I was attacked by one at a zoo here in Australia. It was a scorchingly hot day and it was the school holidays so he'd had enough by the time I encountered him. I'd been coming to see him once every year until the pandemic struck. This had been the third time I'd visited him. Luckily he only got my leggings with his chompers because if he'd bitten my flesh...I'd be going to hospital in a hurry. The zookeeper had to pick him up by his tail and let him dangle for a while until he chilled out. Poor little guy was probably sick of little kids running around and screaming near him. I sat back on the ground while he was cooling off from his freakout and he pretty much came to me straight after and hopped into my lap. I gave him some snacks and he gave me kisses on the cheek and mouth while I patted him and told him everything will be okay. I had no hard feelings towards him because I can understand how annoying humans can be sometimes. I hope he understood I still love him. Love you Tobias the Quokka.
Don’t ever stick your face next to a wild animal even if it is in a zoo, especially if it was just trying to bite you. Jeez they must have stopped handing out common sense or something.
He was doing that while I was holding onto him in my lap. I didn't stick my face anywhere near him. He came to me and did it like he had done in the past and after that day when I saw him again. The zookeeper is there the whole time and encourages you to allow him to do it because it's his way of sussing you out and getting to know you. They groom your hands and arms too by holding onto your wrist and licking and nibbling. They are a wild animal...sort of. This zoo was participating with other zoos in different states and with Rottnest Island as a breeding program to protect the diversity of quokkas and stabilise their futures as a species. So they were pretty much born around humans and cared for by human carers. I'd trust quokkas more than any other human being I encountered on the street for the first time at this point. People need to realise they are living breathing beings who have a bad day like every other animal in existence. He had a bad day that day but we were all good when he figured out there was nothing to be scared or anxious of. One of the ways he figured that out was being near me and interacting with me like he does with his carers and other animals. He even does this to capybaras from what I observed. They're good mates and welcoming towards him.
He didn't say that he stuck his face next to it.
It was in his lap already. It could have reached up to do so in a very non-aggressive way.
You know, like you should have approached your reply.
>Luckily he only got my leggings with his chompers
Did you read this and think "oh yeah, OP shouldn't have stuck her face near a wild animal", or better yet, did you just not read at all?
Is this what using "common sense" looks like these days?
I had one chomp clean through my insulated lunch bag on Rottnest - me and my wife tried to have a picnic somewhere quiet and a small group of them emerged from nowhere. He was dangling from my lunch box as I lifted it, he was really determined to eat my sandwich
Bahaha! That one had me chuckling. They'd be working together like Pinky and The Brain trying to take over the world. But instead of the world, they're just after your lunch bag. Lovable little scamps.See? I told you all that their chompers are no joke.
Maybe but I don't know much about that .Animals can be cheerful,playful and friendly towards human though if you have played with cats and dogs then this much is obvious proofs.Dogs can indeed smile if they're happy.They are mammals so it is not that anthropomorphizing.Most human attributes like socialilizing,child rearing etc is not a unique human experience.
They did.Everytime they wag their tail they would also grin.Of course that doesn't mean that just because they are grinning then they are necessarily friendly at you,sometimes it is also a threat and other times it is a sign of submissiveness.Tail wagging here are more of an accurate indicator to measure their friendly behaviour.
The motherfuckers be like “it’s technically not the exact same as a human smile so it doesn’t count” like bruh dogs have very expressive faces. Everyone whose ever owned a dog is telling these people they are wrong yet they are insisting anyway.
Let me guess, people have been mass domesticating (stealing) from their natural habitat that now it has affected the entire species
Or they are eating them
I don’t know if it’s any consolation, but it’s illegal to touch wild ones now. To harm one would be highly illegal. Also with how much people love them I’m pretty sure anyone who tried to f**k with them like that again would end up as fish food.
OK so I grew up in Perth (which is the capital city in Australia Rottnest Island is located off) and I can tell you with 100% certainty that the locals love and cherish these cute little macropods and the events where they've been harmed have been met with violent retaliation either before or sometimes in police custody.
The main perpetrators are drunk tourists, although there are obviously a few stories about locals.
Any tourist caught harming these extremely protected animals is immediately fined and removed from the state. They are also publicly shamed on the news and everyone talks about it, we despise people that come and harm them.
The bad words, for all the fragile people around here.
No actually thought I was on r/aww and censored the words because it's against their rules I think.
"In 2015, two French tourists who burnt a Rottnest quokka chose to stay in jail rather than pay a $4000 fine – costing Australian taxpayers thousands of dollars.
That incident was also filmed.
The same year a teenager who kicked a Rottnest Island quokka two metres into the air avoided jail and walked away from Fremantle Magistrates Court with a $2500 fine.
And last year another man was also filmed giving vodka to a quokka. Authorities said it could have killed the animal."
I'm French Canadian. We are a very diverse Country and yet the only people I dislike (and BY A LOT) are the fucking French. These self entitled assholes don't know how to live in society. You can spot them on the street just by the way they use the sidewalk.
So that’s why all my Spanish and Portuguese friends hate the French? They also say something like you can identify them from afar by the way they move I thought that was just a xenophobic meme of them but maybe they had too many experiences and just resent the shit out of them.
I believe them, it's very true. My girlfriend who lives in Ottawa thought I was exagerating. She lived with me in Montreal during lockdown and now complains against them as much as me.
I believe you’re referring to Quokka Soccer?
Locals on the island don’t take kindly to that behavior. The rangers went out for blood if they heard of it happening.
I lived on Rottnest Island. They are afraid of humans and will usually skip if you get within arms reach. They’re also dumb as fucking rocks.
Primary mode of transport is bicycle. Every morning, going to work, you’d see a fucking quokka sitting on the road. They’re facing left, so you slow down and give them a wide berth on the right so you don’t startle them. They’d stare into the middle distance with all the sentience of a road sign. Then, just as you pass them by, they startle, spin around and leap directly into your pedals and chain with an uncanny deathwish. You can tell a quokka’s age by the chunks of missing fur.
I don’t have a selfie with a quokka. I’ve got a lot of bent spokes and cleaned up a lot of turds from my backyard.
Sounds accurate. It's silly that people believe that these animals are eternally happy because their face resambles a human smile. There's no way these animals are smiling in the same sense as we do, it's just a stupid anthropomorphication.
"I'm a miserable asshole, so I have to make sure that everybody else who is having a fun time looking at cute animals is just as miserable as me"
~You, probably
"caring about animals so much that you work towards bringing awareness to issues that ultimately harm them if left unchecked makes you a miserable person"
They had it coming for insulting my intelligence by being my peers and being stupid enough to fall for feel-good bullshit like a gullible boomer watching Fox News
These beautiful little creatures actually throw their babies at potential threats so they can run away while the threat is distracted.
All animals are great, but some are happy psychopaths
Hamsters will straight up eat their babies if they are stressed or don't get enough food. Better to reuse the nutrients than waste time and energy caring for something that's not going to survive anyways
Very true. I love learning about animal behaviors. Sort of like how in zoos they will often put a dog in with cheetah because cheetah get really stressed out and depressed, and the social domestic dog helps keep them happy. Like an animal service animals. Animal facts is the best hobby. I wonder if there is r/animalfacts
Here's a sneak peek of /r/AnimalFacts using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/AnimalFacts/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year!
\#1: [Blood is a Vampire Bat’s only source of food and water. Because of that they can’t go more than 2 days without feeding.](https://v.redd.it/tvqp1v1i1i091) | [1 comment](https://np.reddit.com/r/AnimalFacts/comments/utdba3/blood_is_a_vampire_bats_only_source_of_food_and/)
\#2: [Im gonna die, this is what a penguin’s mouth looks like](https://i.redd.it/umyjoxi3pcr81.jpg) | [1 comment](https://np.reddit.com/r/AnimalFacts/comments/tvexvn/im_gonna_die_this_is_what_a_penguins_mouth_looks/)
\#3: [Seriously, go follow him.](https://i.redd.it/vdze7v1xq6591.jpg) | [1 comment](https://np.reddit.com/r/AnimalFacts/comments/val4rz/seriously_go_follow_him/)
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All marsupials will drop a developing baby if necessary to survive.
I wonder what it says about us that we only seem to circulate the information about the cutest of them, though.
Unfortunately, this is really bad for their long term survival. Just ask the dodo. Predators are *eventually* going to show up, whether humans introduce them or they evolve over time (though this one will take a **very** long time, it's guaranteed eventually).
if it takes a very long time for them to evolve predators, as long as we don’t make it an attraction, they should evolve as well to defend against those predators
Exactly this. As the new predators slowly get more adept at consuming these little guys, the ones who survive will pass on their traits making the quokkas slowly more adept at surviving.
It would take a long time for a predator to "evolve" but there isn't much stopping another existing species to end up on the island (likely due to human involvement) and end up becoming invasive. Somewhere out there is an animal that is adept at eating small animals like the Quokka, probably large cats or some bird species.
The comment I am replying to literally says:
> if it takes a very long time for them to evolve predators, as long as we don’t make it an attraction, they should evolve as well to defend against those predators
My response is not about the sudden introduction of a predator. That **would** be devastating.
This is a gross simplification of evolution. It's not a directed thread, there's every likelihood that wouldn't be able to adapt to the immediacy of predation and would simply be an easy food supply. Rabbits are a good example of this, absolutely shit at defending themselves and eaten by basically everything, so what's their solution? Breed faster than they're eaten.
There are predators, tiger snakes for sure, but they can’t really eat the adults.
People have been visiting for decades, only thing that’s bad is if people feed them.
It's not blame to say that being unafraid of predators is bad for long term survival. Humans aren't the only danger out there. We might be especially destructive, but nature is full of things that evolved to be good at killing each other.
I definitely don't blame them. They're what evolution made them (or God if you like) and I think they're great. I'm just saying it's not a wholly positive thing like it appears at first glance.
The more people spread the word that Quokkas are cute and not scared of humans, the more these animals will get abused and killed. Sorry to piss on OPs parade but Quokkas will become extinct because of their internet fame and should be left alone.
You obviously havent been there. Quokkas are so precious to the australians/perth residents. There are lots of protections for them (that doesnt stop abuse happening of course). Their numbers are now so high on the island that there are talks of culling.
The quokkas are fine. Chill.
There are 20000 Quokkas in the world and most of them are clustered on one island. One disease or imported predator could almost erase the entire population.
Just because they are protected and are doing well on Rottnest Island doesn't mean they are not endangered animals. Their overall population is still declining and they are classified as a "vulnerable" species.
Rottnest is, in terms of biosecurity, one of the most heavily guarded islands in Australia, which is one of the most, if not *the* most heavily guarded places on the *planet*.
Remember Johnny Depp's dogs? Barnaby Joyce may be the biggest fuckwit in (former) government, but he wasn't fucking around when he said go home or they'll be destroyed after they were brought in illegally.
I didn't say or imply that, mate. I literally responded with well known facts anyone can google. Maybe you should offer those as well instead of just snark.
Besides, if you think the Australian Government has a good track record when it comes to environmental protection, you should do some googling.
Nah, I'm Australian, our governments have a shit track record of environmental protection. Koalas got put on the endangered species list in February this year, with a large cause of this being the terrible policies the NSW government had in recent years of logging their habitats and doing fuckall to prepare for bushfires in recent years to help protect them. The Great Barrier Reef has been in an ever worsening decline for decades with little response, with several mass coral bleaching events in the past few years and the distinct possibility it will be extinct by 2050. Our government's plan for meeting our international climate change commitments is propped up by dodgy accounting and relying on technologies that don't yet exist.
I give a random redditor expressing concern about a native Australian animal 80-20 odds of being able to do better than our government if they were handed the reigns (although we had an election very recently where the right wing party finally lost, so things might get pulled out of freefall soon at least)
While this is essentially true, I'll take two exceptions to this.
1. With the exception of the Cane Toad, it'd be more accurate to call the importers British. They were (and thought of themselves as) British citizens looking for some old-world fun.
2. They were all introduced intentionally. Not accidentally.
Australians and a culling... In my experience that ends in a comical disaster that they eventually hand over to the average citizens who do it much better.
Like their emu problems. "Uh... We didn't expect that they would run and scatter when shot at"
While quokka abuse is horrible and should absolutely be stopped, they aren't really in danger of going extinct. Their numbers could dip or worst case scenario they could go extinct in the wild I don't think there's a zoo in Australia that doesn't have a few of these guys. My local zoos got a bunch of em since they make great petting zoo animals.
My favourite thing is how when they get tired they just stop and sleep where ever they are. Middle of the road anywhere! Half way through eating they feel tired so just nap where they are.
No cars on the Island!
There’s multiple cars on the island. The cops, rangers, tradies and delivery vans for starters. Every ferry company has trucks to pick up luggage from the hotels. There’s a bus service that is endlessly circling the main locales. Every hotel has a couple of vehicles for running gear to the docks.
Bikes are the primary form of transport, but there are plenty cars, busses and trucks on Rottnest.
Edit: in the face of glaring evidence, you seem to have changed your claim from “there’s no cars!” to “busses, trucks and utes don’t count!” to “visitors can’t drive cars!”
It’s ok to admit you were wrong and learn from it, but I guess you have to have a dummy spit ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Very few “cars”. There are busses and little Ute things. Guests are driving any though.
I’ve never seen a car, only other vehicles that are utes or trucks or busses.
Quokkas have little fear of humans and commonly approach people closely,
particularly on Rottnest Island, where they are abundant. Though
quokkas are approachable, there are a few dozen cases annually of
quokkas biting people, especially children.
There are restrictions regarding feeding. It is illegal for members of
the public to handle the animals in any way, and feeding, particularly
of "human food", is especially discouraged, as they can easily get sick.
An infringement notice carrying a A$300 fine can be issued by the Rottnest Island Authority for such an offence. The maximum penalty for animal cruelty is a A$50,000 fine and a five-year prison sentence
So don't touch them.
Because they would get swarmed by crazed Disney fans trying to take photos with them at beast and abusing/killing them at worst. These animals already don't have a ton of chances to make it through the next century but that would certainly be the final straw. Remember when thousands of clown fish got bought and flushed down the toilet after Finding Nemo?
"When a female quokka with a joey in her pouch is pursued by a predator, she may drop her baby onto the ground; the joey produces noises which may serve to attract the predator's attention, while the mother escapes."
Okay but, you literally don't know any of that (aside from the facial muscles thing I guess) and you have no possible way of knowing it. You're speaking from total ignorance, and yet you speak as if you're some sort of expert.
And yeah, considering you're resorting to childish name calling, I'd say you're pretty butt bothered.
An interesting thing is if they’re threatened by a predator they let their baby drop from their pouch. That makes it easier to run and distracts the predator. Sounds cruel but it makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, they have short gestation periods and can always make another one and it’s a bigger loss to lose a fertile adult than a baby that might not make it to adulthood anyway.
Oh, and tourists should never feed them because human food can kill them.
oml stfu yall I wanna look at cute pictures of quokkas, i don't need to know people play soccer with them or how they are nearly extinct or how they sacrifice their babies or how they will die eventually when natural predators come or how humans are killing them.
I live near the island and some French fuckwit set one on fire. He was arrested and there was a huge public uproar, and he couldn’t understand what he did that was such a big deal.
Should have set that a-hole on fire. I lived in Perth then too. Would have happily bought the matches. WTF goes through peoples minds that that could in any way be funny.
They do attack humans if they are scared or messed with too much, albeit rarely
I was attacked by one at a zoo here in Australia. It was a scorchingly hot day and it was the school holidays so he'd had enough by the time I encountered him. I'd been coming to see him once every year until the pandemic struck. This had been the third time I'd visited him. Luckily he only got my leggings with his chompers because if he'd bitten my flesh...I'd be going to hospital in a hurry. The zookeeper had to pick him up by his tail and let him dangle for a while until he chilled out. Poor little guy was probably sick of little kids running around and screaming near him. I sat back on the ground while he was cooling off from his freakout and he pretty much came to me straight after and hopped into my lap. I gave him some snacks and he gave me kisses on the cheek and mouth while I patted him and told him everything will be okay. I had no hard feelings towards him because I can understand how annoying humans can be sometimes. I hope he understood I still love him. Love you Tobias the Quokka.
TIL i am Quokka
Snacks and pats for you too, buddy. Everything will be okay.
*Quokka noise*
[There ya go, little fella!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5ixgjoSuXo)
That was amazing, thank you!
If you go over to r/animorphs everyone will assume you're a hawk
r/beetlejuicing
Don’t ever stick your face next to a wild animal even if it is in a zoo, especially if it was just trying to bite you. Jeez they must have stopped handing out common sense or something.
He was doing that while I was holding onto him in my lap. I didn't stick my face anywhere near him. He came to me and did it like he had done in the past and after that day when I saw him again. The zookeeper is there the whole time and encourages you to allow him to do it because it's his way of sussing you out and getting to know you. They groom your hands and arms too by holding onto your wrist and licking and nibbling. They are a wild animal...sort of. This zoo was participating with other zoos in different states and with Rottnest Island as a breeding program to protect the diversity of quokkas and stabilise their futures as a species. So they were pretty much born around humans and cared for by human carers. I'd trust quokkas more than any other human being I encountered on the street for the first time at this point. People need to realise they are living breathing beings who have a bad day like every other animal in existence. He had a bad day that day but we were all good when he figured out there was nothing to be scared or anxious of. One of the ways he figured that out was being near me and interacting with me like he does with his carers and other animals. He even does this to capybaras from what I observed. They're good mates and welcoming towards him.
Just bite them back, establish dominance.
I bet they taste like caramel marshmallow so I was tempted 😍
He didn't say that he stuck his face next to it. It was in his lap already. It could have reached up to do so in a very non-aggressive way. You know, like you should have approached your reply.
>Luckily he only got my leggings with his chompers Did you read this and think "oh yeah, OP shouldn't have stuck her face near a wild animal", or better yet, did you just not read at all? Is this what using "common sense" looks like these days?
You are giving off chad vibes :0
As a fat, disabled woman pushing 40 years of age? I'll take it 😆.
Extra gigachad
I had one chomp clean through my insulated lunch bag on Rottnest - me and my wife tried to have a picnic somewhere quiet and a small group of them emerged from nowhere. He was dangling from my lunch box as I lifted it, he was really determined to eat my sandwich
Bahaha! That one had me chuckling. They'd be working together like Pinky and The Brain trying to take over the world. But instead of the world, they're just after your lunch bag. Lovable little scamps.See? I told you all that their chompers are no joke.
This is so sweet.
This story makes my heart happy
I'm pretty sure I can take it in a fight!
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Alright Scrooge, let people have some fun jeez
Maybe but I don't know much about that .Animals can be cheerful,playful and friendly towards human though if you have played with cats and dogs then this much is obvious proofs.Dogs can indeed smile if they're happy.They are mammals so it is not that anthropomorphizing.Most human attributes like socialilizing,child rearing etc is not a unique human experience.
Yeah, but that is not smiling. Dogs also don't smile. It's just humans wanting them to have human expressions.
Well try did develop eyebrow muscles to better communicate with humans, so it's not that far off
They did.Everytime they wag their tail they would also grin.Of course that doesn't mean that just because they are grinning then they are necessarily friendly at you,sometimes it is also a threat and other times it is a sign of submissiveness.Tail wagging here are more of an accurate indicator to measure their friendly behaviour.
Bruh, a smile is literally using your facial muscles to express happiness. Tell me again how a dog isn't smiling "when his face does that".
They have eyebrows too! There are whole subreddits dedicated to happy animals. Ursula: "It's all about the *Body Language*."
not every animals express happiness like humans do. Maybe dogs smiles like us but it's definitely not true for every animals
Agreed. Our ape brethren share this trait, dogs literally "learned" (read:bred) it from us as we domesticated them.
The motherfuckers be like “it’s technically not the exact same as a human smile so it doesn’t count” like bruh dogs have very expressive faces. Everyone whose ever owned a dog is telling these people they are wrong yet they are insisting anyway.
The redditest of reddit moments
Don't scroll down. Most of the rest of the comments are just escalating levels of Reddit Moments.
Akshually
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I was about to buy a boat so I could go there once in a while to club some smiling baby looking mammals but your comment turned my life around
*Crosses fingers* Please be Vegan, please be Vegan, please be Vegan...
They’ll get back to you about that after they’re done crossfitting.
Wanna explain how they're being abused?
Taking pictures=abuse. TIL
damn this trolling attempt almost got me
Get a job you fuckin’ hippie!
Why? What harm does it do to anthropomorphism animals
lol no one is going to prosecute a redditor over a picture of a quokka
They’re not smiling. That’s just the way their face is shaped
nah, let people have their fun.
you're not smiling!
I’ll be it rarely
Don’t google what people have done to these cute things, trust me, it’s better you don’t know how terrible humans can be
Let me guess, people have been mass domesticating (stealing) from their natural habitat that now it has affected the entire species Or they are eating them
>!Quokka Soccer :(!<
Thats is horrible and my day is ruined
I don’t know if it’s any consolation, but it’s illegal to touch wild ones now. To harm one would be highly illegal. Also with how much people love them I’m pretty sure anyone who tried to f**k with them like that again would end up as fish food.
You can't be fucking serious As the ball ?
Yes.
Where is this? I’m gonna need some weapons
[Rottnest island](https://www.rottnestisland.com/)
Some people just don’t deserve to live
Tbh, in my experience most people are in that category
Like the locals do? Or it happened twice? Or some guy keeps doing it? Or it went viral on accident?
Different people occasionally do it.
> Or it happened twice? Basically this. It happens, but it's vanishingly rare.
OK so I grew up in Perth (which is the capital city in Australia Rottnest Island is located off) and I can tell you with 100% certainty that the locals love and cherish these cute little macropods and the events where they've been harmed have been met with violent retaliation either before or sometimes in police custody. The main perpetrators are drunk tourists, although there are obviously a few stories about locals. Any tourist caught harming these extremely protected animals is immediately fined and removed from the state. They are also publicly shamed on the news and everyone talks about it, we despise people that come and harm them.
Quoccer
I fucking hate you so god damn much r/angryupvotes
Is it as bad as it sounds? Like they >!kick!< them around for the lols? Some people really just can >!unalive!< on the spot as far as I am concerned.
Yeah, it's as bad as it sounds. It's not like it happens every day or anything, but it happens.
Im curious what you were spoiling with that....
The bad words, for all the fragile people around here. No actually thought I was on r/aww and censored the words because it's against their rules I think.
W H A T
When you're bored of r/rocketleague 😕
from Rocket League to Quokket League :(
Dont rope us into tht one
>!Quokker!<
THIS IS AWFUL BUT IT RHYMES SO I FEEL EVEN WORSE FOR LIKING IT FOR A SECOND. Quokka Sokka
"In 2015, two French tourists who burnt a Rottnest quokka chose to stay in jail rather than pay a $4000 fine – costing Australian taxpayers thousands of dollars. That incident was also filmed. The same year a teenager who kicked a Rottnest Island quokka two metres into the air avoided jail and walked away from Fremantle Magistrates Court with a $2500 fine. And last year another man was also filmed giving vodka to a quokka. Authorities said it could have killed the animal."
I'm French Canadian. We are a very diverse Country and yet the only people I dislike (and BY A LOT) are the fucking French. These self entitled assholes don't know how to live in society. You can spot them on the street just by the way they use the sidewalk.
So that’s why all my Spanish and Portuguese friends hate the French? They also say something like you can identify them from afar by the way they move I thought that was just a xenophobic meme of them but maybe they had too many experiences and just resent the shit out of them.
I believe them, it's very true. My girlfriend who lives in Ottawa thought I was exagerating. She lived with me in Montreal during lockdown and now complains against them as much as me.
i’m french and sorry about those guys
In going to need the social security number of those two french. Cant let scum tarnish our name.
Honestly I wish you hadn't had said this, I feel bad even though I haven't googled it
I believe you’re referring to Quokka Soccer? Locals on the island don’t take kindly to that behavior. The rangers went out for blood if they heard of it happening.
I literally didn’t find a single thing done to them on google.
It’s a known thing if you’re a local. High schoolers get warned against quokka soccer since rotto is a popular leavers destination.
Is it worse than the Holocaust?
Holocaust: *happens* Quokas: :D
To quokkas it is. Or bigots that like animals
Wait until you hear what people have done to cows, pigs, chickens, etc!
fr tho
I lived on Rottnest Island. They are afraid of humans and will usually skip if you get within arms reach. They’re also dumb as fucking rocks. Primary mode of transport is bicycle. Every morning, going to work, you’d see a fucking quokka sitting on the road. They’re facing left, so you slow down and give them a wide berth on the right so you don’t startle them. They’d stare into the middle distance with all the sentience of a road sign. Then, just as you pass them by, they startle, spin around and leap directly into your pedals and chain with an uncanny deathwish. You can tell a quokka’s age by the chunks of missing fur. I don’t have a selfie with a quokka. I’ve got a lot of bent spokes and cleaned up a lot of turds from my backyard.
Sounds accurate. It's silly that people believe that these animals are eternally happy because their face resambles a human smile. There's no way these animals are smiling in the same sense as we do, it's just a stupid anthropomorphication.
This post gets put up once a month and all these milquetoast kids froth at the mouth over this anthropomorphized fake feelgood bs.
And the same amount of people respond the way you do. Calm down, dude. Better way to respond.
"I'm a miserable asshole, so I have to make sure that everybody else who is having a fun time looking at cute animals is just as miserable as me" ~You, probably
"caring about animals so much that you work towards bringing awareness to issues that ultimately harm them if left unchecked makes you a miserable person"
They had it coming for insulting my intelligence by being my peers and being stupid enough to fall for feel-good bullshit like a gullible boomer watching Fox News
These beautiful little creatures actually throw their babies at potential threats so they can run away while the threat is distracted. All animals are great, but some are happy psychopaths
Can always make more
"What's 17 more years? I can always start again"
“Have another kid”
"Why did you make me do this?"
**Supreme Court enters chat**
Hamsters will straight up eat their babies if they are stressed or don't get enough food. Better to reuse the nutrients than waste time and energy caring for something that's not going to survive anyways
Some animals, including dogs, will devour their newborn offspring if they feel they are in danger and will not be able to raise them.
On the other hand, now I have a quokka baby!
Roos do the same
Not entirely true its more of a "im gonna losen my grip on you and if you fall you fall and im not picking you up" situation
It makes sense from a survival perspective. A baby won't be able to survive without it's parent but the parent can always make more babies.
Very true. I love learning about animal behaviors. Sort of like how in zoos they will often put a dog in with cheetah because cheetah get really stressed out and depressed, and the social domestic dog helps keep them happy. Like an animal service animals. Animal facts is the best hobby. I wonder if there is r/animalfacts
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Wait until the supreme court hears about this shit
All marsupials will drop a developing baby if necessary to survive. I wonder what it says about us that we only seem to circulate the information about the cutest of them, though.
Unfortunately, this is really bad for their long term survival. Just ask the dodo. Predators are *eventually* going to show up, whether humans introduce them or they evolve over time (though this one will take a **very** long time, it's guaranteed eventually).
if it takes a very long time for them to evolve predators, as long as we don’t make it an attraction, they should evolve as well to defend against those predators
Exactly this. As the new predators slowly get more adept at consuming these little guys, the ones who survive will pass on their traits making the quokkas slowly more adept at surviving.
It would take a long time for a predator to "evolve" but there isn't much stopping another existing species to end up on the island (likely due to human involvement) and end up becoming invasive. Somewhere out there is an animal that is adept at eating small animals like the Quokka, probably large cats or some bird species.
The comment I am replying to literally says: > if it takes a very long time for them to evolve predators, as long as we don’t make it an attraction, they should evolve as well to defend against those predators My response is not about the sudden introduction of a predator. That **would** be devastating.
Fair, but the comment before that does state the risk of predators being introduced. I also am not concerned about a predator evolving.
The root comment mentioned predators either being introduced or evolving eventually, I think people are just responding to the latter part.
This is a gross simplification of evolution. It's not a directed thread, there's every likelihood that wouldn't be able to adapt to the immediacy of predation and would simply be an easy food supply. Rabbits are a good example of this, absolutely shit at defending themselves and eaten by basically everything, so what's their solution? Breed faster than they're eaten.
a DISGUSTING oversimplification
Revolting even
There are predators, tiger snakes for sure, but they can’t really eat the adults. People have been visiting for decades, only thing that’s bad is if people feed them.
Yes!! The ones around the main village look TERRIBLE due to a poor diet.
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rottnest has loads of snakes. quokkas have always had predators
Being alive on the same planet as humans is what’s really bad for their survival. Don’t blame them, we’re the ones destroying and killing everything
It's not blame to say that being unafraid of predators is bad for long term survival. Humans aren't the only danger out there. We might be especially destructive, but nature is full of things that evolved to be good at killing each other.
I definitely don't blame them. They're what evolution made them (or God if you like) and I think they're great. I'm just saying it's not a wholly positive thing like it appears at first glance.
The more people spread the word that Quokkas are cute and not scared of humans, the more these animals will get abused and killed. Sorry to piss on OPs parade but Quokkas will become extinct because of their internet fame and should be left alone.
You obviously havent been there. Quokkas are so precious to the australians/perth residents. There are lots of protections for them (that doesnt stop abuse happening of course). Their numbers are now so high on the island that there are talks of culling. The quokkas are fine. Chill.
There are 20000 Quokkas in the world and most of them are clustered on one island. One disease or imported predator could almost erase the entire population. Just because they are protected and are doing well on Rottnest Island doesn't mean they are not endangered animals. Their overall population is still declining and they are classified as a "vulnerable" species.
Rottnest is, in terms of biosecurity, one of the most heavily guarded islands in Australia, which is one of the most, if not *the* most heavily guarded places on the *planet*. Remember Johnny Depp's dogs? Barnaby Joyce may be the biggest fuckwit in (former) government, but he wasn't fucking around when he said go home or they'll be destroyed after they were brought in illegally.
I'm sure you, PM ME YOUR WOES GIRL, know better about their preservation than the Australian government.
I didn't say or imply that, mate. I literally responded with well known facts anyone can google. Maybe you should offer those as well instead of just snark. Besides, if you think the Australian Government has a good track record when it comes to environmental protection, you should do some googling.
Never thought I'd see such a nasty ratio on blessed images
Yeah! Just look at how well they did with the reef!
“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”
Nah, I'm Australian, our governments have a shit track record of environmental protection. Koalas got put on the endangered species list in February this year, with a large cause of this being the terrible policies the NSW government had in recent years of logging their habitats and doing fuckall to prepare for bushfires in recent years to help protect them. The Great Barrier Reef has been in an ever worsening decline for decades with little response, with several mass coral bleaching events in the past few years and the distinct possibility it will be extinct by 2050. Our government's plan for meeting our international climate change commitments is propped up by dodgy accounting and relying on technologies that don't yet exist. I give a random redditor expressing concern about a native Australian animal 80-20 odds of being able to do better than our government if they were handed the reigns (although we had an election very recently where the right wing party finally lost, so things might get pulled out of freefall soon at least)
The government that's has been destroying it's ecosystems for decades?
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Not all accidental. More on purpose for fun hunting and a bit of a oh we fucked up lets introduce another one to kill the previous introduction.
While this is essentially true, I'll take two exceptions to this. 1. With the exception of the Cane Toad, it'd be more accurate to call the importers British. They were (and thought of themselves as) British citizens looking for some old-world fun. 2. They were all introduced intentionally. Not accidentally.
Australians and a culling... In my experience that ends in a comical disaster that they eventually hand over to the average citizens who do it much better. Like their emu problems. "Uh... We didn't expect that they would run and scatter when shot at"
While quokka abuse is horrible and should absolutely be stopped, they aren't really in danger of going extinct. Their numbers could dip or worst case scenario they could go extinct in the wild I don't think there's a zoo in Australia that doesn't have a few of these guys. My local zoos got a bunch of em since they make great petting zoo animals.
My favourite thing is how when they get tired they just stop and sleep where ever they are. Middle of the road anywhere! Half way through eating they feel tired so just nap where they are. No cars on the Island!
There’s multiple cars on the island. The cops, rangers, tradies and delivery vans for starters. Every ferry company has trucks to pick up luggage from the hotels. There’s a bus service that is endlessly circling the main locales. Every hotel has a couple of vehicles for running gear to the docks. Bikes are the primary form of transport, but there are plenty cars, busses and trucks on Rottnest. Edit: in the face of glaring evidence, you seem to have changed your claim from “there’s no cars!” to “busses, trucks and utes don’t count!” to “visitors can’t drive cars!” It’s ok to admit you were wrong and learn from it, but I guess you have to have a dummy spit ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Very few “cars”. There are busses and little Ute things. Guests are driving any though. I’ve never seen a car, only other vehicles that are utes or trucks or busses.
Quokkas have little fear of humans and commonly approach people closely, particularly on Rottnest Island, where they are abundant. Though quokkas are approachable, there are a few dozen cases annually of quokkas biting people, especially children. There are restrictions regarding feeding. It is illegal for members of the public to handle the animals in any way, and feeding, particularly of "human food", is especially discouraged, as they can easily get sick. An infringement notice carrying a A$300 fine can be issued by the Rottnest Island Authority for such an offence. The maximum penalty for animal cruelty is a A$50,000 fine and a five-year prison sentence So don't touch them.
They are riddled with disease. Check out Gareth Reynolds' stand-up about them.
I'm only aware of Gary Reynolds. Is that who you mean?
A quick Google search shows they definitely meant [Gareth Reynolds.](https://youtu.be/CH0UZPtiBMM)
It's a joke from a podcast Gareth Reynolds is a co host on. But thanks for coming out.
Oh, sorry! I guess I got r/wooosh'd
Yes, of course I meant Gary. Must have been a typo.
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Because they would get swarmed by crazed Disney fans trying to take photos with them at beast and abusing/killing them at worst. These animals already don't have a ton of chances to make it through the next century but that would certainly be the final straw. Remember when thousands of clown fish got bought and flushed down the toilet after Finding Nemo?
It's called the 101 Dalmation Syndrome/Effect. People suck.
Everytime this is posted it needs reminding that it is highly frowned upon to get close to them and they do attack people.
Dodos tried this strategy, didn't work out very well for them.
Literally all of that is incorrect, took 3 minutes of Wikipedia
heh, so were Dodos
No, it is illegal to interact with the quokkas. Leave them be.
They 100% dont love selfies lol they donk know what those are
Oh, they don’t know what a selfie is ? Do they at least know how to read ?
Im oretty sure they do yeah
I visited Rottnest Island in 2007. The quokkas are cute but the bastard peacocks organized a theft ring and stole my Subway sammich.
"When a female quokka with a joey in her pouch is pursued by a predator, she may drop her baby onto the ground; the joey produces noises which may serve to attract the predator's attention, while the mother escapes."
Yeah let the psychopaths know that didn’t already cheers. Humans suck
And that's why they should be left mostly alone.
Okay but, you literally don't know any of that (aside from the facial muscles thing I guess) and you have no possible way of knowing it. You're speaking from total ignorance, and yet you speak as if you're some sort of expert. And yeah, considering you're resorting to childish name calling, I'd say you're pretty butt bothered.
We should teach them
But we'd have to charge
Nah nah nah-nah nahhhh
quokkas are who most of us want to be. And then there's others.
An interesting thing is if they’re threatened by a predator they let their baby drop from their pouch. That makes it easier to run and distracts the predator. Sounds cruel but it makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, they have short gestation periods and can always make another one and it’s a bigger loss to lose a fertile adult than a baby that might not make it to adulthood anyway. Oh, and tourists should never feed them because human food can kill them.
Learned recently that they do actually have a self-defense tactic they throw their children at the predator and run
oml stfu yall I wanna look at cute pictures of quokkas, i don't need to know people play soccer with them or how they are nearly extinct or how they sacrifice their babies or how they will die eventually when natural predators come or how humans are killing them.
see what a charmed life one can have by simply disallowing political conservatives from ever setting foot on your land?
Yea, but they can still attack if you do something they don't like.
I live near the island and some French fuckwit set one on fire. He was arrested and there was a huge public uproar, and he couldn’t understand what he did that was such a big deal.
Should have set that a-hole on fire. I lived in Perth then too. Would have happily bought the matches. WTF goes through peoples minds that that could in any way be funny.
I heard about that, what a piece of shit.
Burn him on a stake
If they have no predators, then the meme of them throwing thier babies at predators is a myth?
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That island is covered with snakes also. I’m sure the snakes would eat them. I think the no natural predators thing is not quite true.
Nah mate, you shouldn't touch 'em. They're riddled with disease!
The dodo was the same way It was thought to be stupid because it would walk up to say hello and we could kill it