Numbats are the only marsupial that feeds exclusively on termites, and they have organized their entire existence around that single food source with a completeness that is either admirable or alarming depending on how you feel about dietary flexibility.
The numbat is small, roughly the size of a squirrel, with a pointed snout, a long sticky tongue, and no functional teeth to speak of. It does not need teeth because it does not chew. Termites are swallowed whole, ground up in a muscular stomach that does the work teeth would otherwise do. The tongue can extend well beyond the length of the snout and moves in and out of termite galleries at up to 100 times per minute, collecting termites with a speed that compensates for the small number captured per lick.
Unlike most marsupials, numbats are diurnal, active during the day, which is when termites are closest to the surface of their galleries and most accessible. The timing of numbat activity tracks termite surface activity so precisely that numbats become more active as the day warms and termites move upward, and retreat to shelter as temperatures peak and termites descend again. Learn more about how animals adapt to their environment. The numbat’s daily schedule is essentially a function of termite behavior.
The striped pattern of the fur, white stripes on a reddish-brown background, provides camouflage in the dappled light of the wandoo and jarrah woodlands of southwestern Australia where numbats live. The habitat is specific. Numbats need old-growth woodland with hollow logs for shelter and a high density of termite colonies in the soil. Cleared farmland, even if it contains some trees, does not work.
How Numbats Nearly Vanished
Before European settlement, numbats were found across much of southern Australia. Today the wild population is estimated at fewer than 1,000 individuals, confined to two small areas of southwestern Western Australia and a handful of reintroduction sites. The collapse was driven by introduced foxes and cats, which found numbats easy prey. A diurnal marsupial with no defensive capabilities beyond running is not well equipped against predators that hunt by scent and can operate at night.
Recovery programs involving intensive fox and cat control within fenced reserves have stabilized the remaining populations and allowed slow growth. Reintroductions to fenced sanctuaries in South Australia and New South Wales have established new populations outside the species‘ contracted range. The numbat is one of the Australian conservation success stories, in the limited sense that it still exists, which was not guaranteed twenty years ago.
The animal that eats three million termites a year and nothing else, that schedules its day around termite surface behavior, that needs old hollow logs and old woodland and a landscape free of foxes, is hanging on. Just.