Lynne Hovey, age 10, of Charleston, West Virginia, for her question:
What kind of animal is the wallaby?
The wallaby is a charming little character, gentle and rather shy. Hh is also handsome and very spry. His agile acrobatics can keep you pleasantly amused forhours. However, let's leave the attractive wallaby in his native land. There are reasons why we do not want him prancing freely through our corn fields. Scientists classify the animals in family groups, and the wallaby belongs to the animal. family Macropodidae. Most of these scientific family names are long and fancy words. They are built up from words borrowed from older languages such as Greek and Latin. These older words have hidden clues and the family name of an animal usually tells us something about itself. The name Macropodidae means Big Feet. So our wallaby belongs to a family of big footed animals. His relatives also happen to have very long, strong hind legs. And most of them have very long, strong tails that works as well as extra legs
The wallaby family and several somewhat related families are grouped together in a big animal order. Their order is Marsupialia the pouched animals. Every marsupial mother carries her infant baby inside a cosy pouch on her body. As a rule, the built in cradle is a fur lined fold of skin on Mama's tummy. This bit of news reminds us of the timid opossum who lives in our own native woods. It also brings to mind the big footed, high jumping kangaroo. The opossum andthe kangaroo are both marsupials. And so is the wallaby.
Most members of the Marsupialia order are at home on the opposite side of the globe in Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania. In that part of the world, the most plentiful four footed animals are pouched marsupials. The giant of the clan is the long leaping, high jump ing kangaroo. And everybody knows what he looks like. The wallaby looks just like him, but he is smaller. In fact, even experts say that the average wallaby is just a small variety of the big kangaroo. The wallaby is small by nature. He may be a hare wallaby, who never grows bigger than a jack rabbit. He may make his living on the barren, rocky deserts of Australia, or he may live on the open prairies, hiding himself in the tunnels he makes through the scrubby grasses. All the wallaby cousins are strict vegetarians. Some forage by night. Others begin munching at dawn and take a sunny siesta during the heat of the day. Most wallabies gather greenery, leaves and sometimes berries with their dainty little hands. When a mother wallaby has a half grown youngster in her pouch, he may pop out his head and shoulders and grasp a handful of munchable greenery for himself. Mrs. Wallaby has only one infant at a time and the family does not multiply at a great rate. But before their land was settled by busy farmers and ranches, they were plentiful almost everywhere. The hungry wallabies devoured the grass meant for sheep and cattle, and even raided the farm crops. So they were hunted and hunted, along with their big Kangaroo cousins. There are still many big footed members of the Macropodidae family on the other side of the globe, but not so many as there used to be before mankind came to settle their native lands.