What is a numbat?

The numbat is a small and unusual marsupial. They used to be found in southern Australia but now they are found only in two small areas of southwest Western Australia.

Habitat and distribution (where they are found)

The numbat's habitat is eucalyptus forests. In the past, it was also found in grasslands.

The important thing for numbats is that must they live where there are termites.

Their habitat is dry, and numbats do not drink, getting enough moisture from their food.

What do numbats look like? 

The numbat's body is about 20 cm long, and it has a brushy tail about 17 cm long.  Its fur is reddish-brown, with white stripes across its back. These stripes, and its diet, have given it the name 'banded anteater'. The numbat has a narrow head with a pointy muzzle. It has a long thin sticky tongue that it flicks into holes where termites are.

The numbat is unusual because it is a marsupial without a pouch and eats only termites (white ants).

Diet

The numbat is the only marsupial that feeds only on termites.

The insects stick to the numbat's long sticky tongue and are taken into the mouth. Numbats eat about 20,000 termites a day.

Numbats’ teeth are blunt pegs because they do not chew their food.

Unlike other ant-eating mammals, the numbat does not have strong claws for tearing apart termite nests. The numbat is not strong enough to do that, so it finds termites by scent and then scrabbles at the soil to find the corridors that termites travel along.

Behaviours

The numbat is one of the few marsupials that is diurnal, or active during the day.  It sleeps in hollow fallen logs, and sometimes may dig a burrow.

Numbats must be active at times when the termites are active: in summer termites come out in the cool times of the day in early morning and late afternoon, and then go deep into the soil when the day gets hot.

Numbats shelter in logs or burrows during the heat of the day and come out to feed when the termites are out. In winter, termites don't come out until the sun has started to warm the soil, and they stay out until sunset. Numbats also remain active from late morning till sunset so they can feed.

Life Cycle

Males and females mate around December. Being marsupials, the females are pregnant for a very short time and the tiny young are born at a very early stage of development. Fourteen days after mating, female numbats give birth to up to 4 young.

Female numbats do not have a pouch, but have instead a fold of skin along the belly which keeps the young warm. Each young attaches itself to one of four teats on the outside of the mother's belly, unprotected by a pouch, and stays attached for about 5 months.

Young are then moved to a nest at the end of a burrow until spring, when they start to come out and play, staying near the entrance of the burrow for safety. By late spring they are ready to move away and eventually find their own territory.

Conservation Status and Threats

The numbat is classified as Endangered. It was once found across the southern part of Australia but is now only found in a few small areas in Western Australia. Its numbers have been reduced by habitat loss and by predation by cats and foxes, which are introduced animals. 

They are affected by habitat loss: when land is cleared and logs removed they have nowhere to shelter. When termites are cleared also numbats are left with no food.

There are about 1,000 left in the wild: fewer than giant pandas, Sumatran tigers, and many other threatened animals. 

It’s a good idea to get information from more than one source!

Read more about numbats

http://www.australianwildlife.org/wildlife/numbat.aspx

http://www.numbat.org.au/thenumbat/

Watch a video about numbats and why they are endangered

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrxD27Yyl-c