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Marsupial
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Marsupial rats and mice are a diverse group of about 40 species of small, native carnivores of Australia, Tasmania, and New Guinea, in the family Dasyuridae. The young of marsupial rats and mice, as with those of all marsupials, are born while still in a tiny, embryonic stage of development. The almost helpless babies migrate to the belly of their mother, where they fix on a nipple and suckle until they are ready to lead an independent life. Unusual among the marsupials, the females of some species of marsupial rats and mice do not have a belly pouch (or marsupium) that encloses their nipples and protects their young. Other species do have a permanent pouch, or they have one that develops only during the breeding season.
Easier - Marsupial (mar-soo-pee-uhl) is the name of a large animal group whose young are born in an immature state. Females usually carry and nurse their young in pouches or pouch-like area on their abdomens. The newborn attaches itself to one of her nipples and remains until it is well formed and has grown much larger.
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Marsupial rats and mice are small mammals with a uniformly dark, brownish coat, often with a whitish belly, and they have a superficial resemblance to placental rats and mice. Most species are nocturnal predators that feed on insects and other small prey. The larger species, such as marsupial rats, feed on smaller marsupials, birds, and reptiles, and introduced rodents. In a sense, marsupial mice fill the ecological roles played by the smallest placental predators on other continents, for example, shrews, while the marsupial rats are ecologically similar to larger small predators, such as weasels.
Canberra, Australia -- Marsupial lions, kangaroos as tall as trucks and wombats the size of a rhinoceros roamed Australia's outback before being killed off by fires lit by arriving humans, scientists said on Thursday. The giant animals lived in the arid Nullarbor desert around 400,000 years ago, but died out around 50,000 years ago, relatively shortly after the arrival of human settlers, according to new fossil skeletons found in caves. Fossilized remains were uncovered almost intact in a series of three deep caves in the center of the Nullarbor desert -- east of the west coast city of Perth -- in October 2002. "Three subsequent expeditions produced hundreds of fossils so well-preserved that they constitute a veritable "Rosetta Stone for Ice-Age Australia", expedition leader Gavin Prideaux said of the find, detailed in the latest edition of the journal Nature.
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ยท Marsupial moles are similar in appearance to normal moles, they carry their babies in their pouch on the outside of their tummy. The baby is born really tiny and crawls into its mother's pouch. The joey lives in its mother's pouch till its quite large. Even when it's quite large it still drinks milk from a teat in its mother's pouch
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