Lucy Lockett, age 9, of Santa Maria, California, for her question:

Why does Australia have such strange animals?

Australia has big hopping kangaroos and small hopping wallabies. The cuddly koala belongs to Australia. So does the amazing platypus and so do the prickly echidna. They seem strange to us because they are different from our own everyday animals. Most of those that live in and around Australia are marsupials, which are animals that carry their tiny helpless babes in built in pouches.

The opossum is our only marsupial. But experts tell us that ages ago many more of our mother animals carried their babes in pouches. At that time, Australia was nearer to the other continents. But slowly it drifted away, taking its animals along. In the rest of the world, pouches went out of style and our modern animals arrived. But way down in Australia, the mother animals continued to cradle their babes in built in pouches, which is why there are so many unusual animals in that part of the world.