About the Catchment Area : Animals

Southern Brown Bandicoot (Isoodon obesulus)

See also Valley of the Bandicoot

The Southern Brown Bandicoot prefers sandy soil with scrubby vegetation and / or areas with low ground cover that are burnt out from time to time. During the early stages of regeneration after fire, the diversity of growing vegetation supports abundant insect food and is a very favourable habitat. Later, as the vegetation approaches maturity, the food supply is reduced.

For a particular area to support a more or less stable population, parts of it must be burned fairly regularly, creating a changing mosaic of suitable habitats.

It is nocturnal and prefers to stay close to cover when in search of food on the surface of the ground and in the shallow, conical holes that it digs with its powerful foreclaws. It feeds on earthworms and other invertebrates but mainly insects, both adult and larval. It also eats fungi and other subterranean plant material. During the day, it sleeps in a nest which it constructs on the ground by collecting grass and other plant material, sometimes mixed with earth. Some nests are extremely well concealed among litter and debris or among dense vegetation.

Reproduction is very opportunistic and, with rapid development of young, the species is capable of a high reproductive rate under favourable conditions. Breeding begins in winter and usually lasts six to eight months. There are eight teats in a rear-opening pouch, accommodating one to six (usually two to four) young in a litter. Two or three litters may be reared in a season, weaning of one litter being soon followed by the birth of another. The death rate of juveniles is usually high.

The prospects of young animals, which are weaned when about 60-70 days old, are determined by where they begin their independent lives. If a juvenile is fortunate to discover and claim a small area of newly regenerating vegetation, it will probably survive to an age of about three years. Another may have the luck to be weaned just at the time when a piece of habitat becomes vacant due to death, or movement away, of an old animal. The few young females to establish themselves in suitable habitats mature quickly and produce a succession of litters.

Individual survival depends upon possession and defence of an adequate home range (a big adult may use an area as much as 7 hectares) but in times and places of good food supply, home ranges may overlap substantially. Individuals appear to be solitary in the wild. Captive animals are likely to attack each other if put in the same enclosure.

Before European settlement, the use of fire by Aborigines maintained a complex mosaic of habitats very suitable for the Brown Bandicoot. European settlement has led to clearance, the loss of dense vegetation due to the spread of sheep and cattle and a reduction in the frequency of small/scale fires, all detrimental to be species, which now has a patchy distribution over a reduced range.

Information sourced from:
“The Mammals of Australia,” Australian Museum/Reed Books, 1995. Edited by Ronald Strahan. (Above information compiled by R.W BRAITHWAITE)

Size and Identification

Weight
500-1600 (850g) (males)
400-1100 (700g) (females)

Identification
Identification Dark greyish or yellowish brown above (rather coarse to touch); creamy white below. Tail and upper surface of hindfeet usually dark brown. Adult scrotum usually darkly pigmented. Ears rounded. Large auditory bullae.