Why Are There No Big Animals In Australia

Learning about Australias extinct fauna helps us to create links through time that relate the animals of the past with those of today and to develop conservation strategies.

Why are there no big animals in australia. This is a misconception fueled by silliness and exoticism. Cats dogs bears raccoons etc - the dingo now known as Australias wild dog was introduced about 3000 years ago NO native hoofed animals deer goats etc NO primates monkeys and apes and. They can be found all over Australia except for Tasmania although they mainly live in the countrys outback.

Dingo Animals in Australia. Australias coast also stretched further into the Timor Sea. The answer is an unqualified or un-koalafied no.

Some of our Australian animals are very well known like kangaroos dingos wallabies and wombats and of course the koala platypus and echidna. Sea levels were much lower than today. The distribution of climates topography and soils that has produced the zones and ecological variation of Australian vegetation has also been reflected in the distribution of animal life.

Snakes kill an average of 2 to 4 people a year here but the number of casualties seem small when you compare it to the 11000 individuals that snakes annually kill in Asia. This list was developed by the Australian Museum in Sydney. So an exceptionally large proportion of australias plants and animals are endemic meaning they naturally exist nowhere else in the world.

This species doesnt have particularly potent venom but the allergic reaction suffered by 1-2 per cent of the population coupled with the high incidence of bee stings make them second to snakes as the most deadly venomous animal in Australia. The lack of volcanic activity is due to the islands location in relation to a tectonic plate the two layers of the Earths crust or lithosphere. The fact that monkeys did not make the journey to Australia can probably be attributed to geological movement that began 175 million years ago.

Animals could make their way from the Malay Archipelago. There are some 250 species of native mammals 550 species of land and aquatic. A grand total of 21 out of the worlds 25 most venomous snakes inhabit Australia.