Wombats eat young shoots of herbs. Sometimes the roots of plants, mosses, mushrooms and berries are also eaten.
The divided upper lip allows wombats to choose very precisely what they eat. Thanks to her front teeth can go straight to the ground and cut off even the smallest shoots. An important role in choosing food from active wombats at night is played by smell.
The metabolism of wombats is very slow and effective. To digest food, they need up to 14 days. Wombats are the most economical water consumers from all mammals after the camel: they only need 22 ml of water per kg of body weight per day. Even such animals, perfectly suited to the conditions of life in Australia, like representatives of the kangaroo family, expend water four times more. Wombs badly suffer from cold.
The feces of wombats are shaped like cubes, which is caused by the special structure of their anus.
Wombs with their sharp claws tear out small residential caves in the ground, which sometimes form complex tunnel systems. As a rule, most of them (tunnel systems) reach about 20 meters in length and 3.5 meters in depth. If parts of individual individuals intersect, caves can be used at different times by different wombats. Wombats are active at night when they go out in search of food. During the day they rest in their shelters.
The adult wombat has almost no natural enemies. One of the few is a dingo imported by man. In addition, the Tasmanian devil may be a danger. The back of the wombat’s body is extremely hard because of thick skin, cartilage and bones. In case of danger, they can turn their backside, block their hole and repel most attackers, or crush their limbs against the walls of their residential cave. In the back of the back, on the pelvic bones, the wombat has a sort of shield that protects it when attacking from behind. He also inflicts heavy blows on the head – it seems like a ram or a goat. If the dog climbs into its hole, it waits for it, without leaving the place, and then tries to drive into a corner, to the wall of the hole, and there to suffocate with a shield. Much more often in death wombata the person is guilty: in particular, many wombats perish under the wheels of cars. In areas where the human impact is small, the number of wombats is determined by the availability of a suitable feed.
