This Rare Baby Wombat Needs a Paternity Test

In March 2026, volunteer caretakers sifting through trail-camera photos at Richard Underwood Nature Refuge in Queensland, Australia, spotted something small: a bump in a female wombat’s pouch. By August, the joey was out on foot, exploring the world for the first time. It is a northern hairy-nosed wombat, one of the rarest mammals on Earth, and the first joey born at the refuge in two years.

There’s just one mystery. A 2024 DNA census of the refuge found 18 wombats and only 3 males. So is the father one of those three, or a male nobody has detected? The answer is in the joey’s droppings: fresh wombat scat carries its DNA, and Australian Wildlife Conservancy and Adelaide University are collecting it now for a paternity test.

In this film

• Camera-trap footage of the mother and joey, from pouch to first steps
• How the species fell to 35 animals in one colony in the 1980s, and climbed back to about 400 across three sites
• The hair-trap DNA census: 43 burrows, 18 wombats, only 3 males detected
• Why a paternity test for a wombat starts with fresh poo
• The two possible answers, and what each one means for the species’ genetic diversity

The film features Dr Ben Stepkovitch, a wildlife ecologist with Australian Wildlife Conservancy. When it was made, there was no paternity result yet. We’ll follow up when there is.

Help the wombats

Australian Wildlife Conservancy looks after Richard Underwood Nature Refuge. Read their release on the joey, watch their camera-trap video, or support their work.

Camera-trap footage and interview: Australian Wildlife Conservancy. Photos: Brad Leue, Andy Howe and Dr Jennifer Pierson / Australian Wildlife Conservancy; Jeremy Austin / Adelaide University. Narration: AI voice. Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), CC BY 4.0.