Quick-scrolling Facebook user mistakes rescued wombat for friend's baby

Facebook is a minefield nowadays. There's the personality quizzes designed to steal your personal information, the invitations to like small businesses from people you knew in primary school, and the dodgy scientific news stories about younger siblings being better looking that your brother or sister will tag you in.

And then there's the endless baby photos.

There's so many of them, so it's no surprise that this went down.

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An unidentified woman posted a photo of a baby wombat she rescued from the side of the road.

"This little boy's mum had been killed during the night and left in the middle of the road," she wrote.

Her post discussed the importance of checking for marsupial babies in roadkill victims and moving the bodies of wildlife off the road.

But one of her Facebook friends was clearly scrolling too fast before leaving her comment.

"OMG congratulations! He's beautiful. I miss you so much," the friend wrote.

Eight hours later came a red-faced apology.

"I didn't look properly. I thought you'd had your baby. I'm so sorry. OMG."

It's the sort of embarrassment that makes you wish you could crawl into a wombat-sized burrow.

But the Facebook friend hit upon an unfortunate truth about humanity: not all newborn babies are beautiful.

And some, it's said to say, can be mistaken for baby wombats.

And vice versa, demonstrably.

The whole exchange was witnessed by TV writer James Felton, who posted the awkwardness on Twitter overnight.