Kids’ Page
Our planet is home to some weird and wonderful animals. These are some of the strangest!
A viscacha lives high in the mountains of South America. It looks like a rabbit, but has legs like a kangaroo and a tail like a squirrel. Thanks to those strong legs, it can easily jump from rock to rock and scale steep cliffs. The thick fur protects it from the icy mountain air. When it needs to warm up, a viscacha will sit for hours in the sun with its eyes closed.
The grinning quokka is a marsupial, like a kangaroo, but it’s the size of a chubby cat. You’ll find quokkas on Rottnest Island, west of Australia. You may have seen photos of them because it’s become quite popular to take selfies with a smiling quokka.
Quokkas are good climbers. They eat grasses and leaves. After eating, a quokka will regurgitate its food, chew it again and swallow. This might sound gross, but the process probably helps to get more nutrients from the plants.
The ferocious wolverine is at home in the cold Arctic forests. Its dense coat consists of a top layer of long fur and a second layer that’s very soft and thick. Its furry feet act as snowshoes and its powerful jaws can bite through bones and frozen meat. A wolverine is not a picky eater: It will eat plants and berries in summer and just about any animal in winter – even carrion.
If an axolotl injures a body part, it can grow a new one.
You may think this adorable creature is a smiley-faced alien, but it’s actually an amphibian. Axolotls (pronounced ak-suh-lot-uhl) only occur in one lake near Mexico City in Mexico and are considered critically endangered.
The feather-like things on the sides of their head are gills, which they use to breathe. Unlike other amphibians, axolotls never leave the water. They eat worms, insect larvae and fish. In the wild they are usually brown, grey or black. The ones kept as pets in an aquarium are often pinkish.
12 cm
About 1,4 kg 38 cm