It's all external reproduction with native Aussie frogs, the male grabbing the female around her back and hanging on for dear life with a very tight forearm grip. As she lays the spawn he fertilizes the eggs with his sperm. Of many thousands of eggs that some species lay very few survive to maturity. Come the dry summer many of our frogs retreat into cooler damp burrows awaiting further downpours. I did a small piece with Tracey Vo on ABC 720 talking about amphibians in Oz - listen now on Soundcloud.

The oldest known vertebrate is a Greenland Shark (Somniosus microcephalus) at around 400 years old. Scientists studying a group recently have determined she is between 272 and 512 years old.

An Albatross called Wisdom is the oldest confirmed wild bird in the world and also the oldest banded bird in the world. She was banded in 1956 when approximately 5 years old so is currently 65. She is still nesting and laying eggs.

The oldest captive bred bird in the world is a parrot. On June 30th 1933 a Major Mitchells cockatoo (Lophochroa leadbeateri) hatched from an egg at Taronga Zoo Sydney and was then sent overseas. Today, some 83 years later, Cookie is still alive. He has spent most of his long life at Brookfield Zoo in Chicago.

Clever scientists can use a mixture of radiocarbon and cross dating (like tree rings) to work out the age of some molluscs. One amazing Icelandic Clam (Artica islandica) is called Ming (it was as old as the Ming Dynasty). Ming is a definite record breaker as he had lived for 507 years before being dredged to the surface as part of a study!

The Immortal Jellyfish (Turritopsis dohrnii) can beat them all. Believed to originate in the Pacific Ocean they have spread around the world's warmer oceans in the ballast of ships. They are hard to find at only 4.5mm long. So take a magnifying glass! Technically they are biologically immortal, as when physically injured or just old they can revert to the juvenile polyp stage (a blob of cells) and then reform once again as a healthy jellyfish. It's called transdifferentiation - where cells can transform themselves into different kinds of cells. So a nerve cell may become an egg cell or even a sperm cell, rejuvenate and/or change. Very weird, the process apparently has never been seen in the animal kingdom before. I'm sure something like it will be in a face cream soon.

Just six days later when re-visited the eggs had been eaten. Hugely disappointed scientists had DNA tests on the eggshell remains and have found that a King brown snake was responsible and not as was first thought a goanna. Fortunately the podgy ground dwelling budgie-like bird still breeds elsewhere.

Below are a few terms of venery, many are taken from the Book of St Albans (1486) not that you will find a copy in the local library! I've also added some more common collective nouns as we now call them:

• Apes – shrewdness, troop
• Badgers – cete
• Bees – swarm, drift, erst or grist
• Boars – sounder (12 or more)
• Cats – clowder
• Coots – covert
• Crocodiles – bask
• Ducks – a paddling when on water
• Ducks – a plump
• Eagles – convocation
• Falcons – a cast
• Ferrets – busyness
• Fish – school or shoal
• Foxes – leash or skulk
• Gnats – cloud or horde
• Goldfinches – a charm
• Guineafowl – a rasp
• Hawks – a cast, a boil (2 or more spiralling), a kettle (flying in numbers)
• Hippopotamuses – a bloat
• Hyenas – a cackle
• Iguanas – mess
• Magpies – charm, murder, tiding or tittering
• Mallards – flush, puddling
• Owls – a parliament
• Oysters – a bed
• Parrots – company or pandemonium
• Pelicans – a pod
• Possums – a passell
• Ravens – an undkindness
• Rhinoceroses – a crash
• Sea urchins – a herd
• Snakes – bed, den, knot, nest or pit
• Spiders – cluster or clutter
• Swallows – flight or gulp
• Swans – bank if on ground, wedge if in flight. Also bevy, drift, flight, sownder, team amongst others – swans were often hunted!
• Wombats – wisdom
• Zebras – herd, cohort, dazzle or zeal

Rats and mice I would imagine are possibly the hardest to deal with in urban areas. Stoats (a small carnivorous mammal) and possums across varied landscapes will also require a massive effort – no doubt why 2050 is a target date.

This is a creature I always wanted as a pet in the UK and have a huge soft spot for. You are not allowed to keep them as pets in WA, where authorities ban the keeping of almost all native species and prefer we keep as companion animals non-natives such as rats, rabbits and cats - pet/pests are freely available state wide! Sugar gliders are a popular and widely kept species in many states of the US.

However, back to this cute Australian glider - they are covered in short very soft silvery grey fur and have a black stripe from the nose fading gradually along the back. Belly fur is whitish. Their black round eyes are somewhat bulgy, excellent for night vision and they have a soft pink nose at the end of a slightly flattened head. Gliders are highly social creatures living in family groups or colonies and do not fare well if kept alone.

The bald spot visible in the centre of the male's head is a scent gland used for territory marking. Several glider species are found Australia wide but this species occurs in northern WA and across the warmer top of the country. They live in tree hollows and emerge once night falls.

They feed on a wide variety of fruits, seeds, nectar, fungi and flowers but they are very keen on sweet things. At least 40% of the diet will consist of proteins from lizards, small birds, insects, bugs, grubs, manna, lerp, eggs as a few examples of the many foodstuffs consumed, some being only seasonally available. They are highly adaptive in feeding habits. In captivity several manufactured foodstuffs ensure they have plenty of calcium in the diet to prevent hypocalcaemia or hind leg paralysis. They glide or fly well but always losing height, and 50m glides or more being possible with the aid of an extendable membrane called a patagium, which reaches from their forelegs to hind legs. With all legs and arms extended they are very agile, enabling them to move swiftly to avoid predators and to glide to feeding spots.

Breeding can occur at any time in favourable conditions and one or two young are born per litter. The blind, tiny hairless joeys are in the pouch for 60 odd days and first leave the nest after around 110 days. Predators they must avoid are many and include kookaburras, quolls, snakes, goannas, feral cats and owls.

In the wild on an almost daily basis Sugar gliders can radically alter their metabolism and go into what's called torpor. A bit like hibernation but for much shorter periods of time – just for a few hours when it is cold or food supplies are low, but up to 23 hours a day in very cold conditions. When in torpor the body conserves energy, as it does not need to generate heat.