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The Woylie lives in forests in Australia.
It eats mushrooms, roots and seeds.
It has brown fur.
It carries grass for its nest in its tail.
Foxes hunt Woylies.
What is a Woylie?
The Woylie is also known as the Brush-tailed Bettong. There are five species, or kinds, of bettong. The others are the Burrowing Bettong (endangered), the Rufous Bettong, the Tasmanian Bettong and the Northern Bettong.
The Woylie is a medium-sized marsupial that lives on the ground.
Habitat and Distribution (where it is found)
The Woylie lives in the forests of southwestern Western Australia and South Australia.
Appearance and Behaviours
The Woylie has powerful front legs for digging. Woylies make round nests under fallen logs or under bushes. When it is making a nest, the Woylie curls its tail around bundles of grasses and bark to carry to the nest. It is nocturnal, which means it is active at night. Woylies are related to kangaroos and wallabies, and hop on their back legs in the same way. The Woylie is solitary, which means it lives alone.
Diet
Woylies eat mushrooms and other fungi, as well as roots and seeds.
Life Cycle
Being marsupials, Woylies are born very tiny and undeveloped. About 21 days after mating with a male, a female Woylie gives birth to one young. The tiny young makes its way to the mother's pouch, where it stays for about 13 weeks as it develops and grows.
Conservation Status and Threats
The Woylie was once very common across the southern part of Australia, but became critically endangered because it had been hunted to near extinction by foxes, animals introduced into Australia. In an attempt to save the Woylie, the Western Australian, South Australian and Commonwealth Governments contributed money to investigate ways to reduce fox numbers in the Woylie's habitat. A program of poisoning was started and was very effective in reducing fox numbers.
The Woylies were not affected by the poison because one of the ingredients occurs naturally in the native plants they eat. This made them immune to the poison. The fox threat was reduced and the Woylie numbers increased to the point where they were removed from the critically endangered list in 1996.
However, the reduced number of foxes has led to an increase of feral cats, and the woylie numbers are once again falling very rapidly. Woylies are now being released onto small islands or in fenced areas where introduced predators can be kept out.
If you use any
of this information in your own work acknowledge this source in
your bibliography like this:
Woylie
(2000).
[Online], Available: www.kidcyber.com.au
updated October 2007