Learn about Australian Wildlife
Learn about Australian Wildlife and the unique habitats surrounding Byron Bay. All the animals on this web site are regularly seen it their natural environment on our wildlife tours.
Echidnas (tachyglossus acculeatus) and dingos (canis lupus dingo) are also occasionally spotted on our tours.
Birdlife on our wildlife tours: Too many to mention, at least forty different species ranging from sea and water birds, raptors, parrots, wrens and honey eaters to name a few.
Kangaroos, Wallabies & Pademelons
Fact: Australia has around 45 different species of wallabies including 15 Rock Wallabies. Generally a Wallaby is defined by it's weight being not much more than 20kg, where as Kangaroos can weigh up to 90kg.
Pademelons are small, compact wallaby like mammals with short tails and small arms and paws. Typically they live in rainforest, heath or shrub where they make tunnels through the undergrowth. Their diet is leaves, figs, shrubs, fruit and grasses. They are as much a foriager as they are a grazer. The hindfeet 'thump' the ground when alarmed.
Fact: There are three different species of Pademelons: Red Legged, Red Necked and Tasmanian.
Fact: The Swamp Wallaby is genetically different to all other wallabies with only eleven chromosomes instead of sixteen, and is the only mammal belonging to the genus 'wallabia'.
Find out more about Kangaroos, Wallabies & Pademelons by using the links below.
Koalas
Fact: Koalas are fussy eaters and of seven hundred and fifty species of eucalyptus in Australia, they eat only twelve.
Fact: Eucalyptus is toxic, very low in protein and provide koalas with about five hours of energy every day.
Find out more about Koalas by using the link below.
Humpback whale & Bottlenose Dolphin
Fact: Humpbacks whales can travel at about twenty kilometres per hour and dive for up to thirty minutes.
Fact: Dolphins do not sleep. Their brains are divided into two halves, one side awake while the other side sleeps.
Find out more about Humpback whale & Bottlenose Dolphin by using the links below.
Platypus
Fact: Platypus ancestry dates back an incredible 130,000,000 years.
Fact: Male Platypus have a poisonous spur in their back feet, making them the only venomous mammal on the planet.
Find out more about Platypus by using the link below.
Flying Foxes
Closely related to fruit bats, flying foxes are categorized by large eyes, external ears and a tongue that 
doesn't extend past it's lips. Their diet consists of fruits, blossoms and occasionally insects. Flying foxes have no rdar or sonar capabilities and roost in trees, not caves. Births are placental and the young cling to their mother's chest as she flies around carrying the young until it can fend for itself. Flying foxes are an important seed dispenser. Their circulatory system is designed to pump blood when they are horizontal or upside down in their roosting position. Flying foxes are social and some carry diseases such as the Lyssa virus. Their roosts are always near water, fresh or salt.
Fact: Incredibly, Little Red Flying Fox colonies can easily exceed one million.
Find out more about Flying Foxes by using the links below.
