Learn English with the News – Wombats’ Deadly Bums

Wombats, a fascinating species that outside of Australia is not very well-known. Recent research has shown some very peculiar uses for parts of the wombat’s body, because you can never stop learning, even if it’s about a wombat’s butt! Watch the video and then do the accompanying English language exercises.

The news is a consistent source of entertainment, knowledge and discovery that never ceases to exist and always comes out with more and more material each day. Because it plays such a vital part in our lives and is so important to keep up with, it is without a doubt a piece of your everyday routine that can’t go ignored.

Whether it is to understand the ramifications of recent legislation passed, to hear about recent events and grasp the potential consequences to your country, or simply hear about what is happening in other countries in order to compare them to what’s happening in yours, the news is certainly a staple in our lives and the most consistent way to get information.

This is why Scrambled Eggs has decided to unite two of your biggest worlds: learning English and keeping up with what is happening in the world. We hope our challenging daily exercises, composed of listening, vocabulary and comprehension exercises in English, will satisfy both of those above worlds in a satisfactory and also entertaining way.

So enough about introductions, let’s get to today’s Learn English with the News topic:

Adapted from this article.

Now that you’ve had a listen, let’s put your knowledge to the test with some of our vocabulary and comprehension exercises:

And that’s it for today’s English lesson, where you can improve your English with the news and current events. Do you have any comments or special requests for us for the next edition of Learn English with the News? Be sure to leave any feedback you have in the comments section below, as we would love to help you on your quest to learn the English language!

For other Learn English with the News segments, be sure to check out the rest of our posts:

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Full Text:

“Australia is known for its strange and deadly wildlife, with plenty of attention given to venomous snakes and bird-eating spiders. But it seems one terrifying aspect of outback fauna has been thoroughly ignored: the wombat’s deadly bum. The rump of the wombat is hard as rock, used for defence, burrowing, bonding, mating and possibly violently crushing the skulls of its enemies against the roof of its burrow. Although the jury is still out on that one. The marsupials’ bums are made up of four plates fused together and surrounded by cartilage, fat, skin and fur. Alyce Swinbourne, an expert in wombat bottoms from the University of Adelaide, says wombats will use their backside to plug up their burrows, stopping predators entering and protecting softer areas of their anatomy. But Swinbourne is a little skeptical when it comes to the wombat’s most infamous bottom-based talent, crushing the skulls of foxes and dingos against the compacted dirt of their burrows. Fox skulls and bodies have been found outside the entrance to wombat burrows, often with the bones crushed, but Swinbourne says it’s unclear if the wombat deals the deadly blow. Swinbourne notes that adult wombats are not necessarily on the menu for foxes, their powerful defence mechanisms making them’ more effort than it’s worth. But bony bums aren’t just for self-defence. Especially for the more social varieties, such as the southern hairy-nosed wombat, bottoms are an integral part of friendship and love. Biting each other on the bottom is a vital flirtation technique. Swinbourne’s research into southern hairy-nosed wombat mating techniques – bum biting included – is now being used by the University of Queensland to develop artificial insemination technologies.”