List Of Marsupials

Crazy critters, strike vote, debt chicken

LOCAL

» Orcas and flying marsupials, oh my! A pod of orcas, a rare sight this far south, was photographed off Kauai last weekend. Honolulu police on Wednesday seized a sugar glider, a small marsupial that looks like a flying squirrel, from a Kaneohe home. It was the 15th illegal animal confiscated by officials here since June 29.

» Do you know this man? Honolulu police forensics specialists, with the help of military experts, reconstructed a clay likeness of the head of a man whose skeleton was found last October in the yard of a Manoa home. The man had been shot three times in the head. A coin dated 1982 was found in his pocket. HPD released images of the model Thursday.

» Four Hawaii post offices are among 3,653 postal facilities being reviewed for possible closure in a cost-cutting move, the Postal Service announced Tuesday. The Hawaii post offices on the list are in Chinatown, Kapolei, Kalaupapa and Hanamaulu on Kauai.

» United Public Workers members began taking a strike-authorization vote last week. About 85,000 UPW blue-collar state and county workers have the right to strike. The Abercrombie administration is seeking 5 percent in payroll savings and an equal split in health insurance premium costs.

»  No fireworks-related injuries were treated at Oahu hospital emergency rooms during the July 4th holiday period, the state reported, the first such injury-free period in at least nine years. Officials credited Oahu's new ban on most fireworks.

MAINLAND

» In a last-minute stab at compromise, Republican congressional leaders and the White House made progress toward a deal to avert a government default, according to officials familiar with the talks. Without legislation in place by Tuesday, administration officials say the Treasury will run out of funds to pay all the nation's bills. They say a subsequent default could prove catastrophic for the U.S. economy and send shock waves around the world.

»  Warren Jeffs, the polygamist sect leader defending himself against sexual assault charges, broke his silence with a courtroom sermon defending plural marriages as divine. Jeffs, who is on trial in San Angelo, Texas, said God would bring "sickness and death" on those involved if his trial wasn't immediately stopped.

Synapsida: The Strangest Marsupial?

As you can see (sort of) from the picture, these animals look remarkably like the golden moles. There's probably a good reason for that; like most golden moles, they burrow their way through dry, sandy soils, and they have a very similar lifestyle. Yet, apart from both being mammals, they are entirely unrelated. These animals dig through the sands, not of Africa, but of Australia. For these are the marsupial moles ( Notoryctes spp.) The marsupial mole family contains just two species, imaginatively named the northern and southern marsupial moles. They're pretty much impossible to tell apart just by looking at them, and for a long time it wasn't clear that they were two separate species at all. They live only in the deserts of central and north-western Australia, where they like especially sandy soils, and feed primarily on ants and termites. They are, if anything, even more adapted to this life than the golden moles are. Their forelegs are reduced to mere pointed stubs ending in pick-like claws, and their hind limbs are flattened into spades for shovelling sand behind them. They have no visible eyes or ears, and they can close their small nostrils to prevent them filling with sand. The snout and forehead are covered by a shield of thick horny material that acts like the blade of a plough, enabling them to push their way forward. To help further, the bones of their neck are fused solid, allowing them to keep their head rigidly positioned. But, if you're a marsupial, travelling through loose sand presents an additional problem that golden moles and the like don't have to face. We've seen how mole-like mammals have small ears, permanently closed eyes, and so on, to prevent them filling with dirt. But female marsupials also have a pouch, and if that filled with sand, the young would all suffocate. Although some marsupials don't have much, if anything, in the way of a pouch, that approach won't work for moles, because then the young would be even more exposed to abrasion. In the absence of evolving a zipper, the marsupial moles have, nonetheless evolved an effective solution: the pouch faces backwards. And the strangeness doesn't end there. For one thing, even male marsupial moles have a pouch, something unknown in any other marsupial. Apparently , they have no optic nerves, which suggests that they can't detect light at all (which does seem rather odd, given that you'd think they'd want to avoid it).

Australasian marsupials and monotremes, an action plan for their conservation

Marsupials, Marsupial, List of Monotremes and Marsupials, Southern Marsupial Mole, List of Monotremes and Marsupials of Australia

Marsupial Genetics and Genomics

Marsupials

The Illustrated Encyclopedia Of North American Mammals, A Comprehensive Guide to Mammals of North America