Bandicoot

Bandicoots
Temporal range: Late Oligocene – Recent
Eastern barred bandicoot (Perameles gunni)
Eastern barred bandicoot (Perameles gunni)
Scientific classificationEdit this classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Infraclass: Marsupialia
Clade: Agreodontia
Order: Peramelemorphia
Superfamilies, etc.

See text.

Bandicoots are a group of more than 20 species of small to medium-sized, largely nocturnal, omnivorous marsupials in the order Peramelemorphia. They are endemic to the Australia–New Guinea region, including the Bismarck Archipelago to the east and Seram and Halmahera to the west.

Etymology

The bandicoots are members of the order Peramelemorphia and the word bandicoot is often used informally to refer to any peramelemorph, such as the bilby. The term originally referred to the unrelated Indian bandicoot rat from the Telugu word pandikokku (పందికొక్కు), wherein pandi means pig and kokku means rat.

Characteristics

Bandicoots have V-shaped faces, ending in a prominent nose. These noses make them similar in appearance to elephant shrews and extinct leptictids. The long snout and sharp claws enable them to dig.

Like most marsupials, male bandicoots have bifurcated penises.

A sign near Armadale shopping city, Perth, Australia, asking members of the public not to leave bread for bandicoots and other animals

The embryos of bandicoots have a chorioallantoic placenta that connects them to the uterine wall, in addition to the choriovitelline placenta common to all marsupials. However the chorioallantoic placenta is small compared with those of the Placentalia and lacks chorionic villi.

Bandicoots can reach 11 to 31 in (28 to 79 cm) in length and 0.4 to 3.5 lb (0.18 to 1.6 kg) in weight. A bandicoot has a long pointed snout, large ears, a short body and a long tail. Its body is covered with fur that can be brown, black, golden, white or grey. Bandicoots have strong hind legs well adapted for jumping.

Bandicoots also have low body temperatures and low basal metabolic rates, which aids their survival in hot and dry climates. They also have a low total water evaporative rate and effective panting mechanisms, which further aid their survival in hotter temperatures.

Classification

Classification within the Peramelemorphia was previously thought to be straightforward, with two families in the order—the short-legged and mostly herbivorous bandicoots, and the longer-legged, nearly carnivorous bilbies. In recent years, however, the situation clearly has become more complex. First, the bandicoots of the New Guinean and far-northern Australian rainforests were deemed distinct from all other bandicoots and were grouped together in the separate family Peroryctidae. More recently, the bandicoot families were reunited in the Peramelidae, with the New Guinean species split into four genera in two subfamilies, Peroryctinae and Echymiperinae, while the "true bandicoots" occupy the subfamily Peramelinae. The only exception is the now-extinct pig-footed bandicoot, which has been given its own family, Chaeropodidae.

Vernacular names

Bandicoots in bronze at the Waratah Mills light rail stop on Sydney's Inner West Light Rail line; public art by Ochre Lawson

The name bandicoot is an Anglicised version of a word from the Telugu language of South India meaning 'pig-rat'. What are now called bandicoots are not found in India and 'bandicoot' was originally applied to completely unrelated mammals—several species of large rat (rodents). Today these species, belonging to the genera Bandicota and Nesokia, are referred to as bandicoot rats.

Bandicoots have different names by the indigenous peoples of the Australia–New Guinea region. For example, the Kaurna people refer to the southern brown bandicoot as the bung or the marti. In Oceanic Motu the name mada is used and in Fijian gwaca, It is known as aine in the Abinomn language of Papua, Indonesia.

References

  1. ↑ Bandicoot. Encyclopaedia Britannica. 7 October 2020. Retrieved 29 June 2021.
  2. ↑ "Definition of bandicoot from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary". Retrieved 7 September 2011.
  3. ↑ Satpathy, Sumanyu (30 September 2017). "A tea party with Topiwalla and Alice". The Hindu. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 19 June 2019.
  4. ↑ "About bandicoots". Department of Environment and Science, Queensland. Queensland Government. 2026. Archived from the original on 8 March 2020. Retrieved 22 October 2026.
  5. ↑ "Natural History Collections: Anatomical Differences". Nhc.ed.ac.uk. Retrieved 7 March 2014.
  6. ↑ Feldhamer, George A. (2007). Mammalogy: adaptation, diversity, ecology. JHU Press. p. 232. ISBN 978-0-8018-8695-9.
  7. ↑ "Metabolic and ventilatory physiology of the Barrow Island golden bandicoot (Isoodon auratus barrowensis) and the northern brown bandicoot (Isoodon macrourus)". Journal of Thermal Biology. 33 (6): 337–344. August 2008.
  8. ↑ Strahan, R. (1995). Mammals of Australia. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.
  9. ↑ Travouillon, K.J.; Gurovich, Y.; Beck, R.M.D.; Muirhead, J. (2010). "An exceptionally well-preserved short-snouted bandicoot (Marsupialia; Peramelemorphia) from Riversleigh's Oligo-Miocene deposits, northwestern Queensland, Australia". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 30 (5): 1528. Bibcode:2010JVPal..30.1528T. doi:10.1080/02724634.2010.501463. S2CID 86726840.
  10. ↑ Travouillon, K. J.; Gurovich, Y.; Archer, M.; Hand, S. J.; Muirhead, J. (2013). "The genus Galadi: Three new bandicoots (Marsupialia, Peramelemorphia) from Riversleigh's Miocene deposits, northwestern Queensland, Australia". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 33 (1): 153–168. Bibcode:2013JVPal..33..153T. doi:10.1080/02724634.2012.713416. hdl:11336/5382. S2CID 53525712.
  11. ↑ Gurovich, Yamila; Travouillon, Kenny J.; Beck, Robin M.D.; Muirhead, Jeanette; Archer, Michael (2013). "Biogeographical implications of a new mouse-sized fossil bandicoot (Marsupialia: Peramelemorphia) occupying a dasyurid-like ecological niche across Australia". Journal of Systematic Palaeontology. 12 (3): 265. doi:10.1080/14772019.2013.776646. hdl:11336/5406. S2CID 140187280.
  12. ↑ Travouillon, K.J.; Beck, R.M.D.; Hand, S.J; Archer, M. (2013). "The oldest fossil record of bandicoots (Marsupialia; Peramelemorphia) from the late Oligocene of Australia". Palaeontologia Electronica. 16 (2): 13A.1–13A.52.
  13. ↑ Travouillon, Kenny J.; Archer, Michael; Hand, Suzanne J.; Muirhead, Jeanette (2014). "Sexually Dimorphic Bandicoots (Marsupialia: Peramelemorphia) from the Oligo-Miocene of Australia, First Cranial Ontogeny for Fossil Bandicoots and New Species Descriptions". Journal of Mammalian Evolution. 22 (2): 141. doi:10.1007/s10914-014-9271-8. S2CID 14643777.
  14. ↑ Stirton, R.A. (1955). "Late tertiary marsupials from South Australia". Records of the South Australian Museum 11, 247–268.
  15. ↑ Travouillon, K. J.; Hand, S. J.; Archer, M.; Black, K. H. (2014). "Earliest modern bandicoot and bilby (Marsupialia, Peramelidae and Thylacomyidae) from the Miocene of the Riversleigh World Heritage Area, northwestern Queensland, Australia". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 34 (2): 375. Bibcode:2014JVPal..34..375T. doi:10.1080/02724634.2013.799071. hdl:1959.4/unsworks_36968. S2CID 85622058.
  16. ↑ Lawson, Ochre. "Warratah Mills Light Rail Station - Davis St entrance". ochrelawsonart.com. Retrieved 28 May 2023.
  17. ↑ "Bandicoots". BushHeritageMVC. Retrieved 14 March 2024.
  18. ↑ "Five facts about bandicoots". landscape.sa.gov.au. 28 July 2016. Archived from the original on 20 August 2021. Retrieved 2 March 2021.
  19. ↑ "CLICS³ - Concept BANDICOOT". clics.clld.org. Retrieved 2 March 2021.
  20. ↑ Blust, R. (1982). "The linguistic value of the Wallace Line". Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde. 138 (2): 231–250 [241]. doi:10.1163/22134379-90003470.
  21. ↑ Blust, R. (1993). "Central and Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian". Oceanic Linguistics. 32 (2): 241–293 [251]. doi:10.2307/3623195. JSTOR 3623195.
  22. ↑ Blust, R.; Trussel, S. (2010). "*mansar: bandicoot, marsupial rat". Austronesian Comparative Dictionary. Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Retrieved 8 November 2022.
  23. ↑ Foley, William A. (2018). "The languages of Northwest New Guinea". In Palmer, Bill (ed.). The Languages and Linguistics of the New Guinea Area: A Comprehensive Guide. The World of Linguistics. Vol. 4. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 433–568. ISBN 978-3-11-028642-7.