The Bilby
It is omnivorous and its diet includes bulbs, seeds, plants, insects, termites and spiders. The bilby does most of its foraging at night. One of the bilby’s favourite plant foods is the bush onion or yalka that grows in desert sand plains after fires. The bilby can burrow down two metres. It doesn’t need water regularly because, like the koala, it gets most of its moisture from its food. It is also a fast breeder, with a 12 to 14-day gestation period. When the baby is born, it looks like a baked bean with legs. It stays in its mother’s pouch for between 75 and 80 days and is independent about two later. Female bilbies have a backward-opening pouch with eight nipples. At six months of age, the bilby can breed and usually has between one to three babies in a litter. In a good season in the wild, bilbies could have up to eight litters a year. View short videos of Frank Manthey talking about the Bilby. (Courtesy of Headstart – The Courier-Mail.) |
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The bilby is a nocturnal marsupial that has large ears, a silky light grey and white coat and a long black and white tail. They have a long snout and well-developed sense of smell to aid in finding food. Their large, hairless ears are extremely useful for listening for predators. The bilby is a bandicoot and the only surviving representative of the sub-family Thylacomyinae. It is one of the few medium-sized native mammals remaining in arid Australia.