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World Wombat Day is October 22! Photo by keiichihiki / iStock.com.
In honor of World Wombat Day, celebrated every year on October 22, here are five cool facts about wombats:
1. There are three species of wombat.
Most people are familiar with the bare-nosed wombat (aka common wombat). But there are also two species of hairy-nosed wombats: the southern hairy-nosed wombat and the northern hairy-nosed wombat. And yes! Hairy-nosed wombats have hair on their noses.
Southern hairy-nosed wombats have hair on their noses. Photo by NoxNorthy / iStock.com.
2. Wombats are marsupials.
That means they are a kind of mammal that has a pouch on their belly for carrying their young. Other examples of marsupials are kangaroos and koalas!
Wombats have pouches on their bellies for carrying their young. Can you spot the pouch? Photo by JJ Harrison ([email protected]), CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
3. Wombats have backward-facing pouches.
Wombat pouches open up toward their backsides! This helps ensure that dirt doesn’t get inside the pouch when the mother is burrowing.
A wombat joey peeks out of its mother’s backward pouch. Photo credit: TimSagorski, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
4. Wombats’ teeth never stop growing.
Their diet is made up mostly of grasses, so their teeth must keep up with the constant wear and tear.
Grazing on grass is tough on the teeth. Luckily wombats’ teeth never stop growing! Photo by pelooyen / iStock.com.
5. Wombats have cube-shaped poop!
They are the only animals in the world to have this unique-shaped dung.
A wombat poop found in Tasmania. Photo credit: Bjørn Christian Tørrissen, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
To learn more about wombats, see our article, Common Wombat.
The post 5 Cool Facts about Wombats for World Wombat Day appeared first on Animal Fact Guide.