Australian Native Animals

Australian animals are unique, unusual, dangerous, and bizarre. From the cuddly koala and hopping kangaroo to the odd platypus, fierce crocodiles, and deadly snakes, Australia's native wildlife is sure to fascinate you. Learn about them all here.

Kangaroo

Kangaroo most famous Australian animal

The kangaroo is a large hopping marsupial with triangular upright body, deer-like head, two powerful hind legs, small forelimbs, and long, thick tails. Some can hop at speeds of 70kmh (45mph) and leap up to twice their body height. The kangaroo is the only animal that walks on five legs!

Koala

Koala climbing tree

The Koala is a marsupial with thick fur, large fluffy ears, small eyes, a big flat nose, and no tail. It lives in the eucalyptus forest in eastern Australia and sleeps up to 20 hours a day. It has paws with opposable thumbs and padded feet. It is sometimes called a Koala Bear, but it is not a bear.

Platypus

Platypus swimming under water

The Platypus is a bizarre aquatic mammal with a bill like a duck, webbed feet like an otter, a tail like a beaver, and lays eggs like a lizard! But once the baby hatches, the mother feeds it milk like a mammal. The platypus has receptors in its bill that act like a radar to locate its prey underwater.

Wombat

The Wombat is a solidly built burrowing herbivorous marsupial with coarse brown or black fur. It has short, powerful legs with strong claws for digging for food and tunnelling underground. Wombats walk slowly and grunt loudly if threatened. They do cube-shaped poop!

Emu

The Emu is a giant, flightless Australian bird with shaggy feathers, a small head, large eyes and a long, slender neck. It can run at 50kph for long distances. It is the second-largest bird in the world and has a deadly kick which can cause serious injury to a human if provoked.

Echidna

The Echidna is a small dome-shaped mammal covered in sharp spines. It lays eggs like a reptile, but the mother feeds its young milk like a mammal! The echidna has a rubbery snout with highly sensitive electro-receptors for detecting prey. It uses its sticky tongue to catch ants and termites.

Quokka

The Quokka is a small hopping marsupial with an almost human-like smile, earning it the nickname “the world’s happiest animal”. It has a rounded body, greyish-brown fur, small ears and large dark eyes. Despite their friendly nature, quokkas should be treated with respect and caution.

Cassowary

The cassowary, with its dagger-like claws and powerful kicks, is the most dangerous bird in the world. It is over 2m tall and weighs up to 59kg. Its body is covered with long, glossy black hair-like feathers, and it has no wings. The cassowary makes a deep, rumbling and booming sound.

Dingo

The Dingo is a medium-sized Australian wild dog with a lean, muscular body, yellow, red or black fur, pointed ears, and a bushy tail. It is an intelligent, opportunistic hunter and scavenger that is highly adaptable and survives in various environments. The Dingo is Australia's apex predator.

Tasmanian Devil

The Tasmanian devil is a marsupial about the size of a small dog. It is known by this name because of its blood-curdling screams, eerie growls, black colour, foul odour and aggressive behaviour. It is the world's largest carnivorous marsupial and prefers to eat dead animals.

Red Bellied Black Snake

The Red-bellied Black Snake is a sleek, venomous snake with a shiny black upper body, a red belly and sides. It is carnivorous, eating small animals. It has small hollow syringe-like venom-injecting fangs. It accounts for 16% of all snake bites in Australia, but its venom is rarely fatal to humans.

Kookaburra

The Kookaburra is a stocky bird with a large head and a prominent beak. It has a loud and distinctive bird call that sounds like human laughter. Hence its other names, Laughing Kookaburra and Laughing Jackass. Kookaburras eat lizards, frogs, snakes and other small animals.

Blue Tongued Lizard

The Blue-tongued Lizard, also known as the Blue-tongued Skink, gets its name from its bright blue tongue, which it sticks out to scare off predators. It is an omnivorous slow-moving medium-sized lizard. It is a popular pet because of its docile nature and distinctive appearance.

Redback Spider

The Redback Spider is the second most dangerous spider in the world. Females, which are deadly, have black pea-shaped bodies with a red stripe on top of their bodies. The male is tiny and harmless is often eaten by the female after mating. A bite from a female redback spider can kill a human.

Frilled Lizard

The frilled lizard is a tree-dwelling lizard that ruffles out its scaly red and yellow frill to scare off predators. If this display doesn't scare off an attacker, it runs away quickly. It is about a meter in length and weighs about half a kilo. The frilled lizard eats insects, and smaller lizards, and mammals.

Crocodile

Salt-water crocodiles are ferocious amphibious, carnivorous reptiles with scaly skin and a broad snout crammed with pointed teeth. They are one of the deadliest predators on earth. Crocodiles live in warm and temperate climates in freshwater rivers, estuaries, and creeks.

Eastern Brown Snake

Eastern brown snakes are the second most venomous snake in the world and responsible for the most snakebite fatalities in Australia. They have slender bodies brown, tan or burnt orange in colour. They feeds on vertebrates, frogs, lizards, birds, mammals, and eggs.

Shark

The Shark has a streamlined body with a cartilaginous skeleton. It has sharp serrated teeth and a powerful jaw, making it an apex predator. It has an incredible sense of smell and can detect blood from kilometres away. It also has an organ called the lateral line, which senses vibrations in the water.

Wallaby

Wallabies are small to medium-sized hopping marsupials with compact legs and short forelimbs. They are almost identical to kangaroos but are smaller, have more fur, and live in wooded and rocky environments. Wallabies eat leaves and flowers, ferns, moss, and even insects.

Black Swan

The Black Swan is a large water bird with striking black plumage, a long neck, and a red bill. It makes high-pitched musical bugle-like sounds. The Black swan is omnivorous, feeding on aquatic plants, insects, and small animals. The term "black swan event" is named after these birds.

Possum

Possums are nocturnal arboreal marsupials. They range in size from the tiny pygmy possum, which is 70mm to the brushtail possum a meter in length. They have soft, silver-grey fur, dark orange to dark brown in colour. They have excellent night vision, hearing, and a sense of smell.

Box Jellyfish

Box jellyfish are the most venomous animals in the world. Its sting can kill a human in less than 4 minutes. They are pale blue and hardly visible. They get their name from their four-sided box-like shape. Its has long tentacles lined with thousands of deadly stinging cells called nematocysts.

Tasmanian Tiger

The Tasmanian Tiger, also known as the Thylacine, was a carnivorous marsupial that looked like a yellowish-brown dog with a stiff tail and dark stripes on its back. Humans caused its extinction at the start of the 20th century by hunting, habitat destruction and introducing diseases.

Headless Chicken Monster

The Headless Chicken Monster is a bioluminescent deep-sea swimming sea cucumber. It gets its nickname because it sometimes looks like a decapitated chicken. It is also called the Spanish dancer because of its graceful swimming movements. It has a soft body with sticky, transparent skin.

Corroboree Frog

Corroboree frogs are highly poisonous amphibians with striking yellow and black longitudinal markings. These frogs walk rather than hop like most other frogs. There may be as few as 50 left in the wild.

Gouldian Finch

Gouldian finches are beautifully coloured grass finches. They were once found by the millions but are nearly extinct in the wild. Gouldian finches feed on both ripe and partially-ripe grass seeds.

Sugar Glider

Sugar gliders are small arboreal, nocturnal marsupial mammals that glide from tree to tree and eat the sugary nectar of plants. They are about 250mm long and very agile. It can glide up to 90 meters from tree to tree.

Marsupial Mole

Marsupial moles literally swim underground through the sand. They have no eyes or ears and have a bony shield to protect their noses. They are probably one of the most unusual and least understood animals in the world.

Blobfish

Blobfish are the ugliest animals in the world. They have jelly-like bodies and live in the ocean at depths of over 1,000m where they look like tadpoles. On land, its body collapses, and it looks like a slime blob.

Stonefish

Reef stonefishes are the most venomous fish in the world. Spines along their backs, inject highly toxic venom and intensely painful venom. They camouflage themselves to blend effortlessly into their environment.

Cuttlefish

Cuttlefish are intelligent creatures and experts at using colour, shape, and texture for camouflage. They can put on spectacular colour and light displays. Cuttlefish are related to squid and octopuses.

Thorny Devil

Thorny Devil lizards are armoured with spikes and have excellent camouflaging skills. These attributes offer them superior protection from would-be predators. They are about 20cm in length and only eat black ants.

Antechinus

Antechinuses are little marsupials with pointy noses. Their appearance is similar to a mouse. They are ferocious hunters, preying on insects and small animals. They have a suicidal oversexed sexual behaviour.

Greater Bilby

Greater bilbies are small, nocturnal, omnivorous marsupials with rabbit-like ears and pointy pink snouts. They have muscular forearms and claws for digging their burrows and uncovering buried food.

Swift Parrot

Swift parrots, are small green and yellow birds with long pointed wings. These rather noisy birds are the fastest parrots in the world.

Red Kangaroo

Red kangaroos are the largest marsupials and the largest hopping animal in the world. Standing up to 2 meters tall, it can hop at over 60kph.

Lyrebird

Lyrebirds are ground-dwelling pheasant-sized songbirds that are amazing mimics. They can imitate chainsaws, mobile phones, and horns.

Numbat

Numbats are small marsupial anteaters that eat termites. They weigh about 700 grams. They forage for termites during the daylight.

Great Barrier Reef

The Great Barrier Reef is the largest and most spectacular coral reef in the world. It has the world's most diverse range of underwater animals.

Leadbeater's Possum

Leadbeater's Possums are fast-moving marsupials that live high in the forest canopy and leaps gracefully from one tree to another.

Spotted Quoll

Spotted Tailed Quolls are the size of a large cat. They have many sharp little teeth. They are the second-largest carnivorous marsupial.

Gilbert's potoroo

Gilbert's potoroo is the world's rarest marsupial. It has long front limbs with craved claws with which its digs for underground fungi (truffles).

Dugong

Dugongs are plant-eating marine mammals. Because of their sleek, appearance and large teats, ancient sailors thought they were mermaids.

Bushtail Possum

The brushtail possum is a semi-arboreal nocturnal marsupial. It has a bushy prehensile tail, which it uses to grasp onto branches.

Funnel Web Spider

The Sydney funnel web is the deadliest and most aggressive spider in the world. Its bite can kill a human in 15 minutes.

Bandicoot

Bandicoots are small omnivorous marsupials with pointy snouts, large hind feet, and hop. There are 20 species of bandicoots in Australia.

Night Parrot

Night Parrots are small ground-dwelling nocturnal parrots. They are the world's most mysterious and elusive birds. Only 250 survive.

Giant Clam

The Giant clam is the world’s largest sessile mollusc. It can grow up to 1.5 meters and weigh 230 kilos. It has large protruding blue iridescent lips.

Ringtail Possum

The Ringtail possum is a small arboreal, nocturnal marsupial that holds its tail in a tight coil. It has two thumbs on each front paws.

Tawny Frogmouth

The Tawny Frogmouth is a nocturnal insect hunter that looks like an owl. It camouflages itself by fluffing its feathers to look like a dead tree stump.

Musky Rat-Kangaroo

The Musky rat-kangaroo is the smallest macropod and the only kangaroo that doesn't hop. As its name suggests, it looks like a rat and has a musky smell.

Clownfish

Clownfish come in a wide variety of colours and usually have vertical bands across their bodies. They live amongst poisonous sea anemones.

Tree Kangaroo

Tree kangaroos are kangaroos that live in trees. They climb by wrapping the forelimbs around a tree and hopping up with their powerful hind legs.

Snapping Turtle

This turtle breathes through its bum, yes its anus, and it can remain submerged for days. It's about 45cm and lives to over 100 years.

Stick Nest Rat

The white-tipped-stick-nest-rat lived in central Australia. It built its nest of sticks, which it added to over the years, making a massive nesting mound.

Antilopine Kangaroo

The antilopine kangaroo is the only kangaroo that lives entirely in the tropics. It has a face that looks like that of an antelope, hence its name.

Sea Anemone

Sea anemones are small marine invertebrates closely related to coral and jellyfish. They catch prey with their venomous tentacles.

Penguin

Fairy Penguins are the smallest penguin species in the world. It goes fishing during the day and eats small fish and crustaceans.

Lesser Bilby

The lesser bilby was a small omnivorous marsupial that became extinct in 1950 due to rabbits and predators such as feral cats and foxes.

Woylie

The woylie is a nocturnal marsupial with a long tail which it wraps around a bundle of nesting material and transports it home.

Flying Fox (Bat)

Flying Foxes are relatively large flying herbivorous mammals. Most do not use echolocation but instead rely on their keen sight.

Rakali (Water Rat)

The Rakali is a semi-aquatic native placental mammal. It lives in burrows on the banks of rivers. It eats insects, fish, crustaceans, snails, and frogs.

Cockatoo Parrot

The Sulphur-crested Cockatoo is a very noisy large white parrot with a large yellow crest that it fans out. It eats berries, seeds, nuts and roots.

Blue-Ringed Octopus

The blue-ringed octopus bite is painless and may go unnoticed. However, its toxin acts quickly. Death may occur in as little as 30 minutes

Tiger Snake

Tiger snakes are large, aggressive snakes responsible for the second-highest number of bites in Australia. Their venom is neurotoxic.

Goanna

The goanna is the largest lizard in Australia and the fourth-largest in the world. If threatened, it whips its tail, bites, and claws its victim.

Dolphin

Dolphins are very vocal, playful, intelligent, social animals that live in groups of up to 15 animals. They feed on invertebrates, fish, and squid.

Parrot

Australia has 56 species of colourful parrots. It has two-thirds of the world’s cockatoos and around one-eighth of the world’s parrots.

Sea Lion

Australian sea lions stocky bodies, a large head, and short narrow flippers. The male is twice as large as the female. They hunt fish and squid.

Red-eyed Tree Frog

Red-eye tree frogs live in Australian rainforests and wetlands. They are nocturnal hunters that feed on moths and insects.

Taipan

Taipans are large, fast-moving snakes. They are some of the most venomous snakes in the world but prefer to avoid confrontation with humans.

Peacock Mantis Shrimp

Peacock mantis shrimps have the fastest punch in the world, creating small implosions in the water that generates heat, light, and sound.

Handfish

Handfish prefer to walk on their pectoral and pelvic fins rather than swim. They live at depths of 5-40m and eat crustaceans and worms.

Red-fronted Parakeet

Red-fronted parakeets were quite common till about 1879. They became extinct because of hunting by humans and as a result of the feral cat.

Whale

Humpback whales travel up from the Antarctic to give birth and feed their young. They can grow to 12 – 16 metres and weigh 36,000 kgs.

Plains Wanderer

Plains wanderers are small quail-like birds that live in semi-arid grasslands. They prefer to run rather than fly and fall easy prey to foxes.

Loggerhead Turtle

Loggerhead Turtles are the largest hard-shelled turtles in the world. They are carnivorous, feeding on shellfish, crabs, sea urchins, and jellyfish.

Eastern Bettong

The eastern bettong became extinct on the mainland in the 1920s as the result of the introduction of the red fox and rabbit.

Gastric-brooding Frog

Gastric-brooding frogs incubated their babies in the mother's stomach. They became extinct in the mid-1980s due to a pathogenic fungus.

Green Turtle

Green turtles feed on seagrasses, but they also eat the venomous box jellyfish. They get their name from the colour of their fat.

Textile Cone

The Textile Cone's harpoon-like tooth can pierce the skin, rubber gloves and wetsuits. Its venom causes respiratory paralysis and eventual death

Leatherback Turtle

It is the largest turtle of them all. It is called a leatherback because it doesn't have a hard shell but has leathery skin. It eats jellyfish and invertebrates.

Introduced Animals

Introduced animals are those animals brought to Australia by humans. The first animal introduced into Australia by humans was the dingo, a wild Australian dog. Other introduced animals were brought here for agriculture (cattle and sheep), transportation (camel and horse), sport (rabbit and fox), pleasure (myna bird and house sparrow), and pest control (cane toad). Some of these creatures have been disastrous to the Australian ecology.

Australian Marsupials

There are more than 330 species of marsupials ranging in size from the 2.1-meter tall red kangaroo to the tiny planigale, which is just 6cm in length and weighs only 4 gm (about as much as a teaspoon of sugar). Marsupials occupy all ecological niches in the trees, on the ground, and underground.

Nocturnal Animals

Most native Australian animals are nocturnal. That is, they are only active when its dark. Being active at night allows these animals to cope with the extreme heat and aridity of the country. Coming out only at night when the temperature is cooler conserves precious water, which would be lost by being active in the hot sun.

Endangered Animals

There are over 300 species of Australian animals that are endangered. They may disappear from the face of the Earth forever. In recent time, due to human activities, the number of species becoming extinct has accelerated at an alarming rate. Some species have become extinct in just a few years.

Extinct Animals

Extinction is a natural process of evolution. Since the arrival of humans, however, extinction has accelerated alarmingly. Many species of Australian megafauna became extinct after the arrival of the Aboriginals. Since the arrival of European settlers in 1788, Australia has lost many hundreds of other native animals and plants.

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