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Marsupials are a diverse group of mammals belonging to the infraclass Marsupialia.They are natively found in Australasia, Wallacea, and the Americas.One of the defining features of marsupials is their unique reproductive strategy, where the young are born in a relatively undeveloped state and then nurtured within a pouch on their mother's abdomen.
The latter subclass is divided into two infraclasses: pouched mammals (metatherians or marsupials), and placental mammals (eutherians, for which see List of placental mammals). Classification updated from Wilson and Reeder's "Mammal Species of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference" using the "Planet Mammifères" website.
Peramelemorphia includes the bandicoots and bilbies: it equates approximately to the mainstream of marsupial omnivores. All members of the order are endemic to the twin land masses of Australia - New Guinea and most have the characteristic bandicoot shape: a plump, arch-backed body with a long, delicately tapering snout, very large upright ears ...
A marsupial has a short gestation period, typically shorter than its estrous cycle, and gives birth to an underdeveloped newborn that then undergoes further development; in many species, this takes place within a pouch-like sac, the marsupium, located in the front of the mother's abdomen.
The pouch is a distinguishing feature of female marsupials, monotremes [1] [2] [3] (and rarely in the males as in the yapok [4] and the extinct thylacine); the name marsupial is derived from the Latin marsupium, meaning "pouch". This is due to the occurrence of epipubic bones, a pair of bones projecting forward from the pelvis.
The Sulawesi bear cuscus, also known as the Sulawesi bear phalanger (Ailurops ursinus), is a species of arboreal marsupial in the family Phalangeridae that is endemic to Sulawesi and nearby islands in Indonesia. It lives in tropical moist lowland forest at elevations up to 600 m (2,000 ft) and is diurnal, folivorous and often found in pairs. [2]
All extant marsupials are endemic to Australasia and the Americas. A distinctive characteristic common to most of these species is that the young are carried in a pouch . Well-known marsupials include kangaroos , wallabies , koalas , opossums , wombats , Tasmanian devils , and the extinct thylacine .
Australia is home to two of the five extant species of monotremes and the majority of the world's marsupials (the remainder are from Papua New Guinea, eastern Indonesia and the Americas). The taxonomy is somewhat fluid; this list generally follows Menkhorst and Knight [ 1 ] and Van Dyck and Strahan, [ 2 ] with some input from the global list ...