Lesser bilby
| Lesser bilby | |
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| A stuffed lesser bilby specimen at Tring Museum | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Peramelemorphia |
| Family: | Thylacomyidae |
| Genus: | Macrotis |
| Species: | M. leucura |
| Binomial name | |
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Macrotis leucura Thomas, 1887 |
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| Historic lesser bilby range in orange | |
The lesser bilby (Macrotis leucura), also known as the yallara, the lesser rabbit-eared bandicoot or the white-tailed rabbit-eared bandicoot, was a rabbit-like marsupial. The species was first described by Oldfield Thomas as Peregale leucura in 1887 from a single specimen from a collection of mammals of the British Museum. Reaching the size of a young rabbit, this species lived in the deserts of Central Australia. Since the 1950s–1960s, it has been believed to be extinct.
The lesser bilby was a medium-sized marsupial with a body mass of 300 to 450 grams (11 to 16 oz). Its fur colour ranged from pale yellowish-brown to grey-brown with pale white or yellowish-white fur on its belly, with white limbs and tail. The tail of this animal was long, about 70% of its total head-body length.
Very little is known about its former range and distribution, as the species was collected only six times in modern history, with the first of these coming from an unknown region.
In modern times this species was endemic to the Gibson and Great Sandy deserts of arid central Australia and to northeast South Australia and adjoining southeast Northern Territory in the northern half of the Lake Eyre Basin.
It preferred to live in sandy and loamy deserts, sandplains and dunes covered with spinifex, mulga, zygochloa canegrass and/or tussock grass, as well as in triodia hummock grassland with sparse low trees and shrubs.
The lesser bilby, like its surviving relatives, was a strictly nocturnal animal. It was an omnivore feeding on ants, termites, roots, seeds, but it also hunted and fed on introduced rodents.
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Wikipedia