47-503: Macrotis lagotis † Macrotis leucura Paragalia Gray, 1841 Peragale Lydekker, 1887 Phalacomys anon., 1854 Thalaconus Richardson, Dallas, Cobbold, Baird and White, 1862 Thylacomys Blyth, 1840 Macrotis is a genus of desert-dwelling marsupial omnivores known as bilbies or rabbit-bandicoots ; they are members of the order Peramelemorphia . At the time of European colonisation of Australia , there were two species. The lesser bilby became extinct in
94-517: A 15-million-year-old fossilised jaw of a bilby which had shorter teeth that were probably used for eating forest fruit. Prior to this discovery, the oldest bilby fossil on record was 5 million years old. Modern bilbies have evolved to have long teeth used to dig holes in the desert to eat worms and insects. It is thought the bilby diverged from its closest relative, an originally-carnivorous bandicoot , 20 million years ago . Macrotis lagotis The greater bilby ( Macrotis lagotis ), or simply
141-534: A German tradition of an Easter Hare bringing eggs for the children. The hare was a popular motif in medieval church art. In ancient times, it was widely believed (as by Pliny , Plutarch , Philostratus , and Aelian ) that the hare was a hermaphrodite . The idea that a hare could reproduce without loss of virginity led to an association with the Virgin Mary , with hares sometimes occurring in illuminated manuscripts and Northern European paintings of
188-564: A book in German and later quoted by H. Krebs in a notes section in the journal Folk-Lore , also in 1883. His quote is as follows: Some time ago the question was raised how it came that, according to South German still prevailing folk-lore, the Hare is believed by children to lay the Easter-eggs. I venture now to offer a probable answer to it. Originally the hare seems to have been a bird which
235-427: A dozen; and moves between them, using them for shelter both from predators and the heat of the day. The female bilby's pouch faces backward, which prevents her pouch from getting filled with dirt while she is digging. Once widespread in arid, semi-arid and relatively fertile areas covering 70 per cent of mainland Australia , by 1995 the bilby was restricted to arid regions and classed as a threatened species . Before
282-569: A longer tail, bigger ears, and softer, silky fur. The size of their ears allows them to have better hearing. They are nocturnal omnivores that do not need to drink water, as they obtain their moisture from food, which includes insects and their larvae, seeds, spiders, bulbs, fruit, fungi, and very small animals. Most food is found by digging or scratching in the soil, and using their very long tongues. Unlike bandicoots, they are excellent burrowers and build extensive tunnel systems with their strong forelimbs and well-developed claws. A bilby typically makes
329-435: A number of burrows within its home range, up to about a dozen, and moves between them, using them for shelter both from predators and the heat of the day. The female bilby's pouch faces backwards, which prevents the pouch from getting filled with dirt while she is digging. Bilbies have a gestation of about 12–14 days, one of the shortest among mammals. The appearance of the bilby has been alluded to as "Australia’s answer to
376-706: A part of Western Shield . Successful reintroductions have also occurred on other conservation lands, including islands and the Australian Wildlife Conservancy 's Scotia and Yookamurra Sanctuaries . There is a highly successful bilby breeding program at Kanyana Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre, near Perth . The knowledge of the Martu people of the Western Desert has been incorporated into models that predict bilby distributions. Easter rabbit The Easter Bunny (also called
423-533: A very short gestation period of about 12–14 days, one of the shortest among mammals. The young are only 0.25 in (0.6 cm) long and very underdeveloped when they are born. They must crawl to the mother's pouch and latch onto one of her eight teats. They leave the pouch after 70–75 days and remain in the natal burrow for two to three weeks before becoming independent. Litters usually consist of one to three joeys and females can have up to four litters per year in favourable conditions. The Warumungu people of
470-852: Is also listed as vulnerable under the Commonwealth Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 , with a species recovery plan published in 2007. Under state and territory legislation, it is extinct in New South Wales , endangered in Queensland , and vulnerable in the Northern Territory , South Australia and Western Australia . Save the Bilby Fund CEO Kevin Bradley estimated in December 2021 that
517-703: Is derived from an invalid synonym Thylacomys , meaning 'pouched mouse', from the Ancient Greek thýlakos ( θύλακος , 'pouch, sack') and mys ( μῦς , 'mouse, muscle'), sometimes misspelt Thalacomys . The term bilby is a loanword from the Yuwaalaraay Aboriginal language of northern New South Wales , meaning long-nosed rat. It is known as dalgite in Western Australia , and in South Australia , pinkie
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#1732801568827564-410: Is most likely due to the fact that males are often in search of mates and need to only care for themselves, while females are responsible for their offspring and must work to support them. Communication remains difficult between bilbies due to poor eyesight, but since these marsupials usually live alone or in very small groups, this obstacle is not incredibly formidable. Any communication that does occur
611-613: Is mostly olfactory between males or auditory. The scent markings implemented by male bilbies primarily function as a mode of communication between members of the same sex, since female bilbies rarely take heed of such signals and males are never aggressive towards their female counterparts. In captivity, bilbies typically live for at least six years with some specimens reaching ten years of age. However, wild caught bilbies tend to be less than 12 months old. Females become reproductively active at six months of age and can breed all year round if conditions are favourable. Greater bilbies have
658-437: Is sometimes used. The Wiradjuri of New South Wales also call it "bilby". Gerard Krefft recorded the name Jacko used by the peoples of the lower Darling in 1864, emended to Jecko in 1866 along with Wuirrapur from the peoples at the lower Murray River . The placement of the population within taxonomic classification has changed in recent years. Vaughan (1978) and Groves and Flannery (1990) both placed this family within
705-714: The Coptic Orthodox Church , and among Western Christians observing the Daniel Fast . A common practice in England during the medieval Christian era was for children to go door-to-door begging for eggs on the Saturday before Lent began. People handed out eggs as special treats for children to enjoy prior to the Lenten fast; people then abstained from eggs throughout Lent and could enjoy them once again with
752-654: The Easter Bunny by selling chocolate Easter Bilbies (sometimes with a portion of the profits going to bilby protection and research). Reintroduction efforts have begun, with a successful reintroduction into the Arid Recovery Reserve in South Australia in 2000, and a reintroduction into Currawinya National Park in Queensland , where six bilbies were released into a predator-proof enclosure in April 2019. Successful reintroductions have also occurred on
799-502: The Easter Rabbit or Easter Hare ) is a folkloric figure and symbol of Easter , depicted as a rabbit —sometimes dressed with clothes—bringing Easter eggs . Originating among German Lutherans , the "Easter Hare" originally played the role of a judge, evaluating whether children were good or disobedient in behavior at the start of the season of Eastertide , similar to the "naughty or nice" list made by Santa Claus . As part of
846-462: The Easter rabbit ". Bilbies are slowly becoming endangered because of habitat loss and change, and competition with other animals. There is a national recovery plan being developed for saving them. This program includes captive breeding, monitoring populations, and reestablishing bilbies where they once lived. There have been reasonably successful moves to popularise the bilby as a native alternative to
893-563: The Tennant Creek area call this animal, warrikirti , and hunted it by digging up its burrows, or using "goanna dogs" (small dogs) to go down the burrows. The bilbies would then be caught by boomerang. Greater bilbies are a vulnerable species as classified by IUCN , their existence threatened by habitat loss and change as well as the competition with other animals. The main threats are cited as "Livestock farming & ranching" and "Invasive non-native/alien species/diseases". However,
940-429: The bilby , is a long-eared, rabbit-like mammal native to Australia. It lives in burrows and is active at night, feeding on insects, fruit, or fungi. The bilby is a marsupial and carries its young in a pouch. Threats include habitat loss, disease, and introduced predators such as foxes. Formerly widespread, bilbies are now restricted to arid parts of northwestern and central Australia. It is commonly called bilby after
987-662: The blood of Christ , shed as at that time of his crucifixion." The Ukrainian art of decorating eggs, known as pysanky . Similar variants of this form of artwork are seen among other eastern and central European cultures. The idea of an egg-giving hare went to the U.S. in the 18th century. Protestant German immigrants in the Pennsylvania Dutch area told their children about the " Osterhase " (sometimes spelled " Oschter Haws " ). Hase means "hare", not rabbit, and in Northwest European folklore
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#17328015688271034-578: The lesser bilby ( Macrotis leucura ) became extinct in the 1950s. Other names include dalgyte , pinkie , or rabbit-eared bandicoot . The term bilby is a loan word from the Yuwaalaraay Aboriginal language of northern New South Wales , meaning long-nosed rat. It is also known as dalgyte in Western Australia by the Noongar people from their word djalkat . The Wiradjuri of New South Wales also call it bilby . Other names include pinkie and rabbit-eared bandicoot. A scientific description of
1081-501: The "Easter Bunny" indeed is a hare . According to the legend, only good children received gifts of colored eggs in the nests that they made in their caps and bonnets before Easter. In a publication from 1874 German philologist Adolf Holtzmann stated "The Easter Hare is unintelligible to me, but probably the hare was the sacred animal of Ostara ". The connection between Easter and that goddess had been made by Jacob Grimm in his 1835 Deutsche Mythologie . This proposed association
1128-523: The 1950s; the greater bilby survives but remains endangered. It is currently listed as a vulnerable species. The greater bilby is on average 55 cm (22 in) long, excluding the tail, which is usually around 29 cm (11 in) long. Its fur is usually grey or white; it has a long, pointy nose and very long ears, hence the reference of its nickname to rabbits . Macrotis means 'big-eared' ( macro- + ōt- 'ear') in Greek, referring to
1175-615: The Anglo-Saxon goddess Ēostre, but there is no shred of evidence for this; Bede , the only writer to mention Ēostre , does not link her with any animal". A legend often encountered in contemporary times is that Eostre freed a frozen bird from a tree branch by turning it into a hare. It still continued to lay eggs but, having no use for them anymore and in gratitude to the goddess, gave them away. This has no basis in any authentic, pre-Christian folklore, myth or religion and only appears to date from 1883, first published by K. A. Oberle in
1222-558: The Peron Peninsula in Western Australia as a part of the Western Shield program, and at other conservation lands, including islands and the Australian Wildlife Conservancy 's Scotia and Yookamurra Sanctuaries . There is a highly successful bilby breeding program at Kanyana Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre near Perth , Western Australia. The bilby lineage extends back 15 million years. In 2014 scientists found part of
1269-678: The Virgin and Christ Child . It may also have been associated with the Holy Trinity , as in the three hares motif. In Christianity , for the celebration of Eastertide, Easter eggs symbolize the empty tomb of Jesus , from which Jesus was resurrected . Eggs became associated with Easter specifically when eating them was prohibited during the fast of Lent , when believers abstaned from meat and animal products—a practice that continues in certain Christian denominations today, such as
1316-537: The animal had been pushed back to around 10% of their former range, which covered 70% of Australia. The bilby has been popularised as a native alternative to the Easter Bunny by selling chocolate Easter Bilbies . Haigh's Chocolates in Adelaide made 950,000 chocolate bilbies between 1993 and Easter 2020, with proceeds donated to the Foundation for Rabbit-Free Australia, which does environmental work to protect
1363-430: The animal's large, long ears. The genus name was first proposed as a subgeneric classification, which after a century of taxonomic confusion was eventually stabilised as the accepted name in a 1932 revision by Ellis Troughton . In reviewing the systematic arrangement of the genus, Troughton recognised three species names, including one highly variable population with six subspecies. The family's current name Thylacomyidae
1410-429: The biggest threat to the bilby is believed to be predation by introduced predators, such as red foxes , with changing fire regimes and pastoralism being landscape-scale variables that also impact bilby distribution and population. There is a national recovery plan for saving these animals: this program includes breeding in captivity, monitoring populations, and re-establishing bilbies where they once lived. The species
1457-573: The conclusion of Lent at the arrival of Easter Sunday. As a special dish, eggs have been decorated by Christians as part of the Easter celebrations. Eggs boiled with some flowers change their color, bringing the spring into the homes, and some over time added the custom of decorating the eggs . Many Christians of the Eastern Orthodox Church and Oriental Orthodox Church to this day typically dye their Easter eggs red "in memory of
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1504-698: The currently accepted scientific name for the species is Macrotis lagotis . The placement of bilbies within the Peramelemorphia has changed in recent years. Vaughan (1978) and Groves and Flannery (1990) both placed this family within the family Peramelidae . Kirsch et al. (1997) found them to be distinct from the species in Peroryctidae (which is now a subfamily in Peramelidae). McKenna and Bell (1997) also placed it in Peramelidae, but as
1551-550: The enclosure, but with at least six cats remaining after around 30 were culled, release was being held back. The Charleville Bilby Experience at Charleville, Queensland , run by the Save the Bilby Fund, has a breeding program , with the first set of twins born in December 2021. Babies born here are sometimes transferred to Currawinya. Successful reintroductions have also occurred onto Peron Peninsula in Western Australia as
1598-485: The extreme contraction of its range to remote northern desert areas, the species was well known around Adelaide , especially in the city parklands , and it was also recorded as living around Perth . It makes its home in a burrow that spirals down, making it hard for its predators to get in. The bilby prefers arid habitats because of the spinifex grass and the acacia shrubs. Greater bilbies are nocturnal omnivores that do not need to drink water, as they get all
1645-556: The family Peramelidae . Kirsch et al. (1997) found them to be distinct from the species in Peroryctidae (which is now a subfamily in Peramelidae). McKenna and Bell (1997) also placed it in Peramelidae, but as the sister of Chaeropus in the subfamily Chaeropodinae. Here is a summary of the treatment as a peramelemorph family: Fossil taxa allied to the family are: Bilbies have the characteristic long bandicoot muzzle and very big ears that radiate heat. They are about 29–55 cm (11–22 in) long. Compared to bandicoots, they have
1692-557: The genus, he added that "should more of the same form be discovered, the above characters would constitute a subgenus to which the name of Macrotis might be applied". The specific epithet lagotis was chosen "from its resemblance to the Rabbit". The following year, Richard Owen read a paper before the Zoological Society of London , in which he proposed to erect a new genus for this species, named Thylacomys . This name
1739-420: The greater bilby was first published in 1837 by a Mr J. Reid. Reid based his description on a specimen that he erroneously stated to have come from Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania ), where the species has not occurred in historical times. As all bandicoot species were then placed in a broadly circumscribed Perameles , Reid placed the bilby there too. However, noting how different it was from other members of
1786-721: The indigenous biodiversity of Australia. A National Bilby Day is held in Australia on the second Sunday in September to raise funds for conservation projects. Reintroduction efforts have been successful in South Australia, with 16 bilbies released onto Thistle Island in 1997, and 9 released into the Arid Recovery Reserve near Roxby Downs in 2000. The Arid Recovery population's gene pool has been expanded by two additional releases in 2010 and 2020,
1833-729: The latter from the thriving population on Thistle Island. From 2001 to 2003, 19 bilbies were introduced into the Venus Bay Conservation Park at Venus Bay on the Eyre Peninsula . Bilbies have been bred at Monarto Zoo and (since 2009) at Cleland Wildlife Park . Bilbies were also introduced into the Currawinya National Park in Queensland, with six bilbies released into the feral-free sanctuary in early February 2006. In July 2012 it
1880-594: The legend, the creature carries colored eggs in its basket, as well as candy, and sometimes toys, to the homes of children. As such, the Easter Bunny again shows similarities to Santa (or the Christkind ) and Christmas by bringing gifts to children on the night before a holiday. The custom was first mentioned in Georg Franck von Franckenau 's De ovis paschalibus ("About Easter Eggs") in 1682, referring to
1927-632: The male is about the same size as a rabbit ; although male animals in good condition have been known to grow up to 3.7 kilograms (8.2 lb) in captivity. The female is smaller, and weighs around 0.8 to 1.1 kilograms (1.8 to 2.4 lb). Bilbies have an excellent sense of smell and sharp hearing. Their fur is blue-grey with patches of tan and is very soft. The tail is black and white with a distinct crest. Unlike bandicoots, they are excellent burrowers and can build extensive tunnel systems with their strong forelimbs and well-developed claws. A bilby typically makes several burrows within its home range, up to about
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1974-538: The moisture they need from their food, which includes insects and their larvae , seeds, spiders, termites, bulbs, fruit, fungi, and very small animals. Most food is found by digging or scratching in the soil, and using their very long tongues. They smell out witchetty grubs in roots of wattles and lancewood, and bite open the roots to get the grubs. Greater bilbies are generally solitary marsupials; however, there are some cases in which they travel in pairs. These pairs usually consist of two females, and these females are
2021-404: The sister of Chaeropus in the subfamily Chaeropodinae. Greater bilbies have the characteristics of long bandicoot muzzle and very long ears. They are about 29–55 centimetres (11–22 in) in length. Compared to bandicoots, they have a longer tail, bigger ears, and softer, silky fur. The size of their ears allows them to have better hearing as well. At 1 to 2.4 kilograms (2.2 to 5.3 lb),
2068-517: The sole caregivers of their offspring. Mating occurs between pairs of similar dominance, with females rebuffing lower-ranked males. Much of the plant diet of the bilby is facilitated by fires that occasionally run through Australian regions and facilitate the regrowth of plants that the bilby prefers. They are also a highly motile species when it comes to foraging, with females travelling on average 1.5 km between burrows and male travelling up to 5 km. The difference in male and female motility
2115-557: Was repeated by other authors including Charles Isaac Elton and Charles J. Billson. In 1961 Christina Hole wrote, "The hare was the sacred beast of Eastre (or Ēostre ), a Saxon goddess of Spring and of the dawn." The belief that Ēostre had a hare companion who became the Easter Bunny was popularized when it was presented as fact in the BBC documentary Shadow of the Hare (1993). The Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore however states "nowadays, many writers claim that hares were sacred to
2162-479: Was reported that the population at Currawinya has been affected by feral cats that had gained access into the protected area after the wire netting had rusted after flooding. The high- salinity flood water had pooled around sections of the fencing, and once parts of it had rusted the cats had entered the reserve through the holes. Surveys found no bilbies in April nor July, when the cats were discovered. As of July 2015 there were 75 bilbies ready to be released into
2209-403: Was widely adopted and remained in use for many years. Thus it was that when B. Arthur Bensley erected a subfamily to hold the genus in 1903, he named it Thylacomyinae . This name remains valid, and has since been promoted to family rank as Thylacomyidae , but Thylacomys itself is no longer considered valid, as Reid's original paper is held to have established the generic name Macrotis . Thus
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