Bandicoot

BIRD: linking the biodiversity community

Category: Marsupials

A bandicoot can be any of 10 species of small to medium-sized, terrestrial marsupial omnivores in the family Peramelidae or, in a broader sense, any of the 21 species in the order Peramelemorphia which includes both the true bandicoots and the related rainforest bandicoots of New Guinea.

Classification within the Peramelemorphia used to be simple: there were thought to be two families in the order — the short-legged and mostly herbivorous bandicoots, and the longer-legged, more nearly carnivorous bilbies.

In recent years, however, it has become clear that the rainforest bandicoots of New Guinea and far-northern Australia are distinct from all other bandicoots, and these remain within the order but are now grouped together in the separate family Peroryctidae.

The bilbies, on the other hand, despite their distinct appearance and habits, are more closely related to the true bandicoots than they look, and they are now regarded as at most a subfamily within the Peramelidae.

The extinct Pig-footed Bandicoot differs significantly from the other bandicoots, and if there were still live animals to study, may well have been reclassified into a separate subfamily or even its own family by now.

• ORDER PERAMELEMORPHIA
• Family Peramelidae
  • Western Barred Bandicoot, Perameles bougainville
  • Eastern Barred Bandicoot, Perameles gunnii
  • Long-nosed Bandicoot, Perameles nasuta
  • Desert Bandicoot, Perameles eremiana (extinct)
  • Golden Bandicoot, Isoodon auratus
  • Northern Brown Bandicoot, Isoodon macrourus
  • Southern Brown Bandicoot, Isoodon obesulus
  • Bilby, Macrotis lagotis
  • Lesser Bilby, Macrotis leucura (extinct)
  • Pig-footed Bandicoot, Chaeropus ecaudatus (extinct)
• Family Peroryctidae: rainforest bandicoots, about 11 species in 4 genera