Animals Of Australia (1979)

[music] >> If you ask people about Australian animals, most of them will think of kangaroos. And so it is that kangaroos have become a kind of symbol for all wildlife on this island continent. But the early explorers and artists talked about Australia as the land of parrots. There are many different parrots found all over Australia. Birds like the pink cockatoo are really beautiful, but nowadays you'll see them in only a few places. Other parrots are more common, like Mallee Ringnecks, or cockatiels. >> [screaming] >> But just about everywhere in Australia, you'll find galahs. Here a few of them are coming in to drink at a waterhole. It's early morning, and in summer they'll usually drink at this time before moving away from the trees to feed. Although Australia is a dry continent, you can find many interesting animals throughout the inland. All of them are well adapted to the low rainfall. The largest bird in Australia lives here, the emu. It's about 5 ft tall, but can't fly. However, it's got very powerful legs for self-defense, and can run at over 40 mph. Unlike most other birds, it's the male emu that incubates the eggs and takes care of the young. Away from the creeks and water holes, there's a lot of sandy country covered with drought-resistant trees. Here you can find all kinds of animals. And one of the most interesting is the malleefowl or lowan. These birds incubate their eggs in a huge mound of decomposing leaves and warm sand, which the male and female scratch up themselves. Some mounds are up to 18 ft across and must contain tons of sand, leaves, and twigs. Malleefowls can adjust the temperature of the mound by mixing up the warm and cool sand, so that the eggs stay at exactly the same temperature all the time. In the early morning, the mound is opened up. But during the hotter hours of the day, the birds will move the sand back again to protect the eggs from the sun. In this sandy country, you can also see colorful birds like the rainbow bee-eater. And in the dry forests of Western Australia, you'll find the numbat, a small marsupial that lives on termites. But it's on the wide plains of Australia's inland that you'll see huge mobs of kangaroos. And in open dry country like this, you'll find the largest of all the kangaroos, the red kangaroo. >> They live in the driest parts of the inland, feeding on small herbs and grasses. Kangaroos, like many other Australian animals, are marsupials. This means the female has a pouch in which the young completes its growth. Here, a kangaroo is being born. You can see that the tiny embryo is only about an inch long. And although it's completely blind and deaf, manages to crawl over the fur of its mother and into the pouch. It uses only its front legs. The back legs, which will become so powerful later on, are hardly used at all. In the pouch, it attaches itself to a teat and grows for about the next 6 months. Here, the young kangaroo is well protected for the first few months of its life. Then the young kangaroo, or joey as it's called, is weaned. This weaning process will take about 6 weeks. And in that time, even large joeys will return to the pouch for protection. But gradually, as it begins to eat grass, the young will leave the pouch forever, but will still follow the female for several more months. Many reptiles live in these low rainfall areas, too. This thorny devil may look fierce, but it's really quite harmless. But not so this curl snake. Running down the eastern coastline is a long range of mountains that divides the dry inland regions from the fertile coastal plains. Along these ranges grow the tallest hardwood forests in the world made up entirely of evergreens, mostly eucalypts and acacias. You'll find many of Australia's best known animals in these forests. The lyrebird is one of them. The male lyrebird's courtship display includes the calls of many other forest birds. It's a great mimic. After the breeding season, this male will lose the two beautiful outer feathers of his lyre-shaped tail. Koalas, of course, are another well-known Australian animal. They usually sleep during the day and move about to feed in the evening or during the night. By the way, koalas are also marsupials. They are not related to bears in any way. Swamp wallabies live in thicker parts of the forest. They're just smaller members of the kangaroo family. There aren't many large predatory animals in Australia. And about the only one which could attack this wallaby would be a dingo. Dingoes are related to wolves and probably descended from the pale-footed wolf of Asia. They came to Australia with the Aborigines thousands of years ago. Today, you'll find dingoes in both mountain and inland areas. And like all wolves, they raise their young in dens. The wedge-tailed eagle is another large predator living mainly on smaller animals like rabbits. They're huge birds with a wingspan of around 6 ft. Their large stick nests are used for many years. Wedge-tailed eagles are strong enough to pick up koalas, smaller marsupials, and dingo comes. The echidna, or spiny anteater, is perhaps one of Australia's most unusual animals. It's one of a special group of mammals called monotremes. These animals lay eggs like reptiles, but also suckle their young like all mammals. The echidna carries its single rubbery egg in a pouch. From this egg hatches out a tiny embryo less than an inch long. This embryo will continue to grow in the pouch of the female for several months. The young echidna will be carried about like this until it begins to develop spines of its own. And then it will be left to sleep in a hollow while the female hunts for food. Echidnas live on ants and their larvae as well as termites and other small insects and they catch these on their long sticky tongues. Although they're quite timid animals, echidnas have immensely powerful feet which they use for digging and feeding. The platypus is another monotreme. Its soft bill is very sensitive to vibration and touch. They live in the freshwater streams and lakes of eastern Australia, but often they're hard to see because they spend so little time above ground or out of the water. They live in burrows along the riverbank and usually the entrance is very close to the water's edge. Underwater a platypus searches for worms, crustacea, and small insects and it finds them using only its sense of touch as both eyes are closed when it's swimming. A female platypus lays two or three eggs, but she leaves them in a grass nest at the end of the burrow instead of carrying them in a pouch. Many Australian animals are nocturnal. This is a wombat, another large marsupial. They spend the day underground in one of several long burrows they keep open and come out at dusk to feed on roots of plants. As it gets darker, many other animals start to feed. There are several nocturnal birds. These owls hunt for the smaller marsupials in the forest. This bush rat isn't a marsupial. It's one of several rodents that live in Australia. But this little brown phascogale is a marsupial, one of the smallest of them all. It's about the size of a mouse, but very quick as it hunts for insects on the ground and in the trees. This is a tuan, another marsupial about the size of a rat. It's a fierce small predator and can easily catch most of the smaller animals in the forest such as the brown phascogale. The powerful owl is a huge bird, the largest owl in Australia. This sugar glider is one of several interesting marsupials that can glide from tree to tree by stretching out a flap of skin between the front and back legs. The largest of these gliders in Australia is the greater glider. It's a gentle vegetarian and eats the leaves of only a few select eucalyptus species. The smallest glider is the tiny feathertail. Smaller than a mouse, it lives on nectar and pollen. In northeastern Australia, there are just a few areas of tropical rainforest left. The big waterfalls and huge trees make them interesting places to visit. It's quite an experience to see a colony of flying foxes, or fruit bats as they should be called. This female is suckling her young as she cools herself. All bats have special blood vessels which help them live in this upside down way. At night, they will fly away to feed in the nearby forest. The green tree frog also lives here. He'll hunt for insects as soon as night comes. The rainforest dragon is also well adapted for life among the trees. This lizard has much larger eyes than other members of its family. Very useful in these dark forests. The Australian continent has a long coastline, and some parts of it are remote and quite wild. But, where the fertile Antarctic waters meet the land, there are many different seabirds, and amongst them are the fairy penguins. Underwater, penguins hunt for small fish. Although they can't fly, these birds are well adapted to life in the water. As evening comes, they gather in small parties to return to their nesting rookeries on shore. Penguins are only found on small islands off the mainland coast, where they're safe from large predatory animals like dingoes. They move quickly up well-worn tracks into the sand dunes behind the beach. Here, they nest in short burrows, and when the adult birds return in the evening, they feed their young on fish caught earlier in the day. Before dawn, many will head out to sea again to catch more food for their young. One of the most remarkable places in Australia is the huge coral reef that runs down the eastern coastline, the largest coral reef in the world. This reef has been built up entirely by animals, tiny coral animals less than an inch long. There are no rocks here, and very few plants or seaweeds. It is entirely a community of animals. Many of them depend on one another in some way. This large sweetlip is being cleaned of parasites by small cleaner fish. There are many species of coral and they all feed on drifting particles in the water. The whole of this reef then has been gradually built up by animals over many hundreds of years. It's one of the great natural wonders of the world. For most people, Australia is the land of marsupials. But wherever you go around this island continent, there are all kinds of fascinating animals to be watched and enjoyed.