Crash of the Bandicoots

Eastern barred bandicoot

Even by the standards of marsupials, bandicoots are a bit odd. The largest order of Australian marsupials are the diprotodonts, a generally herbivorous group that includes kangaroos, koalas, wombats, possums and the like. So most things you probably think of when you think of marsupials, then. The second largest group consists of broadly carnivorous species, most of which are shrew sized, but does also include larger forms, most famously the Tasmanian devil. (It's also this group that includes the antechinus, an animal where the females regularly kill themselves raising their young to adulthood, and the males kill themselves by having too much sex).

This leaves a little over twenty species unaccounted for; species that belong to neither group. All but two of these are bandicoots. These are relatively small animals, with the largest species being about the size of a hare or jackrabbit, and most of the others quite a bit smaller. They're omnivorous, eating things they can find close to the ground, like grass seeds and worms. They share with the herbivorous diprotodonts an unusual feature of the hindfeet whereby the second and third toes are fused into a single digit, albeit one that ends in two claws. Their front teeth, on the other hand, resemble those of, well... every marsupial except the diprotodonts.