Brush-tailed Rock Wallaby - Petrogale penicillata

Disclaimer: If this is the first of multiple posts about this species, you have my first of multiple insincere apologies for it.

The Brush-tailed Rock Wallaby lives in the rocky ranges of south-east Australia. Spotting them on the cliffs is difficult, because they are expertly camouflaged, like busking statue at a Rigor Mortis convention. Their distribution across the south-east of Australia, from Toowoomba to west Victoria, means that, just like most people in Australia, they live near where most people in Australia live.

Rock wallabies have heavily padded fore- and hind-paws, along with long, muscular tails that allow them to balance when sitting in precarious positions or making hairpin turns at dangerous speeds. It's a well-known industry fact that the same way bullet-proof apparel was developed by studying the structural integrity of spider's webs, toy stores everywhere were overwhelmed 10 years ago when a detailed analysis of rock wallabies' fore and hind paws blessed us with Moon Shoes.

Where most animals are either diurnal (active during the day) or nocturnal (active at night), rock wallabies are mostly crepuscular - that is, they are active at dawn and dusk, the times between the day and the night. The daytime it too bright, and it leaves them exposed. The night time is too dark, and it leaves them exposed. So they choose a time where diurnal predators, acclimatised to brighter conditions, just get sad and mopey because of the less vibrant mood-lighting, and therefore completely lack motivation to kill and eat a wallaby, and a time when night-time predators, most at home in the darkness, experience veritable eye-explosions at the amount of light severing their corneas. So with the light taking care of them, they are able to go about their lives peacefully.

That is, until a rival enters an individual's territory. Rock wallabies take this personally; it's basically like you waking up to find that your sister's three piece outfit is entirely comprised of your clothes. Brush-tailed rock wallabies have territories averaging 15ha, and given 15 is 3 more than 12, which are two of God's favourite numbers, they consider their frankly unrealistically immense personal space bubble as extra holy. So the next time you find yourself teaching high school history, in particular about the Crusades, and also happily have the funding to go on excursions, take your kids to Crow's Nest National Park (if you live in QLD) or Oxley Wild Rivers National Park (if you live in NSW) for first-hand experience watching violent defence of the Holy Land. It's safer than Gaza!