I love you man, I literally coughed my macca's up.

lol at stof/vonshigsy

are these baby giant pandas because if so i never knew they were so small, there are other types of panda much smaller than the giant ones though. [ie, red pandas]

Pandas are not marsupials (marsupials are native to Australia (dunno about NZ))
also i don't think marsupials are officially classed as mammals, something to do with how they feed their young. The word mammals comes from mammary, and i don't think marsupials have mammary glands.

marsupials are definitely mammals. They have nipples inside the pouch that babies latch onto until they're developed enough to live on their own. And there are marsupials in places besides Austrailia. North America for example has the utterly vomit enducing possum that we just love to run over.

They are so cute! Not really and what was the point of this.

There are technically three distinct groups of mammals. The placental mammals, the marsupials, and the monotremes. The primary difference is the nature of reproduction. Placental mammals give birth to live young. The marsupials do the same, but the young are more mature and are placed within pouches. The Monotremes actually lay eggs. Placentals are the most common world wide. The Marsupials are mostly relegated to Australia, and the same goes for Monotremes which are the rarest of the groups with just a few examples remaining. Placental mammals are the modern mammals. While Monotremes, and Marsupials are vestigial holdovers from earlier epochs.

I am seriouslyshocked that some of you did not know this. I learned this in sixth grade science class. Yeah and its most mammals give birth to live young, and not all creatures that give birth to live young are mammals.

Where do you find this stuff do you just search the net for weirdness to post or something?

Great pics weird but great :D

what is sixth grade in UK terms (or an easier answer would be how old were you in sixth grade)

and no i have definately never heard of the word monotremes, though i know the class of mammal you mean.....the platypus lays eggs but it still feeds it's young on milk, it's just that it's whole skin acts like a mammary gland so it basically sweats milk.

and i heard about the marsupials not strictly mammals thing from QI (quiz program on BBC with Stephen Fry) but i did wonder at the time whether it was true because Marsupials definately don't fit into any other category.

As for the Possum, that is interesting i didn't know there were marsupials outside Australasia, is it possible American possums were brought over from Australia?.... ie are there any records of them before things like sailing trips between continents were common?

 Ok. I'm glad I'm not the only one who was thinking this.

Wow. That's crazy as hell. Especially how tiny and helpless they look compared to how they end up. BTW, I also thought that one pic looked like a penis.

a yowling penis. even scarier.