A species that was in danger of going extinct suddenly has hope. After their attempts to reproduce the species appear to have been successful, a team of biologists in Australia is overjoyed. Ecologists at Australia’s Mount Gibson Wildlife Sanctuary recently made a startling discovery.
They discovered a litter of young, spiky animals in the sanctuary. But these are not just any creatures. They belong to the species “western quolls,” which are a specific type of marsupial carnivore. The species was once widely distributed across Australia, but its numbers have drastically decreased since the first European settlers arrived.
These days, the western quolls, often called chuditchs, are restricted to small groups in Australia’s southwest. This marsupial species, which is roughly…