1 Wild Australia

CHAPTER 1 Australia and Its Wildlife A LONG TIME AGO, AUSTRALIA WAS PART OF A SUPERCONTINENT CALLED GONDWANA. Because Australia left the supercontinent 130 million years ago, the animals here are different from animals in other places. The wildlife can be dangerous to people: there are venomous snakes and spiders, and crocodiles, too. Some animals only come from Australia, like the koala and the platypus. There are also many beautiful birds. Some are big and cannot fly, like the emu. The Australian animal that everybody knows is the kangaroo. Its babies live in a pouch on the mother's body. You can find exciting animals all over Australia.

CHAPTER 2 Mammals MAMMALS ARE ANIMALS THAT START THEIR LIVES AS BABIES AND NOT AS EGGS. THEY DRINK THEIR MOTHER'S MILK. MANY MAMMALS IN THE WORLD ONLY COME FROM AUSTRALIA. The kangaroo is the national animal of Australia. Its picture is on some Australian money. Kangaroos can be gray or red. Baby kangaroos live in their mother's pouch. Australians call a baby kangaroo a joey. The kangaroo is the only large animal that jumps—goes up and down—from one place to another. It is very fast: with its big legs and feet, a kangaroo can jump at 70 kilometers an hour! The koala is a very beautiful animal with gray hair and a black nose. It lives in the trees, and it finds its food there. It has a pouch for its babies, like the kangaroo. Koalas sleep for most of the day because the weather in Australia can be very hot. Some people say the Aborigine word koala means "does not drink," but this is wrong. It's only a name. The koala gets a lot of water from the plants it eats, but like every animal it also drinks water when it's thirsty.

The Tasmanian devil lives in Tasmania, the second, smaller island of Australia. It has a pouch, too. It eats other animals. It has a big head and black fur. It also has long hairs on its face. It uses the hairs to feel things, like cats do. The hairs tell the animal what is near it. When the first people came to Tasmania, they ate many Tasmanian devils. There are not many Tasmanian devils living in Australia today. The dingo is a dog, but it is not a pet! We think the first dingoes came to Australia with people many thousands of years ago. Dingoes eat meat, and farmers do not like them because they eat sheep. Dingoes can be dangerous. If you visit a place where there are dingoes, you must watch your children. In 1980, a mother in Australia lost her baby. She said a dingo took it. People thought that she wasn't right, but she was!

CHAPTER 3 Birds AUSTRALIA HAS A LOT OF DIFFERENT BIRDS. FOR MILLIONS OF YEARS, UNTIL PEOPLE CAME TO AUSTRALIA WITH DOGS AND CATS, THERE WERE NO OTHER ANIMALS TO EAT THE BIRDS. SO MANY KINDS OF BIRDS DIDN'T NEED TO FLY. The emu is Australia's biggest and most famous bird. It cannot fly, but it can run very fast: 50 kilometers an hour! Emus can be taller than a man. Most of them live in forests, and they eat plants. There are now emu farms in Australia, because people like to eat their meat. Emu eggs are very big. An Aborigine story says that when the world was young, somebody sent an emu egg into the sky and made the sun. Aborigines also see a big picture of a black emu in the night sky. Another famous Australian bird is the kookaburra. There are different kinds of kookaburra with different colors. When you listen to them, they sound like people laughing. Kookaburras eat snakes and other birds. Sometimes when people are cooking outside their homes, kookaburras fly down and take the food.

CHAPTER 4 Reptiles SNAKES, CROCODILES, AND LIZARDS ARE REPTILES. THEY ARE ANIMALS THAT COME FROM EGGS. Most snakes in Australia are dangerous. You can die if they put their venom in your body. One of the most venomous snakes in the world is the Inland Taipan. It lives in hot places and eats small animals. It's difficult to see because its color changes. This snake isn't usually a problem, because it doesn't like to be near people. Crocodiles live in oceans or rivers. They have big teeth and long bodies. They can be six meters long. They live for a long time: some live for more than a hundred years! Crocodiles eat meat, fish, and sometimes people! It isn't good to go near a crocodile. But it isn't always easy to see crocodiles. You can sometimes think they are a part of a tree in the water.

CHAPTER 5 River and Sea Life THERE IS A LOT OF LIFE IN AUSTRALIA'S RIVERS AND SEAS. The platypus lives in Australia's rivers. It's a mammal, but it's very different from other mammals. It's the only mammal to come from an egg, and it's venomous, too! People in England first saw the platypus in 1798. They didn't it was one animal. They thought it was two animals together. The platypus sleeps for 14 hours a day and eats small animals. It uses electricity to "see" these animals! No other mammal does this. The Great Barrier Reef is a wall of coral in the sea near Australia. It's 600,000 years old, and it's very big —2,600 kilometers long! Very small sea animals make coral and live in it, Coral reefs are a great home for animals and plants. The Great Barrier Reef is home to 1,500 kinds of fish and more than 2,000 kinds of plants. Some of them cannot live in any other place, so they need the reef.