Bilby

Macrotis is a genus of desert-dwelling marsupial omnivores known as bilbies or rabbit-bandicoots;[3] 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 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.

Bilby

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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 is sometimes used.[8] The Wiradjuri of New South Wales also call it "bilby".[9]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.[5]

Unlike bandicoots, they are excellent burrowers and build extensive tunnel systems with their strong forelimbs and well-developed claws. A bilby typically makes 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 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 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,[17][18] and a reintroduction into Currawinya National Park in Queensland, where six bilbies were released into a predator-proof enclosure in April 2019.[19]

Successful reintroductions have also occurred on the Peron Peninsula in Western Australia as a part of[20] the Western Shield program, and at other conservation lands, including islands and the Australian Wildlife Conservancy's[21] Scotia[22] and Yookamurra Sanctuaries.[23] There is a highly successful bilby breeding program at Kanyana Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre[24] near Perth, Western Australia.

The bilby lineage extends back 15 million years.[25] In 2014 scientists found part of 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.

The greater bilby, or simply bilby, (Macrotis lagotis) 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.

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.[4][5] The Wiradjuri of New South Wales also call it bilby.[6] Other names include pinkie and rabbit-eared bandicoot.[7]

A scientific description of 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.[8] As all bandicoot species were then placed in a broadly circumscribed Perameles,[9] Reid placed the bilby there too. However, noting how different it was from other members of 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".[10]

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 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,[14] by 1995 the bilby was restricted to arid regions and classed as a threatened species.[15] Before the extreme contraction of its range to remote northern desert areas, the species was well known around Adelaide, especially in the city parklands,[16][17] and it was also recorded as living around Perth.[18]

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 the sole caregivers of their offspring. Mating occurs between pairs of similar dominance, with females rebuffing lower-ranked males.[21] 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 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.[22] 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 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.[21]

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, the biggest threat to the bilby is believed to be predation by introduced predators, notably foxes,[1] with changing fire regimes and pastoralism being landscape-scale variables that also impact bilby distribution and population.[citation needed] 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.[1]

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 the indigenous biodiversity of Australia.[29] A National Bilby Day is held in Australia on the second Sunday in September to raise funds for conservation projects.[30][31]

Successful reintroductions have also occurred onto Peron Peninsula in Western Australia as a part of[39] Western Shield. Successful reintroductions have also occurred on other conservation lands, including islands and the Australian Wildlife Conservancy's[40] Scotia[41] and Yookamurra Sanctuaries.[42] There is a highly successful bilby breeding program at Kanyana Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre,[43] near Perth.

The aim of bilby is to provide a user-friendly interface to perform parameterestimation. It is primarily designed and built for inference of compactbinary coalescence events in interferometric data, but it can also be used formore general problems.

Never heard of a bilby? Well, it's a cute, rabbit-sized marsupial with large ears and a long, pointed nose; once upon a time, it hopped around much of Australia. But the arrival of European settlers some 200 years ago brought hard times for the bilbies. Cities and farms destroyed habitat. Foxes and feral cats preyed on them. And rabbits eventually pushed the bilbies out of their burrows.

In 1968, a 9-year-old girl in Queensland, Rose-Marie Dusting, wrote a story, "Billy The Aussie Easter Bilby," which she published as a book 11 years later. The story helped catalyze the public's interest in saving the bilby, and by 1991, the Foundation for Rabbit-Free Australia began their Easter Bilby campaign to replace the Easter bunny with true native wildlife.

And though Australians still consume plenty of chocolate bunnies each Easter, the chocolate bilbies have helped make bilby lovers out of urbanites who will likely never see the animals in the wild. "The sale of Easter bilbies instead of Easter bunnies has been very successful in increasing public awareness across Australia," says Miller. "It is great to see young kids talking about bilbies instead of bunnies."

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