Lesser Bilby

Introduced foxes and cats preyed on the lesser bilby

Red foxes, domestic cats and wild rabbits introduced to Australia are considered the main reason why the marsupial species lesser bilby became extinct in the middle of the 20th century.

After its discovery in 1887, the population of the bilby declined steadily from 1900 onward. Foxes and cats hunted the marsupial, and wild rabbits displaced the bilby from its habitat. In addition, the large-scale conversion of inland Australia into livestock pasture had a negative effect on the animal species. Indigenous Australians also occasionally hunted the small marsupials for food.

The last confirmed sighting of an animal of this species occurred in 1931 near Koonchera Dune in northeastern South Australia. The IUCN relies on oral reports from Aborigines stating that the lesser bilby may have survived in the western deserts into the 1960s.

In 1967, a skull of the bilby was found in the nest of a wedge-tailed eagle (Aquila audax) southeast of Alice Springs, on the edge of the Simpson Desert. Whether this find can provide evidence for the existence of living lesser bilbies cannot be said, as the exact age of the skull is difficult to determine. According to the IUCN, it is considered certain that the skull was less than 15 years old at the time.

In addition to the lesser bilby, the related pig-footed bandicoot also became extinct at the beginning of the 20th century because of habitat loss and predation by cats and rats.

Lesser bilby – fact sheet

alternative names	Yallara, Lesser rabbit-eared bandicoot, White-tailed rabbit-eared bandicoot
scientific name	Macrotis leucura
original range	Australia
time of extinction	by the 1960s at the latest
causes of extinction	animals introduced to the island, habitat loss
IUCN status	extinct

Little is known about the marsupial’s way of life

As far as is known, lesser bilbies preferred the dry interior of Australia, such as deserts, sand dunes and sandplains. There is evidence that they also inhabited grassland with sparse small trees and shrubs.

The animals, which moved by hopping, were nocturnal. With their powerful forelegs, they dug deep burrows whose entrances they closed when they stayed inside during the day. Their diet consisted mainly of roots, insects and other small animals.

The closest relative of these marsupials is the greater bilby (Macrotis lagotis), which still exists in Australia. Unlike its larger relative, the lesser bilby was described as aggressive by the mammalogist Hedley Herbert Finlayson.

Finlayson wrote in his book On Mammals from the Lake Eyre Basin (1936): The lesser bilby was “savage and tenacious, and (it) resisted the gentlest attempts to touch it with repeated snapping and harsh hissing sounds”.

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