Scientists uncover rare, unusually spiky newborn animals in a protected habitat

The proof arrived in the smallest possible package. Not a dramatic population boom. Not hundreds of animals suddenly racing across the Australian landscape. Just tiny young tucked inside a mother’s pouch. At Mt Gibson Wildlife Sanctuary in Western Australia, the discovery of newborn western quolls—also known as chuditch—carried significance far beyond their size. The animals had been returned to a landscape from which their kind had disappeared, and now they were doing the one thing conservationists most needed them to do without human assistance: They were breeding. That distinction matters. Moving an endangered animal into