Quenda
Isoodon fusciventer
- Class
- Mammal
- Rarity
- Common
- Observations
- 1,242
- Most observed in
- 🇦🇺 Australia
Description
The quenda (Isoodon fusciventer), also known as the southwestern brown bandicoot or western brown bandicoot, is a small marsupial species endemic to Southwest Australia. Though it was originally treated as a subspecies of the southern brown bandicoot (Isoodon obesulus), such as by the IUCN where it is given the status of least concern, a 2018 paper proposed to raise it to species rank due to molecular and morphological analysis which revealed it was more closely related to the golden bandicoot (Isoodon auratus). It is currently recognised as a separate species by the ASM Mammal Diversity Database, the Australian Faunal Directory and the Atlas of Living Australia. Quenda are one of the few native marsupials that can still be seen in Perth's urban bushland reserves. They are vulnerable to predation by feral foxes and cats and quenda populations can recover where predators are controlled.
Summary adapted from the Wikipedia article “Quenda”.