National Geographic: Australias Animal Mysteries Page #4

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array of defenses and bluff.

Looking like some creature

from the Dinosaur Age,

the Thorny Devil belongs to the

group aptly called dragon lizards.

Actually a squat, slow-moving,

ant-eating lizard,

the devil is found throughout the

arid regions of central

and western Australia,

and has adapted to some of

the continent's harshest conditions.

But perhaps its most notable adaptation

is its coat of spines

a barricade of daggers warning

all the might come near.

Lizards abound throughout Australia.

The most famous and perhaps

the most spectacular roams the forests

of the warmer northern regions.

Undisturbed, the frilled lizard

looks harmless enough.

But in the face of an enemy,

it performs with remarkable bluff.

If all else fails,

it need only make a hasty retreat.

The entire range of Australian wildlife

is the domain of these two naturalists

Together they are known

as Mantis Wildlife Films.

Individually they are

Australian Jim Frazier

and his British-born partner Densey Clyne.

For the past 12 years they have

specialized in filming behaviors

the naked eye can barely see.

Today the object of their search is

one of the most fearsome ants on earth.

Yes.

They're coming out already.

This one is bringing something

into the nest. What is it?

It looks like a bit of food...

Food or...

Debris.

I don't know what it is.

About an inch long,

They've seen us already.

the formidable bulldog

ant inflicts a powerful

and painful sting.

But to film their behavior,

Jim and Densey must collect

the entire colony

perhaps as many as 400 ants.

Even the larvae be taken, but

Jim's film sequence to be completed.

There we are.

At Densey's home,

the headquarters of Mantis films,

Jim has built a plaster model based on

his knowledge of the nest in the wild.

There's quite a lot of

them on the glass there...

Yes, right.

They're coming out everywhere.

The slippery white coating at the top

will prevent the ants from escaping.

It's amazing what a lot of noise

they make, isn't it? Yeah.

Running around.

You can actually see the sting

coming out and trying to sting the glass.

Going in between the sections of glass.

Look at this one here.

Look at the sting.

They're not happy are they?

Well, if I had my home

uprooted like that,

I wouldn't be very happy either.

Jim, I think although they're in a

bit of a panic now,

you know, as soon as the queen

is settled in one of the chambers,

they'll be alright.

Yes.

They're starting to slow down now.

They're not quite as frantic as they were.

No, they're not. Some of them have

found the larvae

and pupae down below.

It will be three or four days before

the ants settle down sufficiently

for Jim to begin filming.

I worked at the Australian Museum

for about seven years,

and in that time I learned how to

manipulate the environment,

as it were, in making miniature dioramas,

and it seemed a natural thing to

combine photograph

with the filming of small animals.

Colony life centers around the queen

whose primary function is to lay eggs.

She may produce as few as one a day

or as many as one every two hours.

Using her sharp mandibles,

she gently picks up the egg

and looks for a safe place to lay it down.

She must be careful that the

voracious developing larvae

do not steal it for food.

But indeed, this time it is a

larva that wins out.

To complete their development

into adult ants,

the larvae will seal themselves

inside a cocoon they make

by spinning silk around debris

from the tunnel floor.

Having adjusted to their

man-made environment,

the ants go about their routine.

An intruder into their silent,

miniature world,

Jim Frazier feels privileged to have

witnessed little known behavior

of one of the most

primitive ants on Earth.

Millions of years of isolation in

Australia

have protected a group of

animals that today

has no living relatives on Earth.

Sharing features of both ancestral

reptiles and early mammals,

they may offer a glimpse of how more

modern mammals evolved.

One of these egg-laying mammals,

or monotremes,

is the echidna, the spiny anteater.

This small, unaggressive creature

has only a tiny mouth at the end

of its sticklike snout and no teeth.

In the daily search for ants,

it relies solely on the long sticky

tongue as its means of getting food.

The echidna's only defenses

and very effective ones they are

are needle sharp spines

and the ability to sink out of sight

in the face of danger.

Digging rapidly into the hard earth,

the powerful echidna can

disappear within minutes.

An almost impenetrable shield will

be all that remains above ground.

The female echidna carries

a singly leathery egg

in a pouch that forms on her belly

at the beginning of the breeding season.

In about ten days the egg will hatch.

The tiny baby nurses in the pouch

for up to two months.

By definition, a mammal is a warm-blooded,

haired animal that suckles its young.

The echidna qualifies in all respects.

But it retains the distinctly

reptilian characteristic of laying eggs.

When and why other mammals stopped laying

eggs and began to bear their young live

remains a recurrent

riddle of evolution yet to be solved.

In eastern Australia's streams,

rivers, and lakes

is found the echidna's only

living relative on Earth.

Outwardly looking nothing

whatever like its spiny cousin,

the platypus does share its

reptilian traits,

including the laying of eggs.

Although it is often called the

"duckbill" platypus,

its bill is actually soft, pliable,

and rubbery, quite unlike a duck's.

filled with sensitive nerves,

it is a specialized adaptation for

feeling out the insect larvae

and crayfish on which the platypus feeds.

Lacking teeth, adults grind their food

between large horny plates in the jaws.

Because the platypus spends much of

the time burrowed in riverbanks,

little of its life cycle is known.

So unlike other animals is the platypus,

it was considered a hoax

when discovered in the late 1700s.

Laymen still gaze quizzically at an

animal that appears to be part mammal,

part reptile, part bird.

At an early date it was named "paradoxus".

So much of a paradox is the platypus

that almost two centuries later

it remains a creature shrouded in mystery.

One of Australia's foremost naturalists,

David Fleay has been studying the

platypus for close to 50 years.

Today at his Fauna Reserve in Queensland

visitors can enjoy an assortment

of Australian exotica,

but it is the platypus most tourists

come especially to see.

Well, he's going through

his ordinary routine now.

He's out feeding and swimming

and when he's had enough of that,

which goes on for about 10 hours,

right into the night,

he goes back into these tunnels,

curls up, and goes to sleep.

It was almost 40 years ago

that Fleay gained world-wide fame

as the first person to breed a

platypus in captivity.

It began in 1943 with a couple

named Jack and Jill.

Taken from the wild,

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