SPECIES: Dasyuroides byrnei — Kowari
CLASSIFICATION: Vulnerable
Meet the Kowari. It's about the same size as a rat, it eats meat and mostly prefers it's own company! This innocent looking marsupial is capable of eating ground-dwelling birds, rodents, reptiles and even frogs. Not bad for a pint-sized animal that will only grow to about 18cm in length! It has light-grey/brown coloured fur and a thick brushy black tip of its tail. The Kowari is now only found in a restricted desert area of south-west Queensland and the north-east corner of South Australia.
As it's home is often in a stony desert, it will burrow underground - or use an abandoned Bilby burrow - to escape temperatures and predators. The remaining Kowari population is in decline, and major threats to it's ongoing survial are predation - cats, foxes, wild dogs/dingoes, loss of habitat and poison (from bates used to inadvertently control predators). It's already officially extinct in the Northern Territory, let's not let this species disappear from our country all together.
Photo: Elias Neideck - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20...