Down UNDER, that is. Ha! Australia is a world where the mammalian placentals (besides the higher primates that tend to congregate in the urban areas) are the minority, and the marsupial diversity isn't limited to the gruesome beady-eyed O-possum of North America - we're talking everything from sugar gliders and wombats to the macropods - the kangaroos and wallabies. I was fortunate enough to see 4 species of wallaby and the 3 largest species of kangaroo (the Easter and Western Grey and the infamous but ugly Red Kangaroo) in the wild and I even got to race a few of them down some running trails on Kangaroo Island.
But that was nothing compared to my 3 encounters with the short-beaked echidna, one of 3 species in the subclass Monotrema that are still extant in the world today. The above picture is of my first encounter, during possum patrol one night in Dandegong Ranges National Park in Victoria.
This is the Prefect's final entry on the subject of Australia, and subsequent posts will henceforth focus on the prehistorically mammal-less island nation of Aotearoa, "the Land of the Long White Cloud," or in the woods of its European discover Abel Tasman, Novae Seelandiae.
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