Скачать или смотреть Do Wombats REALLY Share Their Burrows With Other Animals?

With bushfires continuing to burn across Australia, the media has run riot in recent weeks with stories about wombats actively shepherding other animals to the shelter of their burrows like some kind of marsupial bushfire hero?
So in this weeks episode of wicked wildlife we discuss, do other species use wombat burrows for shelter? Do wombats really share their burrows willingly? And to they actually herd other animals to safety?
So stories of other species using wombat burrows for shelter are nothing new. There has long been anecdotal evidence of many small species such as snakes and lizards using wombat burrows as a place to escape the heat.
More recently scientific studies have observed a wider variety of animals using wombat burrows including little penguins, sand skinks and rock wallabies sheltering in the burrows of Southern Hairy Nosed wombats on Wedge Island in south Australia, and in 2018 zoology students from Melbourne University even captured footage of a koala exiting the burrow of a common wombat in victoria.
So we know for sure that other animals will seek out wombat burrows, but does this mean they are all sheltering together or that the wombats are shepherding animals to safety?
The reality is wombat burrows are often extensive and complex tunnel systems with many entrances and chambers, so more often then not the different animals sheltering in any given burrow are likely taking refuge in different parts of the burrow. On top of this common wombats have been observed regularly using as many as 14 different burrow systems, and so there’s a strong possibility that if other species take shelter in a given wombat burrow, that the wombat who constructed that burrow isn’t even home!
So do wombats really Rescue other species during bush fires?
Well being solitary species and wild animals wombats have no inclination to help other animals during a time of fire, but their very presence in an ecosystem, and the construction of the dozens of burrows and tunnels that result makes wombats the real life bush fire heroes we all think they are, even of the wombats havnt done anything on purpose!