Mammals
Numbat
Myrmecobius fasciatus · also called numbat, banded anteater, walpurti
The numbat is a striped, bushy-tailed little marsupial that has built its entire existence around termites. It eats nothing else, it is one of the only marsupials that works a strict daytime shift, and it has more teeth than any other land mammal — all of them nearly useless, because it never chews.
Overview
Numbats live in eucalypt woodland in southwestern Western Australia, in a handful of natural and reintroduced populations. They are solitary, ground-dwelling, and strictly diurnal, spending the daylight hours foraging for termites and the night in a hollow log, often plugging the entrance with their rump. They are about the size of a small squirrel, reddish-brown with bold white bands across the back and a long, often erect tail.
A termite machine
The numbat’s day is timed to the termites, which work in shallow runways near the surface while it is warm. It rakes the galleries open with its forefeet and laps the termites up with a long, sticky tongue that extends to about half its body length. It needs around 20,000 termites a day. Its ~50 peg-like teeth — the most of any land mammal — do essentially nothing.
No pouch
The female numbat has no pouch. Her up to four young cling to teats on her belly, covered only by long belly hair, for about six months before being left in a nest. The numbat is the sole survivor of its family.
Status
The numbat is Endangered, with fewer than ~1,000 mature individuals. Once widespread across southern Australia, it was devastated by introduced foxes and cats — a small, day-active, log-sheltering animal has little defence — and by woodland clearing and the loss of the fallen timber it needs. Fox baiting, captive breeding, and fenced reintroductions have rebuilt the population from a few hundred. It is the animal emblem of Western Australia.
Numbat: common questions
Why does the numbat eat only termites and not ants?
Its whole body is specialised for termites specifically. Numbats forage by day, when termites are working in shallow runways just below the surface and in fallen wood, and the numbat rakes these open with its forefeet and laps the termites up with its long sticky tongue. Ants, by contrast, are aggressive, bite and sting, and are active at different times, and the numbat has no defence against them and does not target them. A numbat needs the equivalent of around 20,000 termites a day, so it spends most of daylight hours foraging and can travel over a kilometre doing it.
Is a numbat a marsupial, and does it have a pouch?
Yes, it is a marsupial, but it is unusual in having no proper pouch. The female produces up to four tiny young that crawl to four teats on the underside of her belly and attach. Instead of being enclosed in a pouch, they are simply covered by a patch of long, crimped belly hair while they hang from the teats for around six months. Later she leaves them in a nest chamber in a hollow log and returns to nurse them. The numbat is also the only surviving member of its family, Myrmecobiidae, so it has no close living relatives.
Why is the numbat endangered?
When Europeans arrived, numbats lived across a huge swath of southern Australia. They were then almost wiped out by introduced red foxes and, to a lesser extent, feral cats, against which a small, ground-dwelling, day-active animal that shelters in hollow logs has very little defence. Clearing of woodland for farming and the loss of the fallen timber they nest and forage in did the rest. By the 1980s only two natural populations remained, totalling a few hundred animals. Fox baiting, captive breeding, and reintroduction behind predator-proof fences have since built the total back toward a thousand, but it remains Endangered.
How can you tell a numbat from other small mammals?
The combination is unmistakable in its range — a reddish-brown to grey body crossed by six or more bold white bands over the rump, a pointed snout, a dark eye-stripe, a long bushy tail often held erect, and daytime activity on the ground in eucalypt woodland. It is roughly squirrel-sized. Nothing else in southwestern Australia looks like it, which — along with its role as the state emblem — makes it a flagship species that people can recognise and want to protect.