• FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Numbats? Dunnarts?

    These names aren’t all Australian colloquialisms for “dumb”… are they??

    Also… no love for the Cult of Quoka? I mean seriously, look at these guys? How is anything that cute?

    • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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      2 months ago

      I don’t think I’ve ever heard any of these used to mean “dumb”, apart from “numbat”.

    • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      If you think about it… all names were made up at one point or another.

      All words, even.

  • JayJLeas@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I was shocked an Aussie to learn that my American boyfriend had never heard of bilbies…

  • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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    2 months ago

    Australia used to have the “Easter bilby” in addition to the more common overseas Easter bunny. Sadly I think stores stopped selling chocolate Easter bilbies; I don’t recall seeing any this year.

    • Sternhammer@aussie.zone
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      2 months ago

      I think the Easter Billy thing may have been a fund raiser for the Save the Bilby Fund, though I’m not sure. Did some work with them in Charleville some time back, as part of a student field trip looking at design concepts for what eventually became the Bilby Experience. Great people.

      From what I can remember they’ve had good success in rebuilding the bilby population.

  • loaExMachina@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    What’s funny with all these small, narrow-snouted bug-eating mammals is you can never guess what bigger mammal they’re more closely related too by a pic alone because this body plan is present in all therians, possibly because it was the best suited to survive the KT-extinction. So while you’d be tempted to call all of them rodents, you’ve got tree shrews closer to primates, tenrecs closer to elephants, and possums closer to kangaroos than they are to mice.

    Edit: Also I checked those from the pic and they’re all marsupials, like possums.

    • Pup Biru@aussie.zone
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      2 months ago

      as an aussie, it’s pretty safe to assume marsupial… basically everything here is a marsupial