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Thanks to Phoebe for suggesting the quokka and the wombat, two of the cutest, happiest-looking animals in Australia!\n\nFurther Reading:\n\nViral stories of wombats sheltering other animals from the bushfires aren't entirely true\n\nSatellites reveal the underground lifestyle of wombats\n\nGiant Wombat-Like Marsupials Roamed Australia 25 Million Years Ago\n\nFurther Listening:\n\nAnimals and Ultraviolet Light (unlocked Patreon episode)\n\nThe adorable quokka with a nummy leaf and a joey in her pouch:\n\n\n\nQuokka (left) and my chonky cat Dracula (right)\n\n \n\nSome quokka selfies showing quokka smiles. That second picture really shows how small the quokka actually is:\n\n \n\nWombats!\n\n \n\nA wombat and its burrow entrance:\n\n\n\nA wombat mom with her joey peeking out of the rear-facing pouch:\n\n\n\nGolden wombats. All they need is some Doublemint Gum:\n\n\n\nTwo (dead, stuffed) wombats glowing under ultraviolet light:\n\n\n\nShow Transcript:\n\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.\n\nThis week we\u2019re going to look at two super-cute animals from Australia, both of them suggestions by Phoebe. Thank you, Phoebe!\n\nLet\u2019s start with the quokka. It\u2019s a marsupial, which as you may recall means that it\u2019s a mammal that gives birth to babies that aren\u2019t fully formed yet, and the babies then finish developing in the mother\u2019s pouch. It\u2019s related to kangaroos and wallabies but is quite small, around the size of an ordinary domestic cat. It\u2019s kind of a chonk, though, which means it\u2019s probably closer in size to my big chonk cat Dracula. It\u2019s shaped roughly like a little wallaby or kangaroo but with a smaller tail and with rounded ears, and it\u2019s grey-brown in color.\n\nYou may have seen pictures of the quokka online, because the reason it\u2019s considered so incredibly cute is because it looks like it\u2019s smiling all the time. If you take a picture of a quokka\u2019s face, it looks like it has a happy smile and that, of course, makes the people who look at it happy too. Those are real pictures, by the way. Because of the way its muzzle and mouth are shaped, the quokka really does look like it\u2019s smiling.\n\nThis has caused some problems, unfortunately. People who want to take selfies with a quokka sometimes forget that they\u2019re wild animals. While quokkas aren\u2019t very aggressive and are curious animals who aren\u2019t usually afraid of people, they can and will bite when frightened. The Nature Conservancy of Australia recommends that people who want to take a selfie with a quokka arrive early in the morning or late in the evening, since quokkas are mostly nocturnal, and that they let the quokkas approach them instead of following one around. Touching a quokka or giving it food or drink is strictly prohibited, since it\u2019s a protected animal.\n\nThe quokka lives on a few small islands off the coast of western Australia and a few small forested areas on the mainland. The largest population lives on Rottnest Island, and in fact the island was named by a Dutch explorer who thought the quokkas were rats. It means rat\u2019s nest. The island\u2019s actual name was Wadjemup and it was a ceremonial area for the local Whadjuk Noongar people.\n\nOnly an estimated 14,000 quokkas live in the wild today, with most of those on Rottnest Island. It used to be much more widespread, but once white settlers arrived and introduced predators like dogs, cats, and foxes, its numbers started to decline. It\u2019s also threatened by habitat loss. It reproduces slowly, since a female only raises one baby a year.\n\nA baby quokka is born after only a month, but like other marsupial babies, called joeys, it\u2019s just a little pink squidge when it\u2019s born. It climbs into its mother\u2019s pouch where it stays for the next six months. Once it\u2019s old enough to leave her pouch, it still depends on her milk for a few more months. While she\u2019s raising one baby, though, the mother has other babies still in her womb ready to be born but held in suspended animation.