clipped from: news.bbc.co.uk   
Australian wallaby - file picture
Wallabies have been observed acting strangely in poppy fields
Australian wallabies are eating opium poppies and creating crop circles as they hop around "as high as a kite", a government official has said.

Australia supplies about 50% of the world's legally-grown opium used to make morphine and other painkillers.

"Then they crash," she added. "We see crop circles in the poppy industry from wallabies that are high."

"There have been many stories about sheep that have eaten some of the poppies after harvesting and they all walk around in circles," he added.

Retired Tasmanian poppy farmer Lyndley Chopping also said he had seen strange behaviour from wallabies in his fields.

"They would just come and eat some poppies and they would go away," he told ABC News.

"They'd come back again and they would do their circle work in the paddock."