How many species of wombats live in Australia today?
There are 3 species of wombats in Australia in the Vombatidae family and they live in different areas of Australia (mostly on the mainland)
Common wombat (Vombatus ursinus) found in south eastern Australia including Tasmania and even up to south east Queensland
Northern hairy-nosed wombat or yaminon (Lasiorhinus krefftii) – very endangered and found in Queensland
Southern hairy-nosed wombat (Lasiorhinus latifrons) – found in South Australia and across the Nullabor to southeastern Western Australia

Why is a wombat called a marsupial?
Wombats are marsupials because they have live young who once born crawl into their mother’s pouch and live there until they are independent enough to leave home.
Wombat joeys attach to the mother’s teat and are fed milk until old enough to eat grass. When first born they are hairless, weigh only a gram and are called ‘pinkies’
Find out more

What is special about a wombat’s pouch?
Wombat pouches open backwards which means they see where their mother has been unlike the kangaroo joey who has a forward looking pouch and sees where they are headed. Why the difference?
Wombats are very strong digging animals and a forward facing pouch would soon fill up with dirt – not very practical. The other advantage of the backward facing pouch as the joey gets older (5 months) is that it can feed without leaving the pouch until it is older (7 months).

What do we know about their diet and their scats?
Wombats eat grasses, mosses and bark but when times are tough they look to other foods like corms of weeds like thread iris (southern hairy-nosed wombats). Their scats are most remarkable in that they are very dry cubes. Stories abound that this is so when they mark their territory with them they do not roll away. More information and images are on the Save Our Wonderdul Wombats site

What do we know about the breeding cycle?
Wombats breed approximately every 2 years and have a gestation time of 21 – 30 days. Only one joey is born at a time.

How long do wombats live in the wild?
Wombats in the wild can live about 26 years according to one source

Why aren’t wombats often seen in daylight?
Wombats are nocturnal animals who come out to feed in the early evening and during the night. Wombats sometimes do emerge from their burrows to sun themselves on sunny days.

What do we know about wombat burrows?
Wombat burrows cam cover a large area and will have many entrances. All wombat species live in burrows, often creating complex networks of burrows with tunnels and chambers that can extend up to 150m in radius. See more on the Bush Heritage link above. In fact they can also be seen from space.

Want to know more about Wombats?
Wombats can run up to 40km per hour and did you know they can do 100 scats a night? See more on the Save Our Wonderful Wombats site.

Did you know there was a day set aside each year to celebrate wombats?
World Wombat Day is celebrated each year on October 22nd.

Did you know wombats have been part of several TV series?
Fatso was a wombat in a long running TV series called a Country Practice in the 80s and 90s.
Another Fatso became the symbol of a TV program celebrating the Sydney Olympics in the year 2000. In fact he was so popular he was made an unofficial mascot after the Olympics and a statue of Fatso was built. As a stuffed toy Fatso was even seen on the podium with some of Australia’s gold medallists.
There was a Children’s TV program called Wombat in Brisbane that ran for many years.

How are wombats celebrated in Australia ?
There are places in Victoria called Wombat,including a town and a forest.
Statues of wombats are found across several states including Adelaide Zoo and Tjilkaba in South Australia. More can be found here
Wombats have been on several postage stamps over the years, including a $1.10 stamp in 2020-21.
Commemorative coins have celebrated 2 of our wombat species.
Two of our Australian children’s classics – the Adventures of Blinky Bill and the Magic Pudding involve wombats. Modern day children’s literature especially picture books have a wealth of titles about wombats both factual and fanciful.
The Hairy-Nosed or Plains Wombat (Lasiorhinus latifrons) was adopted as the faunal emblem of South Australia on 27 August 1970.

Why are wombats considered important?
Copper was first discovered in the 19th century on the Yorke Peninsula in South Australia in the diggings of a wombat burrow. This started a huge mining industry in what became known as the Copper triangle. There is a statue in Moonta honouring the wombats.
Their diggings are also important to the ecology of their area. Turning over the soil as they dig, and burrowing into limestone and calcrete, improving water filtration – they improve the soil and spread fungi which improve plant health. They are even called ‘ecosystem engineers’
These animals can also turn over plant material thus reducing some of the combustible materials around them.
A farmer in NSW credits wombats with locating water underground and this has brought water to more animals during the drought – a very unusual behaviour. https://theconversation.com/losing-australias-diggers-is-hurting-our-ecosystems-18590
During bushfires, native animals have benefited from the burrows that make up the wombat’s warrens https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2020/01/the-truth-behind-heroic-wombats/