Mammals

Mammal – Marsupial, Family Peramelidae
The Southern Brown Bandicoot has a head and body length of 33cm and a tail 12cm long, with males weighing 850g and females 700g. They have glistening golden brown fur with black guard hairs, a long sensitive snout to detect food, and strong forepaws for digging.

Conservation Status:
Of the seven bandicoot species still found in Australia, the Southern Brown Bandicoot used to be the most numerous. However population numbers of this bandicoot have plummeted in the last few decades and they were recently listed nationally as “Threatened”. While they are still common in some parts of Victoria, there’s been a dramatic reduction in their range. The main threats are predation by feral foxes and cats, habitat clearance and changing fire regimes. They are also susceptible to 1080 poison laid to control rabbits and foxes, and where the bandicoots invade rabbit warrens for shelter they are also threatened by warren fumigation and ripping. 49 Southern Brown Bandicoots made the trip to Mt Rothwell from Warrawong (March – August 2002) and they have since bred up very quickly.

Habitat, Diet & Breeding:
Southern Brown Bandicoots inhabit woodland, dry forest, shrub lands and coastal heath, occupying home ranges of 1 to 3ha, and up to 7ha. This bandicoot tends to be solitary, yet in areas of good quality habitat population densities can reach 5 animals per hectare. They are an opportunistic omnivore, eating insects, ants, earthworms, insect larvae, fruits, fungi, tubers, grasses, seeds & bulbs.

These bandicoots are prolific breeders and they can breed all year round, though the majority of births coincide with peaks in food abundance. The development of the young occurs very quickly. Southern Brown Bandicoots have one of the shortest recorded gestation periods for a mammal, as they are only pregnant for around 12 days. In their rear-opening pouch there are 8 nipples and while the female can give birth to up to 16 young, the number of surviving young per litter is usually 2-4. The lactation period is only 60 days and a new litter may be born immediately after the pouch is vacated. In good years, 2 to 3 litters may be reared annually. Females can begin to breed at 7 months of age, and in her lifetime of around 3 to 3.5 years, she can produce just over 30 young. There’s high dispersal of juveniles who quickly colonise nearby patches of suitable habitat.

Interesting Facts:
This bandicoot species spends the daytime sheltering in hollow logs or in well-concealed nests that they make on the ground from collected grass and leaf litter. When foraging at night, they dig conical pits in the soil with their powerful forelimbs. These holes make ideal spots for seedlings to germinate, as the seed blows in with nutritious leaf litter and fills with rainwater. Bandicoots are “forest friends” with the bettongs, potoroos and pademelons, as they reduce the fire fuel loads; help break down leaf litter, aid cycling of nutrients and soil creation, and spread good microbes.
It is unfortunate that bandicoots, and many other small native marsupials, look like rats to the untrained eye. In human history, there is some justification to dislike rodents for being vermin that have spread disease and caused plagues where millions of people died. When the European settlers first arrived they made the erroneous assumption that Australia was infested with rodents. Yet marsupials being a pouched mammal are quite biologically distinct from placental mammals (Eutherian), such as rodents. Australia’s marsupials were never going to cause harm to humans. However, because they were perceived as a possible health threat, many cats and dogs were deliberately brought to Australia by the settlers to control their numbers. With hindsight, Australia’s marsupials have been unfairly decimated simply because they looked like rodents.