I just have to show you their paws. I find them fascinating.
See what I mean?!?!?
Look at this!!! The fingers, five all line up in a row! No little crazy thumb way up the leg (like dogs or cats), just 5 fingers all lined up like petals on one side of a flower. Amazing!
The back paw is just as amazing to me.
And of course this is what you get when they hope around. I tell you when they are just running away (hoping away?) with no panic they are kind of funny and their body is kept vertical and they look like a bouncing toy. But when they are going full speed, first they are VERY fast and the position of their body is very different, leaning forward. Their back legs come forward and way up just about all the way under their chin. It is an wonderful thing to see. The science of motion tuned to excellence.
The foot prints show as one print (as photo above) repeated over and over again but quite far apart (depending on how fast they were going). The story goes that when Abel Tasman's party landed in Tasmania in 1642 they saw the foot prints that they described them a Tiger-like prints very far apart. This of course suggested to them that those belonged to very large animals and that the pace was dangerous. They sailed away and discovered New Zealand before returning to Batavia (in Java, then a Dutch colonie).
Well now you know how Tasmania got its name!
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