What is a wombat?

The wombat is a stocky, burrowing marsupial with short legs, small ears, and a powerful muscular build. Three species live in Australia: the common (or bare-nosed) wombat across south-eastern Australia and Tasmania; the southern hairy-nosed wombat in semi-arid South Australia; and the critically endangered northern hairy-nosed wombat, restricted to a single national park in central Queensland.

Adult wombats weigh 20 to 35 kilograms and grow up to a metre long, making them the second-largest marsupial in Australia after the kangaroo. They are skilled diggers, excavating extensive burrow systems up to 30 metres long with multiple entrances and chambers. Their large incisors grow continuously to compensate for wear from chewing tough native grasses, and their backside is reinforced with cartilage that they can use to block burrow entrances against predators.

Wombats are the only mammals in the world that produce cube-shaped droppings, around 100 cubes per night, used to mark territory along well-worn paths. The cubes are formed in the last metre of the colon, a quirk of physiology that earned a 2019 Ig Nobel Prize for the researchers who explained how it works. Female wombats carry their young in a backwards-facing pouch, an adaptation that prevents soil getting into the pouch when the mother digs.

The northern hairy-nosed wombat was reduced to just 35 individuals at Epping Forest National Park in Queensland by the 1980s. A second insurance population was established at Richard Underwood Nature Refuge in 2009, and by 2024 the total population had recovered to about 400, one of the most successful endangered-species recoveries in Australia. Common wombats remain abundant in the south-east and are commonly seen at dusk in alpine and coastal woodlands.