long ago, before even the dinosaurs.
If we could travel back in time, we’d see that most of Earth’s land
was clumped together, like this.
But the land didn’t stay that way.
Over a long time, it spread apart until
it finally started to look like the maps of Earth that we see today.
And see? Australia is surrounded on all sides by water… it’s an island.
So if you or I wanted to get to Australia,
we would have to either take an airplane, or take a boat.
There’s no other way to get on or off!
So the animals that were on Australia as it moved apart from that big
clump of land, unless they could fly or swim,
were pretty much stuck on the island. But that process took a super long time.
So long that the animals on Australia changed
in a way to fit into the place where they live.
Animals that fit in well with where they live have an easier time getting around,
finding food, and doing other things it takes to survive. We call this adapting.
And a pouch has turned out to be pretty helpful
in helping animals like koalas and kangaroos to survive.
Well, that’s the cool thing. Scientists aren’t exactly sure why!
But they do have some pretty good ideas.
For example, pouches mean that mother marsupials
don’t need to stay in one place to take care of their babies.
Koalas can keep climbing and kangaroos can keep hopping…
all the better to stay safe and to find food to eat. It’s parenting on the go!
And speaking of being on the go…
I said that if we wanted to see most kinds of marsupials,
we’d need to go to a zoo or Australia.
But, well… There is one kind of marsupial that lives right here in North America.
And one of them dropped by to visit the Fort today!
This kind of marsupial is called a Virginia opossum.
Now, he can’t show us a pouch because he’s a boy,
and it’s usually the mother marsupials who have pouches.
This is Pinto and he’s only a couple months old, so he’s still pretty small.
And he’s going to get a lot bigger.
Opossums usually live two or three years,
and in that time he’s going to go from this size to this size.
One of the neatest things about opossums is their tail.
They use this tail to help them grip as they’re climbing around.
And you’ll notice there’s not very much hair back here.
If you notice, Pinto is using his senses to discover things around him,
and one of his best senses is his sense of smell.
He also has these amazing ears to help him hear.
But opossums are not very good at seeing.
So if something scary comes along,
they’re going to do a couple things to help them survive.
The first thing that Pinto might do is open his mouth really wide,
show off all of his sharp teeth, and hiss.
If that doesn’t scare away the scary thing,
then he’s actually going to get so scared he’s going to pass out from fright.
When he passes out, he will actually fall over, open his mouth,
his tongue will hang out, and he’ll start drooling.
And then he will give off a really stinky smell that makes him
smell like he’s maybe died and gone bad or he’s really sick.
And that scary animal will hopefully leave him alone.
This is called playing dead or playing possum.
Squeaks, aren’t you glad that we got to see North America’s
only marsupial right here at The Fort?
If you want to have fun with me, Squeaks, and all of our friends… and Pinto!...
you can subscribe to SciShow Kids, and we’ll see you next time here at the Fort.
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