Innholdsfortegnelse for July/August 2019 i Click Science and Discovery Magazine for Preschoolers and Young Children

Did you guess that I’m a kangaroo? You’re close. I’m a wallaby. Like a kangaroo, I carry my baby in a pouch on my tummy. I also hop on my two big back legs and have smaller front legs and a long tail. What makes me different from a kangaroo? Mainly size. There are many kinds of kangaroos and wallabies. We’re all part of a big family called macropods, which is just a fancy way to say “big feet.” Kangaroos are the largest macropods. We wallabies are smaller. There are lots of other macropods. Do you think these macropods have big feet too? We macropods all live in Australia or nearby islands. And all macropod mamas have pouches for their babies. Hundreds of other kinds of animals have baby pouches…

Emma, Dad, and their dog, Dakota, were nearly home from their evening walk. Dakota had his nose to the ground. He sniffed. He howled. Ahroooo! Then he lunged forward. Dad held Dakota’s leash and pulled him back. “Look!” Emma shone her flashlight ahead. Something furry lay on the ground under their bird feeder. It had a long, skinny tail. Its tongue hung out of its open mouth. Not one of its muscles moved. “That’s what Dakota smelled. I hope it’s OK.” “I’m sorry, Emma,” said Dad. “I think that poor animal is dead.” Emma and Dad hurried to put Dakota inside their house. Then they went back out to check on the animal. But it had disappeared! All they found were tracks in the mud. The next day Emma photographed…

The two have a lot in common. Both have furry bodies with long furry tails. Big eyes help them see in the dark. A thin flap of skin connects their wrists to their ankles. When they spread this skin out, they can glide like kites. But the animal in photo A is a sugar glider. The one in photo B is a flying squirrel. The sugar glider is a marsupial from Australia and nearby islands. A sugar glider grows inside its mother for only 16 days before it is born. Roughly the size of a grain of rice, it then crawls into its mother’s pouch and drinks her milk. When it leaves the pouch, 8 to 10 weeks later, its eyes are still closed and it has only a little…

Far away in Australia, a koala sits high in a eucalyptus tree. She grips a branch with the rough pads and sharp claws on her paws. In her pouch she hides something special—her baby. At birth the baby koala, called a joey, does not look like his furry mom. He is pink and bald and as small as a jellybean. Although he cannot see, he moves his legs and crawls. He smells milk and, without any help, starts to feel his way to his mother’s pouch. Five minutes later he slips inside. A koala’s pouch opens from the bottom. After the joey climbs in, the mother koala tightens her pouch muscles. Now her joey cannot fall out. Inside the pouch, the joey drinks his mother’s milk and grows. His eyes…