Wombats have been found to have the capacity for compassion. Is it so?
It is believed that the animal world is cruel and obeys only instincts. There is no place for mercy in it and everyone survives as best they can. This stereotype was destroyed by the Australian wombats, which, as it turned out, are not alien to such a quality as compassion. The official Greenpeace account in New Zealand on its Instagram said that wombats began to show atypical behavior for animals.
Greenpeace activists have noticed that during forest fires, animals let other animals into their holes. Thus, they help those who find themselves in a dangerous situation to escape from the fire. The burrows of wombats are very deep and you can wait out any fire in them. Once zoologists found a hole, the total length of which reached 90 meters! At the same time, it had 28 inputs.
Greenpeace people say that when small animals, escaping from the flames and smoke, run into the burrows of wombats, the owners show hospitality without expelling uninvited guests. Under normal circumstances, wombats are not inclined to share their home with someone and defend it bravely. But during forest fires, their behavior changes dramatically.
Merciful wombats, according to the "greens", help save millions of small animals. In 2020, Australia was swept by wildfires the continent has never seen before. Millions of hectares of forests burned, while, according to the most conservative estimates, about a billion representatives of the fauna died.
A variety of species of animals, birds and reptiles find shelter in underground shelters. Cameras at the entrances to the burrows showed that rock wallabies, possum rats, lizards and birds periodically hide in them. Sometimes even small penguins drop by the wombats!
But zoologists say that this information may not be entirely correct. Yes, a huge number of fire victims are hiding in the burrows of wombats. But the owners of underground galleries may not know about it. The fact is that many animals have several dwellings, from 2 to 14. Wombats periodically live in one hole, then in another. Most likely, only empty burrows become a refuge for animals. So the information about the "merciful wombats" requires verification.
Fires on the Green Continent are caused by global warming. But they themselves, in turn, change the climate of the planet. Smoke from burning forests reached New Zealand and then crossed the Pacific Ocean. Its traces were found in South America, thousands of kilometers from Australia. Chile suffered the most, where the smog covered the skies over several regions of the country for many days.