Wombat FAQs

The word Wombat comes from Darug, the aboriginal language of the Sydney Basin.

Wombats can become quite aggressive to intruders or if cornered. Wombats can defend themselves vigorously. Apart from placing their cartilage rich firm butts to the outside of a burrow to stop would be attackers, wombats are well suited to defend themselves. Whilst their thick butts prevent predators from grabbing them with their teeth, they can inflict severe puncture wounds from their claws and deep bites. They can also run at up to 40km/h, making them as fast as Olympic sprinters for short distances. Moreover, this allows them to charge at and bowl over human beings due to their speed and short stocky build.

Whilst they are still babies, wombats are indeed quite cute and cuddly. However, as they grow they become less so and have the tools to cause serious harm to humans. Whilst not so cute and cuddly, they tend to tolerate humans as long as they pose no threat. Moreover, they can bite through 2cm of boot.

A group of wombats is called a wisdom, a mob or a colony of wombats.

Wombat poop is cuboid. Wombats buttholes are round. So whilst you can’t put a square peg in a round hole, wombats manage to force out cuboid poop through a round hole.

This has to do with the long digestion cycle taking 12 – 18 days for the wombat to digest the grass completely. Moreover, scientists found the scat solidified in the last eight per cent of the intestine. They also observed the organ stretching unevenly, producing the unique cuboid shape at the end of the digestive tract.

Wombats live for up to 15 years in the wild and up to 30 years in captivity.

The common wombat is found in Tasmania, New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia. The northern hairy-nosed wombat is found only in the Deniliquin area in southern NSW, the Moonie River area in southern Queensland, and Epping Forest National Park in central Queensland. The southern hairy-nosed wombat is found only in a small region of the southern central coastline of Australia.

A wombat’s pouch open backwards so that they do not get dirt on it when digging. They are the largest digging mammal. The koala, tasmanian devil and bandicoot also have backward opening pouch.

World Wombat Day is celebrated on 22nd of October.

While wombats don’t have many natural predators, they’re eaten by foxes, dingoes, wild-dogs, eagles, and Tasmanian Devils. Furthermore, they are also often hit and killed by cars.

Baby wombats (just like other marsupials) are called joeys.

The closest relative to the wombat is the koala. The next closest is the kangaroo. The koala and wombat are both descendants of the diprotodon, a 4 metre goliath that roamed Australia 40,000 years ago.

Like a kangaroo, wombats usually give birth to a single joey, which is blind and hairless, weighs about 2 grams and is the size of a jelly bean. It crawls into its mother’s pouch and attaches to one of her two teats. In the case of a wombat joey, the lips fuse on to the teat to prevent the joey from falling out of the pouch. The joey stays in the pouch for 8 to 9 months.

Travel Ideology Sydney Tours provides full day private tours to see wild wombats roaming freely in the native habitat. You will also see wild kangaroos in this tour.
See Wild wombats Sydney tour