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Numbat — printable fact sheet
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Numbat
Myrmecobius fasciatus
Myrmecobius fasciatus is the only marsupial that is fully diurnal and eats nothing but termites, roughly 20,000 a day, licked up with a tongue that can extend about 10 cm. Being active by day is not a preference but a constraint: it has no digging claws worth the name and cannot…
Did you know?
- Numbats are the only member of the family Myrmecobiidae, making them evolutionarily unique among marsupials.
- The numbat is Western Australia's faunal emblem and appears on the state's conservation branding, yet most Australians have never seen one in the wild. Its long, bushy tail is often held erect and bottlebrushed, and it may function as a visual signal and a distraction target for raptors, which are the numbat's main natural predator by day. Numbats are among the very few mammals that have essentially abandoned mastication entirely — the termites are swallowed whole and broken down chemically.
What I learned
Draw the numbat
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