bandicoot

(băn'dĭ-kūt')

1. Any of several large rats of the genera Bandicota and Nesokia of southeast Asia.
2. Any of several ratlike marsupials of the family Peramelidae, of Australia and adjacent islands, that feed on insects and plants and have a long, tapering snout and elongated hind legs.

[Telugu bantikokku : banti, ball + kokku, long beak.]

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Long-nosed bandicoot (Perameles nasuta). (credit: Warren Garst — Tom Stack and Associates)

Any of about 22 species of marsupials (family Peramelidae) found in Australia, Tasmania, New Guinea, and nearby islands. Bandicoots are 12 – 30 in. (30 – 80 cm) long, including the 4- to 12-in. (10 – to 30-cm) sparsely haired tail. They have a stout, coarse-haired body, a tapered muzzle, and hindlimbs longer than their forelimbs. Unlike other marsupials, bandicoots have a placenta. They are terrestrial, solitary animals that dig pits to search for insect and plant food. Farmers consider them pests. All species have declined, and some are now endangered.

For more information on bandicoot, visit Britannica.com.

Not every animal is a friend to humankind. There is a particularly unappetizing little mammal in the southeast of India known as the "pig-rat" or pandikokku in the Telugu language spoken there. In 1789, an English writer called it a "troublesome animal" because of "its offensive smell." In 1813, another complained that "bandicoote rats frequently undermine warehouses and destroy every kind of merchandise."

Meanwhile, another kind of bandicoot was in the making. Australia was beginning to swarm with English explorers and settlers. As early as 1799, someone familiar with the bandicoot of India saw something that looked like it in Australia and gave the latter that name. It has stuck with the Australian creature ever since.

Later observers realized that the Indian bandicoot and the Australian one are quite unrelated. What's more, the Australian bandicoot is cute. Or at least comical. It is the size of a rabbit but with a long nose and long legs. Like a kangaroo or opossum, it is a marsupial and sleeps during the day. Also like a kangaroo or opossum, it has a combing toe on each hind foot for grooming and scratching. Its main foods are roots, bulbs, and insects, but it also occasionally eats lizards or other small animals.

Australian bandicoots come in several species, but there aren't as many as there used to be. The desert bandicoot and the pig-footed bandicoot are extinct. The golden bandicoot and barred bandicoot are rare, and even rabbit bandicoots are not plentiful. According to the Australian National Dictionary, since the 1830s the bandicoot has been spoken of "as an emblem of deprivation" in phrases like "miserable as a bandicoot" and "poor as a bandicoot." To bandicoot, in Australian English, is to surreptitiously dig potatoes, leaving the tops behind.

The language from which bandicoot came, Telugu, is spoken by nearly seventy million people in southeastern India. It is an official language in the state of Andhra Pradesh and has the greatest number of speakers of any of the Dravidian languages. The pitta (1840), a bright-colored bird, also has a Telugu name in English.

Small, 1 ft, fawn, sometimes barred marsupial with a pointed nose, prick ears and long back legs. It is nocturnal, burrowing, insectivorous and a host for Ixodes holocyclus. Called also Perameles spp.

• Marsupials
• Rodents

This article is about the animal. For the game series, see Crash Bandicoot (series).

Eastern Barred Bandicoot

Bandicoots are a group of about 20 species of small to medium-sized, terrestrial marsupial omnivores in the order Peramelemorphia. They are found in Australia.

Contents 1 Etymology 2 Description 3 Classification 4 References

Etymology

The word itself is often used as a common name for any of them, and is an anglicised form of the Telugu word (పందికొక్కు) (pandi-kokku).pandi-kokku, (loosely, pig-rat),^[1] which originally referred to the unrelated Indian Bandicoot Rat. The other two species of peramelemorphs are the bilbies.

Description

Their fur is short and usually brown, yellow or black.^{[citation needed]}

The embryos of bandicoots, unlike other marsupials, form a placenta-like organ that connects it to the uterine wall.^[2] The function of this organ is probably to transfer nutrients from the mother; however the structure is small, compared to those of the Placentalia.

They may also serve as a primary reservoir for Coxiella burnetii, infection is transmitted among them by ticks. These are then transmitted to domestic animals (cattle, sheep and poultry). The infected domestic animals shed them in urine, faeces, and placental products. It is transmitted to humans causing Q fever by inhalation of aerosols of these materials. Main symptoms may be pneumonia and/or hepatitis.

Classification

Classification within the Peramelemorphia used to be simple. There were thought to be two families in the order — the short-legged and mostly herbivorous bandicoots, and the longer-legged, nearly carnivorous bilbies. In recent years, however, it has become clear that the situation is more complex. First, the bandicoots of the New Guinean and far-northern Australian rainforests were deemed distinct from all other bandicoots and were grouped together in the separate family Peroryctidae. More recently, the bandicoot families were reunited in Peramelidae, with the New Guinean species split into four genera in two subfamilies, Peroryctinae and Echymiperinae, while the "true bandicoots" occupy the subfamily Peramelinae. The only exception is the now extinct Pig-footed Bandicoot, which has been given its own family, Chaeropodidae.

• Order Peramelemorphia
  • Family Thylacomyidae: bilbies, 2 species
  • Family †Chaeropodidae: Pig-footed Bandicoot
  • Family Peramelidae
    • Subfamily Peramelinae
      • Genus Isoodon: short-nosed bandicoots
      • Genus Perameles: long-nosed bandicoots
    • Subfamily Peroryctinae
      • Genus Peroryctes: New Guinean long-nosed bandicoots
    • Subfamily Echymiperinae
      • Genus Echymipera: New Guinean spiny bandicoots
      • Genus Microperoryctes: New Guinean mouse bandicoots
      • Genus Rhynchomeles: Ceram Bandicoot
  • Superfamily †Yaraloidea
    • Family †Yaralidae: fossil bandicoots, 2 species

References

Look up bandicoot in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

1. ^ "Definition of bandicoot from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary". http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bandicoot. Retrieved September 07, 2011. 
2. ^ George A. Feldhamer (2007). Mammalogy: adaptation, diversity, ecology. JHU Press. pp. 232. ISBN 978-0-8018-8695-9. http://books.google.com/books?id=udCnKce9hfoC. Retrieved 7 September 2011. 

v d e Extant Peramelemorphia species by family Kingdom Animalia · Phylum Chordata · Class Mammalia · Infraclass Marsupialia Thylacomyidae (Bilbies) Macrotis Greater Bilby (M. lagotis) Peramelidae (Bandicoots) Isoodon (Short-nosed bandicoots) Golden Bandicoot (I. auratus) · Northern Brown Bandicoot (I. macrourus) · Southern Brown Bandicoot (I. obesulus) Perameles (Long-nosed bandicoots) Western Barred Bandicoot (P. bougainville) · Eastern Barred Bandicoot (P. gunnii) · Long-nosed Bandicoot (P. nasuta) Peroryctes (New Guinean long- nosed bandicoots) Giant Bandicoot (P. broadbenti) · Raffray's Bandicoot (P. raffrayana) Echymipera (New Guinean spiny bandicoots) Clara's Echymipera (E. clara) · David's Echymipera (E. davidi) · Menzies' Echymipera (E. echinista) · Common Echymipera (E. kaluba) · Long-nosed Echymipera (E. rufescens) Microperoryctes (New Guinean mouse bandicoots) Arfak Pygmy Bandicoot (M. alpini) · Striped Bandicoot (M. longicauda) · Mouse Bandicoot (M. murina) · Papuan Bandicoot (M. papuensis) Rhynchomeles Seram Bandicoot (R. prattorum) Category

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