Australia's Unique Wildlife – A Continent of Evolutionary Experiments

Australia is home to animals found nowhere else on Earth: mammals that lay eggs, marsupials that raise young in pouches, and a bewildering array of species that evolved in isolation for tens of millions of years. This episode explores why Australia's fauna is so strange, what deep time and geography have to do with it, and what makes these animals both marvellous and vulnerable.

You'll come away understanding how continental drift set Australia adrift as an evolutionary laboratory, the difference between monotremes, marsupials and placental mammals, why isolation breeds oddities, and why these unique species are especially fragile.

Talking Science is sponsored by Kinsoft. Visit www.kinsoft.com.au

Further reading: Australian Museum – native animal fact sheets; CSIRO – biodiversity research; David Attenborough / BBC – Life of Mammals (marsupials and monotremes).