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Animal Themes
Mammals
Grasslands

Wombats

Wombats
Reading Level
     edHelper's suggested reading level:   grades 4 to 8
     Flesch-Kincaid grade level:   9.5

Vocabulary
     challenging words:    butts, entrances, eucalyptus, retreat, extremely, naked, lifetime, miniature, species, combat, fully, hefty, marsupial, stocky, wombat, mainly
     content words:    Epping Forest National Park

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Wombats   
1     Wombats look like miniature bears with flat noses! Wandering in semi-dry grasslands of Australia and its nearby island, Tasmania, wombats differ from bears in many perspectives. In fact, after a close-up examination of wombats, you will find that wombats really share no similarities - aside from their furry coats and stocky builds - with bears!
 
2     Wombats are nocturnal, herbivorous, and burrowing animals. That means they are active mainly at night, feed only on vegetation, and live underground. Equipped with sharp claws, wombats are very good at excavating. The tunnels that they dig have very practical designs. When wombats stumble upon their enemies (such as dingoes or foxes), they run quickly, at a top speed of 25 miles per hour, and retreat to safety by entering through one of the many entrances to their homes.
 
3     Extending to more than 70 feet long, wombats' tunnels are custom made to allow only animals of the same size as the homeowners themselves to pass through. If a stalker persists in following wombats into their burrows, it may soon regret its decision! Because wombats have plates of cartilages in their rumps (or butts), they use their hefty rear ends as their first line of defense - they block the entrance to their burrows with their rumps. If the stalker's head gets caught between wombats' rear ends and the burrow wall, its skull can get crushed or it can suffocate. That's a very embarrassing, yet equally comical, way to die, isn't it?

Paragraphs 4 to 7:
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