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The cleavage stages of marsupial development are very variable between groups and aspects of marsupial early development are not yet fully understood. An infant marsupial is known as a joey . Marsupials have a very short gestation period—usually between 12.5 and 33 days, [ 41 ] but as low as 10.7 days in the case of the stripe-faced dunnart ...
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 ...
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]
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.
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.
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 .
In mammals, the process is initiated by hormones which cause the muscular walls of the uterus to contract, expelling the fetus at a developmental stage when it is ready to feed and breathe. In some species, the offspring is precocial and can move around almost immediately after birth but in others, it is altricial and completely dependent on ...