Native to Australia, the numbat (Myrmecobius fasciatus) is also also known as the banded anteater or the walputi. This termite eating marsupial is the only member of the family Myrmecobiidae.

Description

Numbats are about 42 centimetres long from head to tail and are covered mainly in reddish brown fur with six or seven distinct, white bands on their middle and lower back. They have short ears and two black bands that run from the base of the ears to the middle of the snout across the eyes. They also have a bushy tail that resembles a bottle brush that is often carried erect and a narrow pointed snout containing fifty two teeth of different sizes that only immmature numbats use to eat with. Adults may use them to shred bark to use as nesting material.

Another feature is a long, sticky tongue that can stretch to about half the length of its body which is ideal for eating termites. In order to keep such a long tongue moist, numbats have reletively large salivary glands. Their legs are small and delicate which is unusual for a termite-eating animal.

Behaviour

Numbats are generally solitary animals that spend most of their time hunting during the day. They have been known to hunt in the morning and late afternoon in the summer and the middle of the day in the winter. They are totally diurnal¹, reflecting the activity of their termite prey. They do occupy a home range of their own but the boundries are flexible. Young numbats will remain in the family area for the the first nine months of their lives.

Their main predators are goannas², birds of prey such as wedge-tailed eagles and peregrine falcons, foxes and feral cats and dogs. Their colouring helps the numbat to blend in to the natural look of the Australian bush during the day. They have even been known to expand their chest and mid body to wedge themselves inside hollow logs. This together with the ability to turn over inside the narrowest of logs, aided by their flat rumps, makes it very difficult for a predator to extract them. Numbats are unusually unaggressive and gentle when handled.

Diet

Numbats eat termites almost exclusively, occasionally eating other types of ants. They have been known to eat up to as many as 20 000 termites in a day. Numbats feed on the diurnal termites that are found in the fallen logs and branches in their home ranges. Rather than break open trunks and branches, numbats dig out the termites from tunnels in the soil which is why they have not evolved large, muscular limbs. They locate termites using their sense of smell, then dig them out of the soil with their front claws and extract them with their tongues. Even though numbats do have teeth, they usually swallow termites whole. In captivity, they have been fed on a mix of milk, egg and custard with vitamin supplements and ten per cent termites mixed in. Numbats are difficult to keep in captivity due to their particular diet.

Reproduction

Numbats will commonly give birth to four young per litter between January and March. Females to not have a "pouch" as such but rather an indented, mammary patch on the underbelly with four teats covered by long hairs. The young are born tiny, hairless and helpless and from birth, must climb to their mother's teats. They will stay attached to the teat until they grow fur and are too large to remain there. Their mother will carry them on her back and leave them to sleep in a grass lined chamber located at the end of a two metre long borrow while their mother hunts for termites. They are able to fend for themselves at about 7 months of age and will leave their mother when they are around a year old. Females reach sexual maturity after one year and males after two years.

Habitat and Distribution

They can be found in areas where termite poputations are concentrated such as wandoo and jarrah³ woodland areas where there is very little undergrowth but where there are plenty of fallen, hollow branches to hide in. They were once known to inhabit the spinifex, mulga and mallee grasslands of southern Australia. They have even been spotted in some Perth suburbs.

Numbats were once found extensively across most of southern Australia ranging from South Australia to Western Australia, including desert regions, and even beleived to be found more easterly in parts of New South Wales and Victoria. They now only inhabit a few places, Dryandra and Perup forests, in Western Australia. It is believed that the introduction of feral foxes and cats as well as the clearing of woodlands are responsible for the delcine in numbat numbers.

Conservation

An endagered species, the numbat is the faunal emblem of Western Australia, a fact that may have saved it from extinction. They were labeled as the world's most endangered mammal in 1982 but thanks to the efforts of conservationists such as the World Wildlife Fund, the numbat is gaining in numbers.