A tiny, shrew-like marsupial found in south-eastern Australia and Tasmania. It’s related to quolls and the Tasmanian devil, not to mice, even though at first glance it looks very mouse-ish: a small, thickset body, pointed snout, rounded ears, and a long, slender tail. Adults have a tail about 70% of that length, and usually weigh only a few dozen grams. Their fur is soft brown to grey-brown above and paler underneath, with a faint pale ring around each eye that gives them a slightly wide-eyed look.

As the name suggests, swamp antechinus love damp, dense vegetation. They live in closed or open heath, swampy grassland, wet tussock sedge, bracken, and low forest, often where the ground stays moist and thick with cover. They build nests of grass and leaves tucked into tussocks, logs, or burrows, and spend a lot of time under cover rather than in the open. They’re mainly nocturnal but can also be active in the early morning or late afternoon, snuffling through litter and topsoil. Their diet is almost entirely animal: insects, spiders, worms and other small invertebrates, which they dig out with long fore-claws and snap up with sharp teeth. In other words, they’re tiny, hyperactive bug-hunters that help keep invertebrate numbers in check.

Their breeding system is one of the wildest things in mammal biology. Once a year, during a short, intense mating season in late autumn and early winter, males stop almost everything except searching for females and mating. They barely eat or sleep, their stress hormones skyrocket, their immune systems crash… and within a few weeks after mating, every adult male in the population is dead.

Distribution

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Population est.

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Comments

Australia

2015