The northern quoll (''Dasyurus hallucatus''), also known as the northern native cat, the North Australian native cat or the satanellus is a

carnivorous A carnivore , or meat-eater (Latin, ''caro'', genitive ''carnis'', meaning meat or "flesh" and ''vorare'' meaning "to devour"), is an animal or plant whose food and energy requirements derive from animal tissues (mainly muscle, fat and other sof ...

marsupial Marsupials are any members of the mammalian infraclass Marsupialia. All extant marsupials are endemic to Australasia, Wallacea and the Americas. A distinctive characteristic common to most of these species is that the young are carried in a po ...

native to

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

Taxonomy

The northern quoll is a member of the family

Dasyuridae The Dasyuridae are a family of marsupials native to Australia and New Guinea, including 71 extant species divided into 17 genera. Many are small and mouse-like or shrew-like, giving some of them the name marsupial mice or marsupial shrews, but th ...

, and is often stated to be the most distinctive Australian

quoll Quolls (; genus ''Dasyurus'') are carnivorous marsupials native to Australia and New Guinea. They are primarily nocturnal and spend most of the day in a den. Of the six species of quoll, four are found in Australia and two in New Guinea. Anoth ...

. It was first described in 1842 by naturalist and author

John Gould John Gould (; 14 September 1804 – 3 February 1881) was an English ornithologist. He published a number of monographs on birds, illustrated by plates produced by his wife, Elizabeth Gould, and several other artists, including Edward Lear, ...

, who gave it the species name ''hallucatus'', which indicates it has a notable first digit. This species has sometimes been placed in a separate genus, ''Satanellus''.

Life history

The northern quoll is the smallest of the four Australian quoll species. Females are smaller than males, with adult females weighing between and adult males . Head and body length ranges from for adult males and for adult females. The tail length ranges between . Northern quolls feed primarily on invertebrates, but also consume fleshy fruit (particularly figs), and a wide range of vertebrates, including small mammals, birds, lizards, snakes, and frogs. They also scavenge on

roadkill Roadkill is an animal or animals that have been struck and killed by drivers of motor vehicles on highways. Wildlife-vehicle collisions (WVC) have increasingly been the topic of academic research to understand the causes, and how it can be mi ...

s, around campsites, and in garbage tins. A remarkable feature of this species is that the males show complete die-off after mating, leaving the females to raise the young alone. Females have eight teats in a pouch, but apparently give birth to more than eight young which must wriggle their way to the pouch and compete for a teat to survive. In a study in Western Australia's

Kimberley region The Kimberley is the northernmost of the nine regions of Western Australia. It is bordered on the west by the Indian Ocean, on the north by the Timor Sea, on the south by the Great Sandy Desert, Great Sandy and Tanami Desert, Tanami deserts ...

, the testosterone levels of males peaked in July, and females gave birth in July or August. In the wild, males live for about one year, while the maximum recorded for a wild female was about three years of age. In rocky habitats, the lifespan of both sexes appears to be increased to two or three years, and individuals are larger than those living in savanna habitats, possibly due to better habitat and reduced predation.

Range and habitat

The northern quoll occurs from the

Pilbara The Pilbara () is a large, dry, thinly populated region in the north of Western Australia. It is known for its Aboriginal peoples; its ancient landscapes; the red earth; and its vast mineral deposits, in particular iron ore. It is also a glo ...

region of

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

across the

Northern Territory The Northern Territory (commonly abbreviated as NT; formally the Northern Territory of Australia) is an states and territories of Australia, Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. The Northern Territory ...

to south east

Queensland ) , nickname = Sunshine State , image_map = Queensland in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of Queensland in Australia , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , established_ ...

. Their historical range extended uninterrupted from S.E Queensland to the

Kimberleys The Kimberley is the northernmost of the nine regions of Western Australia. It is bordered on the west by the Indian Ocean, on the north by the Timor Sea, on the south by the Great Sandy and Tanami deserts in the region of the Pilbara, an ...

in Western Australia. There are several disjunct populations. This quoll species is most abundant in rocky ranges and open eucalypt forest.

Conservation status

The northern quoll is currently classified as

Endangered An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching and inva ...

by the

IUCN The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN; officially International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natu ...

. The species is now absent from many parts of its former range, particularly the savanna country. In 2005 it was listed as Endangered under Australian Commonwealth legislation (EPBC Act). Threats are predation by feral cats, dingoes and foxes, particularly after fire or grazing has removed protective ground cover. Destruction, degradation, and fragmentation of the quoll's habitat due to land clearing, grazing, pasture improvement, and mining are also significant. Quolls are also susceptible to being run over on roads. The current major threat to the northern quoll in the northern and western portion of its range is the spread of cane toads. Like many other native Australian species, northern quolls are poisoned after eating or mouthing cane toads. Cane toads were originally introduced in

, but have now occupied the Top End of the Northern Territory, including

Kakadu National Park Kakadu National Park is a protected area in the Northern Territory of Australia, southeast of Darwin. It is a World Heritage Site. Kakadu is also gazetted as a locality, covering the same area as the national park, with 313 people recorded liv ...

and the Darwin area, and entered the Kimberley region of Western Australia, where they are established around Kununurra and Lake Argyle. Immediately after cane toad invasion of Kakadu, quolls became extinct at one study site and declined from 45 individuals to five at another site. The northern quoll may cease to exist in most areas in the Top End once the cane toad population completely overlaps the northern quoll's range. However, remnant populations of northern quolls still persist in Queensland where cane toads have been present for decades. These persisting Queensland quoll populations are naturally toad averse (as observed on remote cameras). One of the northern quoll populations studied in Kakadu during the recent cane toad invasion, had a few individuals survive the invasion. These individuals were, likely similar to the Queensland quolls, genetically averse to the toads. In 2003, to help protect northern quolls, numerous quolls were transferred to the toad-free English Company Islands (Astell and Pobassoo Islands), off the coast of Arnhem Land. Quolls thrived on these islands, with an estimated population of 2193 female northern quolls on Astell Island by 2014. In 2017, quolls from Astell Island were collected, trained via conditioned taste aversion to avoid attacking cane toads and reintroduced to Kakadu National Park. This reintroduction attempt saw the release both toad-trained (22) and toad-naive (9) northern quolls to an area of Kakadu that previous had quolls but where they had recently gone locally extinct due to the invasion of cane toads. Although the toad-trained quolls survived longer than those that received no toad training, ultimately this reintroduction population rapidly went extinct because of dingo predation. Subsequently, research comparing antipredator behaviours of quolls from Astell Island and mainland Queensland determined that quolls conserved on this island had lost their ability to recognise and avoid both dingo and cats, predators they have co-evolved with on mainland Australia for at least 3500 and 150 years respectively. This study suggests that animals conserved in complete isolation from predators can rapidly lose evolved antipredator behaviours, in this case in only 13 generations, when they are no longer maintained via natural selection.

In Aboriginal language and culture

The Northern Quoll is known as njanjma in the Indigenous Kundjeyhmi, Kundedjnjenghmi and

Mayali Mayali or Manyallaluk Mayali is a dialect of Bininj Kunwok, an Australian Aboriginal language. The Aboriginal people who speak Mayali are the Bininj people, who live primarily in western Arnhem Land. Mayali is spoken primarily in south-west Arnh ...

languages, djabbo in

Kunwinjku The Kunwinjku (formerly written Gunwinggu) people are an Australian Aboriginal people, one of several groups within the Bininj people, who live around West Arnhem Land to the east of Darwin, Northern Territory. Kunwinjku people generally refer t ...

, and wijingarri in

Wunambal The Wunambal (Unambal), also known as Wunambal Gaambera, Uunguu (referring to their lands), and other names, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the northern Kimberley region of Western Australia. People The Wunambal were, according to Norma ...

. The

Kunwinjku people The Kunwinjku (formerly written Gunwinggu) people are an Australian Aboriginal people, one of several groups within the Bininj people, who live around West Arnhem Land to the east of Darwin, Northern Territory. Kunwinjku people generally refer t ...

of Western

Arnhem Land Arnhem Land is a historical region of the Northern Territory of Australia, with the term still in use. It is located in the north-eastern corner of the territory and is around from the territory capital, Darwin. In 1623, Dutch East India Compan ...

(

) regard djabbo as "good tucker".

References

Cited references

General references

* Braithwaite, R.W. & R.J. Begg (1995), "Northern Quoll", in Strahan, Ronald, ''The Mammals of Australia'', Reed Books * Oakwood, M. 2000. Reproduction and demography of the northern quoll, ''Dasyurus hallucatus,'' in the lowland savanna of northern Australia. ''Australian Journal of Zoology'' 48, 519–539. * Oakwood, M. and Spratt, D. 2000. Parasites of the northern quoll, ''Dasyurus hallucatus'' (Marsupialia: Dasyuridae) in tropical savanna, Northern Territory. ''Australian Journal of Zoology'' 48, 79–90. * Oakwood, M., Bradley, AJ., and Cockburn, A. 2001. Semelparity in a large marsupial. ''Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, B''. 268, 407–411. * Oakwood, M. 2004. Death after sex. ''Biologist'' 51, 5–8. * Oakwood, M. 2004. Case of the disappearing spots. ''Nature Australia'' 26, 26–35.

External links

McAnulty, B. 2002. "Dasyurus hallucatus" (On-line), Animal Diversity Web. Accessed 29 April 2005
{{Taxonbar, from=Q194271 Dasyuromorphs Mammals of the Northern Territory Mammals of Western Australia Mammals of Queensland Marsupials of Australia Mammals described in 1842