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Now you see me, now you don’t.  Australia is well known for all creatures great, small, venomous, bitey, spiky, leapy and apparently hell-bent on ruining your day - there’s a list of them as long as your arm.  However,  the wraparound spider (Dolophones conifera) is not on that particular list.  Although it has given many the shock of their lives when it suddenly appears in front of them, this spider doesn’t want to hurt you. In fact, it has developed a cunning camouflage technique with the sole purpose of being left alone.  It’s waiting, resting up, patiently letting the daylight hours pass it by until night falls and its work may begin again. Image Credit

Image Credit

In the meantime, it needs to be unseen, particularly from its main predator – birds.  So, over countless millennia it has evolved the ability to wrap its body around twigs of its forest home.  It can do this so effectively that when still it simply looks like a small nodule where new shoots, leaves, or flowers might emerge.  The underside of its bodies is concave, and this allows it to press itself so closely on and around a twig that nothing or no one can spot them unless they decide to move.

Nature never ceases to astonish.  This is the larva of the Pink Underwing Moth, an endangered species which lives in the subtropical rainforest below about 600m elevation in the Australian states of New South Wales and Queensland. It has evolved a remarkable set of patterns to ward off potential predators.

A giant set of eyes would, you might think, be enough to warn off a bird looking for an easy lunch. Yet this caterpillar goes one step further.  It appears to have a set of teeth which could rip any possible attacker to shreds. Why, then, is it so rare? You might think that with this sort of natural protection the species would be thriving everywhere.

The robin, both European and American is famous for its red breast.  The subject of nursery rhymes and Christmas cards the male of the species is resplendent in red. Australia, too, has a robin.  One might, of course, expect this particular country to produce something a little different: it has form, after all.  So, step forward the pink robin, Australia’s passerine of pulchritudinous pinkness.


Just in case you think this is some kind of practical joke, here's a rare and short video of the pink robin.

When you hear the word kangaroo what you may well imagine is the large marsupial bounding with immense speed across the Australian landscape – and you would not be wrong.  However, at one point the ancestors of one particular family of kangaroos did something strange.  They returned to the trees whence they had come.  This is the tree-kangaroo and they are the marsupial equivalent of monkeys.

Australia is home to many strange and unusual animals, something the majority of us know. When asked, most people would say that it is the marsupials of the country that are the most significantly different to the rest of the world.  Perhaps that assumption should be questioned – Australia is also home to the tiny Peacock Spider, whose behaviour and appearance is nothing short of startling.

Ask a ten year old what the largest bird in the world is and the chances are you will get the right answer – the ostrich. Asked about the second largest and the odds are still very good that they will be able to name the Emu. Go for third place in the size league and you may well start to get blank looks from all but the keenest young ornithologist. The answer is the Cassowary – and not only is it endangered but is also classified as the world’s most dangerous bird.

It is, of course, just a nickname.  In September 2013, American PhD student Madeline (Maddie) Girard from Berkeley in California and her Sydney friend Eddie Aloise King alighted upon five males of a hitherto unknown species of peacock spider in Wondul Range National Park in Queensland, Australia. They were not able to resist a nod to He-Man’s primary adversary in the Masters of the Universe franchise, Skeletor (left). The bold, skeleton-like aspect of the male spider demanded a designation both apposite and memorable.

Girard took one of the spiders to Dr Jürgen Otto, handing it over with the words approximating to “This is what I call Skeletorus. When you look at him you will know why.”  Although professionally an acarologist (he studies mites and ticks), Otto is fascinated by the peacock spider and is considered one of the world’s foremost authorities on the genus.  He and David Hill, the American editor of the journal Peckhamia that specialises in the publication of articles on the jumping spider family, began studying this species in preparation for a scientific description.

The scientific name arrived at – its binomial nomenclature – is a little different to Girard’s creative nickname. This incredible new discovery has been named Maratus sceletus by Otto and Hill. Maratus is a genus of Salticidae which means that this is a peacock spider, one of the jumping spider family. Sceletus is Latin for (you probably know or have guessed this already) skeleton, which Otto and Hill thought it resembled more than the fictional character. Although Skeletorus was a strictly working name, it may, however, be the name that’s going to stick.

You really don’t see this every day.  The platypus is usually considered nocturnal (even though it can also be seen in the early evening) yet sometimes, needs must.  This platypus (one of the few venomous mammals on the planet) wants to get from one creek to another in its Tasmanian home but with no streams to get it to its destination, it has been forced to walk. Its trek was caught on film by Max Moller of Black Devil Productions.

There is a picture whizzing around the internet at the moment of Brutus the three legged Australian crocodile taken by Katrina Bridgeford.  You can see it here but as it is copyrighted to Ms Bridgeford we won’t put it directly on Ark in Space. Naysayers are maintained that Photoshop was used in the picture but experts have said that it is, in fact, quite real.

So, we thought we would do a little research on Brutus and we came up with this!  Flickr User Lukinosity says about Brutus: “That croc looks an awful lot like the one we saw on our trip up north. He very nearly got our sweet little dog Charlie. I wish I had gotten a better snap of him, but it all happened so quickly.”

So, it seems that Brutus not only has a taste for scraps thrown by tourist guides but may have a taste for the occasional terrier too.  We must hasten to add here that Charlie survived this brush with the crocodile and was quite unfazed by his experience! Here's a lovely shot of him below - no Photoshop involved!

You may not have heard of the quoll.  However, do not suspect they are a creature of invention.  These small marsupials are native to Australia and Papua New Guineau and – as you can see – they are extremely appealing to the eye.  Above is an Eastern Quoll fawn. The tribe (that's a rank between family and genus) that the quoll belongs to also contains the much better known Tasmanian Devil.



One peculiar fact about the quoll is that they only develop a pouch (where their young will grown after they are born) once the breeding season is in progress.  The pouch is towards their tail area. They have six nipplies and can have several young (or joeys) at the same time. Above is another Eastern Quoll, found in Tasmania.

Quolls are quite happy living in forest or in open land and live mostly on the ground.  However, over the millennia they have had reason to take to the trees and are quite happy among the branches too.  They do not have prehensile tails which would enable them to grab hold of branches with their tails to aid climbing.  The above climber is a Spotted or Tiger Quoll, found in eastern Australia.

However, quolls do have ridges on the pads of their feet, a feature which is common among arboreal animals. Although their colour is usually the brown that you can see in most of the pictures here, they can morph black, such as the Eastern Quoll example above.

These little guys have very very strong teeth and so although they look cute and cuddly a nip from one of them would be very painful.  These teeth are used to rip apart their prey. This has included the cane toad, introduced in to Australia in 1935.  Unfortunately the cane toad is highly toxic and has threatened the number of quolls.

Altogether there are six species of quoll and their genus is called Dasyuru, which gives them one of their alternative names, the daysure.  There is now a capture program in process (see above) to help out the quoll in terms of the cane toad problem. 

The Northern Quoll (above) is the smallest of the six species and rarely grows longer than thirty centimeters in length.   A peculiar feature of the Northern is that after mating the males invariably die and the females are left alone to raise the young.  They live mostly on fruit and small vertebrates but despite their size and timid appearance they are happy to scavenge in campsites.

Old maps, when unknown or dangerous territories were shown, would have the legend There Be Dragons upon them.  Whether or not they existed in real life is one thing but this little guy isn't going to sink any ships in a hurry.  He is a Weedy Seadragon (Phyllopteryx taeniolatus).  They live in cooler waters around the coast of southern Australia and up to depths of one hundred and fifty feet.  Some of them can measure up to forty five centimeters in length and live a surprisingly long time - ten years.  The species is, perhaps unsurprisingly, related to the sea horse.

The snout you can see is what they use to suck up their food - mostly small shrimp.  We would probably have preferred them to be called leafy rather than weedy (too many beach and sand kicking connotations) but this species is, weedy or not, gorgeous.