{"id":5203,"date":"2014-11-09T08:39:02","date_gmt":"2014-11-09T13:39:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theleemsmachine.com\/bean\/?p=5203"},"modified":"2014-09-09T15:36:00","modified_gmt":"2014-09-09T19:36:00","slug":"australia-love-from-afar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theleemsmachine.com\/bean\/blog\/2014\/11\/09\/australia-love-from-afar\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia – love from afar"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hello there, lovers of the strange and unusual.\u00a0 There is no place better to find strange and unusual than Australia and I’ve picked out a few examples of evolutionary diversion to share with you today.<\/p>\n

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Southern Hairy-nosed Wombat CC BY 2.0 | Jason Pratt – originally posted to Flickr as Southern Hairy-nosed Wombat<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Wombats<\/a> captured my attention since I first saw one falling through a broken deck chair in Sirens<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 I find them laughably cute.\u00a0 They are one of many marsupials that call Australia home.\u00a0 In fact, 70% of the 334 marsupial species in the world are found in Australia, near by New Guinea and surrounding islands (Wikipedia<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The strangeness of marsupials (what with half developed embryos crawling around on their parents) pales in comparison to the Platypus.<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 With a duck bill, beaver-like tail, and eyes like a hagfish or lampry, this egg laying mammal takes the prize for best animal mash-up, but that’s not all of the strangeness.\u00a0 The Platypus hunts by electroreception<\/a>, similar to sharks, has venom, and lacks a stomach.<\/p>\n

Though not specific to Australia, flying foxes also make there home down under.\u00a0 They are also known as mega bats<\/a> and can have wings spans up to 2 meters or 6 feet.<\/p>\n