Few photos of the birds of UQ

Okay Bluesky you don't have to be mean about it

While at a much lower rate than the males, many of the females still die after only one year of life. Oh yeah, maturity is reached at less than one year! Meaning a whole generation of Antechinus' comes and goes every single year! That might be the end of the thread for now. Thanks for the read.

With the biggest litter of any Australian marsupial, 8-10 babies is quite the task for an Antechinus mother. Like any marsupial, the young are born as a more... jelly-bean like entity, who are raised in the pouch for a while before maturing a bit. From here, the mothers are still likely to die :(

A massive surge of stress hormones flood the male, causing them to go into a mating frenzy. They simply start falling apart, from stress. Not eatin', not sleepin', only bangin'. Their immune systems fail and eventually... they die... But only the males! The females live on to produce the young...

Okay. Let's move on to the big one. Reproduction. The males are almost universally "semelparous," meaning that after reproduction, basically every single male dies except in extremely rare cases. The cause of death? Extreme horniness.

But enough about mice, back to my homeslices. Antechinus' have a very broad range across Australia, you can expect to find them in any major population center, and basically anywhere with a decent covering of vegetation. The east coast, like many Aussie animals, is wehere they truly thrive, however.

One of the best ways to tell them apart, is just by looking at their teeth! The characteristic "two long front teeth" of a rodent is nowehere to be found in Antechinus', with fare more smaller and sharper teeth lining their mouths. To be honest, you wouldn't want to get bitten by either.

Antechinus are small, mostly insectivorous marsupial found across Australia. Despite their appearances, Antechinus’ are barely related to rodents like mice and rats. In fact, any given rodent is more closely related to you than any average Antechinus.

I want to do Bluesky's first thread on my favourite little marsupial, the Antechinus! Many of you may know these guys for their... interesting breeding habits, but plenty of other things make these guys special. Discover more below about these little critters #creaturefeature #zoology