The latest animal craze at The Lounge! Marsupials!

[Crazy Guggenheim]

[XemaSab]

1. I came up with the best metaphor yesterday

stevens and murkowski are like marsupials gestated in the pockets of the oil industry.

[Crazy Guggenheim]

3. Profound.

[Crazy Guggenheim]

2. Look at the pouch. Awww.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

5. Wow...

What a load! That's a far cry from the way those joeys start their lives!

Great pic, and great thread!

:yourock:

[Crazy Guggenheim]

4. Baby ones.

[AlGore-08.com]

6. Have you forgotten America's own marsupial?

The noble 'possum!



:patriot:

[Crazy Guggenheim]

8. Indeed!

http://www.auburn.edu/academic/classes/zy/0301/Topic3e/opossum2

[Crazy Guggenheim]

7. We must learn about them. We're not like those "other"

animal lovers.

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/mammal/marsupial/marsupial.html

Snip
Marsupials are the group of mammals commonly thought of as pouched mammals. They give live birth, but they do not have long gestation times like placental mammals. Instead, they give birth very early and the young animal, essentially a helpless embryo, climbs from the mother's birth canal to the nipples. There it grabs on with its mouth and continues to develop, often for weeks or months depending on the species. The short gestation time is due to having a yolk-type placenta in the mother marsupial. Placental mammals nourish the developing embryo using the mother's blood supply, allowing longer gestation times.

Like other mammals, the marsupials are covered with hair. Mothers nurse their young, as shown in the picture of two kangaroos at right. A young kangaroo may nurse from its mother even when it has grown almost to its mother`s size.

The only naturally occurring marsupial in the United States is the possum, Didelphis marsupialis. In the past, however, marsupials were quite common. During the Mesozoic marsupials were very common in North America; more common, in fact, than placental mammals. They persisted here until the mid- to late- Tertiary.

In South America and Australia, however, marsupials continued to be an important group of land mammals. Many South American forms are similar to the North American possum. The marsupials of South America began to go extinct in the late Miocene and Early Pliocene when a land connection with North America formed, allowing placental mammals to cross into South America. In Australia, though, marsupials continue to be very diverse, and are the dominant native mammals. They include kangaroos (like the one at right), koalas, tasmanian devils, wombats, and other typical Australian mammals. They also include the marsupial wolf, Thylacinus, seen in the image at the top of this page. Like the quagga, the marsupial wolf is recently extinct. The last individual was seen in Tasmania in the 1950's.

Though marsupials today do not have as many species as do the placental mammals, they are quite structurally diverse. They range from small four-footed forms like the marsupial mole, Notoryctes, to the large two-legged kangaroos.

There are several cases of convergent evolution between marsupials and placental mammals, in which the two animals have evolved to fill the same ecological niche in different parts of the world. There are burrowing forms, grazing forms, gliding forms, and even long-snouted ant-eating forms which have evolved independently in the two groups.

Snip

[Crazy Guggenheim]

9. The Wombat!

[MN ChimpH8R]

11. With a name like wombat

it has to be a cool animal. :)

[Crazy Guggenheim]

10. Koala Hugging.

[Jara sang]

12. Marsupials suck, I like monotremes

[Crazy Guggenheim]

13. Freeper .......

:popcorn:

[Crazy Guggenheim]

14. Graceful.

[ScreamingMeemie]

15. Nope. I remain enamored of the baby panda.

:hi:

[ET Awful]

18. How about a baby Wallaby?

[Crazy Guggenheim]

19. Thank you for your photo.

[ScreamingMeemie]

20. baby panda still wins...

[Crazy Guggenheim]

16. Boo!

[Crazy Guggenheim]

17. They're cuddley.

[youthere]

21. Marsupials...Feh...

THIS is a marsupial:



and this marsupials EATS these:

[AlGore-08.com]

24. Giraffes are corporate sell-outs!!

'Possums are ideologically PURE!!



:patriot: 'Possums - - putting America FIRST! :patriot:

[youthere]

25. Possums are disgusting opportunistic scavengers...

that are most certainly far right extremists and I smack them with a shovel every chance I get.

[AlGore-08.com]

28. Giraffes are mindless herd animals that waste natural resources

Each giraffe eats at least 75 pounds of leaves per day, contributing directly to deforestation. 'Possums are natures sanitation engineers, clearing the area of insects, disease carrying vermin and carrion.

[youthere]

29. Possums are egg sucking varmints that are a threat to

rural income. In addition to the chickens they destroy and the eggs they steal they have been known to pillage local gardens, clearing it of any consumable vegetation. They are selfish animals that would surely see all other species fade into oblivion as they will steal dog food, cat food, rabbit food, and chicken feed and allow these species to starve. They are reckless animals that have a careless disregard for human life. They frolick about our roads and highways weaving in and out of traffic with no thought or concern for those behind the wheel. Many accidents are caused by these miscreants throwing themselves in front of moving vehicles for the quick "rush" they get.
Possums are most definitely Republican.

[Crazy Guggenheim]

22. They are so cute!

[Crazy Guggenheim]

23. Marsupial Lion!?!?!?!?

[Crazy Guggenheim]

26. They're even nice around kids!

[Crazy Guggenheim]

27. This photo is called Marsupial Sunrise! Beat that!