Quokka

“Rats’ nest”

The Dutch sailor Willem de Vlamingh, encountering quokkas on a small Western Australian island in 1696, mistook them for giant rats and named the place Rottnest (“rat’s nest”). The name stuck — though quokkas are marsupials, not rodents.

Today Rottnest Island holds the largest concentrated population of quokkas — perhaps 10,000–12,000 individuals. The island has been free of foxes and feral cats (the main threats to mainland quokka populations), allowing the species to thrive.

The “happiest animal” reputation

Quokkas have the kind of facial structure that, viewed straight-on, looks like a smile. The combination of upturned mouth corners and round cheeks photographs as cheerful, even joyful. Tourist “quokka selfies” — a photographer at low angle with a quokka apparently grinning into the camera — went massively viral on social media in the 2010s.

The smile isn’t a real expression; it’s anatomy. But the resulting tourism boom has been a mixed blessing — bringing economic value but also increased contact, disease transmission risk, and incidents of mishandling.

Climbing trees

Unusually for a kangaroo relative, quokkas can climb low trees and shrubs to reach leaves and bark — a behavior almost unheard of in macropodids. They can climb up to about 1.5 m, using their forelimbs and powerful hindlegs.

Conservation

Quokkas are listed as Vulnerable. Mainland populations have collapsed dramatically — fragmented and frequently wiped out by introduced foxes and cats, and by habitat-clearing fires. Rottnest Island remains the species’ last stronghold, with a small additional population on Bald Island and several scattered mainland enclaves under intensive protection.

The mainland populations are currently the focus of conservation efforts; if they decline further, the quokka becomes a single-island species — always a precarious situation in evolutionary terms.