--- title: Animals of Australia and New Zealand: kangaroos, koalas, wombats, kiwis — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Animals of Australia and New Zealand: kangaroos, koalas, wombats, kiwis», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Australia and New Zealand drifted away from the other continents long ago, and their animals went --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/79-animals-of-australia-and-new-zealand/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/) / Animals of Australia and New Zealand:… # Animals of Australia and New Zealand: kangaroos, koalas, wombats, kiwis Lesson 79 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 17 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/biology/79-animals-of-australia-and-new-zealand/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/79-animals-of-australia-and-new-zealand/0/) — Australia and New Zealand drifted away from the other continents long ago, and their animals went their own strange way: mammals that lay eggs, babies the size of a jellybean in pouches, and birds that walk because nothing on the ground used to hunt them. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/79-animals-of-australia-and-new-zealand/1/) — Most Australian mammals are marsupials, whose tiny babies finish growing in a pouch: the red kangaroo, the koala, the wombat and the Tasmanian devil are all pouch mammals. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/79-animals-of-australia-and-new-zealand/2/) — The puzzles are real: a wombat makes cube-shaped droppings, a platypus finds shrimps with its eyes shut by sensing electricity, and a kea parrot will happily take apart your car's windscreen wiper. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/79-animals-of-australia-and-new-zealand/3/) — Cartoons call the koala a bear, draw kangaroos as boxers that hop forever, and make every Australian animal a cuddly toy; real koalas are not bears, and a cassowary's kick or a platypus's spur is no joke. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/79-animals-of-australia-and-new-zealand/4/) — Red kangaroos are the largest marsupials, can stand taller than a man and hop at over 50 kilometres per hour in bursts; their springy tendons make hopping cheap in energy, and a newborn joey is about the size of a jellybean. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/79-animals-of-australia-and-new-zealand/5/) — Koalas are marsupials, not bears; they rest about 18 to 22 hours a day because eucalyptus leaves are tough, low in energy and poisonous to most animals, and they are not drunk on eucalyptus. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/79-animals-of-australia-and-new-zealand/6/) — Wombats are the only animals known to make cube-shaped droppings, shaped by firmer and softer parts of the gut, and they leave them on rocks and logs to mark territory; their pouch faces backwards, so digging does not fill it with soil. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/79-animals-of-australia-and-new-zealand/7/) — The platypus is an egg-laying mammal with a duck-like bill; under water it shuts its eyes, ears and nose and senses tiny electric signals from prey, and males have a venomous spur on each back leg that causes terrible pain, so wild platypuses must never be handled. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/79-animals-of-australia-and-new-zealand/8/) — The echidna is the other egg-laying mammal, with spines and a sticky tongue for ants and termites; its baby, a puggle, hatches in a pouch, and a frightened echidna digs down so only its spines show. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/79-animals-of-australia-and-new-zealand/9/) — The kiwi is a flightless, mostly nocturnal New Zealand bird with nostrils at the tip of its long beak; its egg is about 20 percent of the mother's weight, one of the biggest for body size of any bird. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/79-animals-of-australia-and-new-zealand/10/) — New Zealand had no ground-hunting mammals before people came, so birds like the kiwi and kakapo did not need to fly. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/79-animals-of-australia-and-new-zealand/11/) — The kea is a clever, curious mountain parrot from New Zealand, famous for pulling apart cars, bags and tents, and its warbling call seems to set other keas playing. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/79-animals-of-australia-and-new-zealand/12/) — The laughing kookaburra is a big kingfisher whose family groups laugh together at dawn and dusk to mark territory; it eats snakes, lizards, insects and mice. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/79-animals-of-australia-and-new-zealand/13/) — The Tasmanian devil is the largest surviving meat-eating marsupial, about the size of a small dog, with a bone-crushing bite; a face tumour disease has killed many, so disease-free groups are kept as insurance. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/79-animals-of-australia-and-new-zealand/14/) — The emu is the second tallest bird, up to about 1.9 metres, and runs at around 50 kilometres per hour; the father sits on the eggs for about 8 weeks, hardly eating, and in the 1932 Emu War the emus mostly won. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/79-animals-of-australia-and-new-zealand/15/) — The southern cassowary has a dagger-like claw up to about 12 centimetres on each foot; it avoids people, but fed cassowaries lose their fear and can kick if fed or cornered, so it must be watched from a distance and never fed. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/79-animals-of-australia-and-new-zealand/16/) — The tuatara looks like a lizard but is the last survivor of an ancient group of reptiles; it lives on cool New Zealand islands and can live over 100 years. - ← previous: [Conservation: how people help animals come back](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/78-conservation-animals-come-back/) - next →: [Animals of North America and Britain: moose, bald eagles, raccoons, beavers, foxes, badgers, hedgehogs, robins](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/80-animals-of-north-america-and-britain/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)