Australia has a feral cat problem. Cats and other invasive predators have driven dozens of the country’s native bird, reptile and small mammal species into extinction, and continue to threaten several others. So many feral felines roam the country that the government often traps, shoots or poisons the animals in order to control populations. Most [...]

Scientists and conservationists this week said they will petition the Australian government to change the status of the Leadbeater’s possum from “endangered” to “critically endangered,” a designation shared by only four other Australian mammals. The tiny marsupial (Gymnobelideus leadbeateri) is one of two faunal emblems of Australia’s State of Victoria, but it has suffered badly [...]

A diseased and emaciated Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii) was found last week on a golf course in the town of Zeehan on Tasmania’s west coast. Like many of its kind, the animal suffered from the deadly, transmittable cancer known as Devil Facial Tumor Disease (DFTD), which has wiped out at least 70 percent and possibly [...]

Rabbits aren’t exactly popular in Australia, where invasive European rabbits have wreaked havoc on the country’s ecology. And so, with Easter just days away, many Australian children will be celebrating not with the traditional Easter bunny, but with the Easter bilby, as the nation uses the holiday to to celebrate—and raise funds to protect—one of [...]

Cryptozoology is the study of animals or alleged animals that are known only from anecdotal evidence. The field has a bit of an image problem. Frankly, this isn’t much of a surprise when you look at the busy efforts of the various creationists, true believers and cranks who express interest in the subject. And several [...]

This sequence of photos – taken by my good friend Markus Bühler – shows snail-crushing behaviour in a captive individual of the Australian scincid lizard Hemisphaeriodon (read on) gerrardii, popular known as the Pink-tongued skink. Unique to the coastal eastern strip of Queensland and New South Wales, it’s a predominantly terrestrial skink of damp sclerophyll [...]

I’ve decided to republish – in slightly updated form – the borhyaenoid text posted on Tet Zoo ver 2 back in July 2008. The text was originally published as three separate articles. It makes more sense to have it all together in the same place, so here are all those articles combined. Even to novices [...]

Virtually all people interested in animals are aware of the so-called ‘mystery big cat’ phenomenon. Large, often black, cats are reported with apparent frequency from the eastern USA and the UK. But the phenomenon isn’t unique to those two areas. Here, we’re going to look specifically at the ‘mystery big cat’ phenomenon in Australia. The [...]

By night, I work as a technical research scientist, writer of papers and so on, but by day I walk the beaches of the world, looking for partially decomposed mystery carcasses and identifying them. Kidding: of course I don’t, but you get the idea – thanks in no small part to the Montauk Monster flap [...]

Time to finish up on those fantastic vombatiforms. Be sure to read part I first. In part I, we looked at koalas and marsupial lions, both of which seem to be outside Vombatoidea, the vombatiform clade that includes wombats and the superficially wombat-like, mostly terrestrial diprotodontids and kin. This current article surveys vombatoid diversity. Yes, [...]

That recent article on tree-kangaroos really brought home to me just how little marsupial-themed information I’ve published here on Tet Zoo. This marsupial drought really isn’t deliberate, since I find marsupials among the most fascinating of mammals. It’s just that I’ve never found the time to write about them much. Here’s an effort to rectify [...]

One of my favourite groups of marsupials are the wonderful tree-kangaroos. There are presently ten recognised tree-kangaroo species; they occur exclusively on New Guinea, Umboi, New Britain and north-east Queensland (and it’s generally thought that they were introduced to Umboi by humans). Tree-kangaroos first became known to Europeans in 1826 when crew of the Dutch [...]

Which limb do you prefer? If you’re like most members of our species, you prefer your right hand for most tasks. If you’re like a smaller minority of our species, you might prefer your left hand. Very, very few of us are truly ambidextrous. Most of us have at least a minor preference for one [...]