Carnivorous Nights_ On the Trail of the Tasmanian Tiger - Margaret Mittelbach [114]
Quolls are such unknown animals in America that our edition of Webster's didn't even include their name. Androo said that this ignorance extended to Australia. “The problem with quolls is that a lot of Australians wouldn't know the word ‘quoll’ or what a quoll is. They might know the saying ‘quolling about,’ which is like ferreting. But they don't know the animal.”
We followed Androo to an open-air enclosure fenced off by chicken wire. Inside, there were ferns, tree stumps, branches, and rocks scattered on the ground. A cockatoo squawked from a nearby tree.
Androo opened the gate to the enclosure, and we saw an unusual creature. Its body was long—about fourteen inches—and its black fur was covered with white spots. “We have two species of quolls in Tasmania, the Eastern and the spotted-tailed. That's an Eastern quoll, black morph.” The quoll's small face tapered sharply to a wet, hairless pink nose. Its body sat low to the ground like a ferret's, and its black tail was long and bristly. As soon as we walked in, the spotted beast dashed away in a blur of motion.
The Eastern quoll (the fourth-largest carnivorous marsupial in the world) is believed to be extinct on the mainland. The last one documented was run over by a car in a Sydney suburb in 1963. The Eastern quoll had once ranged throughout southeastern Australia, but competition from foxes and feral cats, forest habitat destruction, and poisoning by farmers had written its epitaph. Tasmania was the only place the Eastern quoll survived.
“Look at its whiskers and sharp little face,” said Androo. Though Eastern quolls occasionally stole food from Tasmanian devils and caught mice, small marsupials, and ground birds, they lived primarily on a diet of insects in the wild.
In a neighboring enclosure was another Eastern quoll, this one with an orange-brown coat and white polka dots. It sat quietly next to a rock and didn't dash away when Androo approached. “It's blind,” Androo said. “Parks and Wildlife gave me that one. It was hit by a car, but he's doing okay. It's a fawn morph. The majority of Eastern quolls are this color.”
We looked at the quoll's round perky ears and sightless almond-shaped eyes. Its short legs were covered in white fur.
Breeding quolls in captivity isn't easy. They only breed once a year, and males and females have to be sequestered soon after mating—because males can become very aggressive. But the process is rewarding. Like devils, Eastern quolls give birth to supernumerary offspring, as many as thirty, although they only have six teats and usually only raise three or four young. Seeing the young ones is a touching experience, Androo said. Quolls are smaller than a grain of rice when they're born and highly undeveloped. Yet, even when they're only a couple of inches in size, still furless and naked, the pouch young already have spots visible on their skin.
Watching the pouch young grow is heartwarming, too. The Eastern quoll's pouch is small relative to a kangaroo's and after about three months, the young outgrow it and are left in a grassy shelter inside a cave, log, or tree hollow. If the mother needs to change dens, she carries the young on her back. The mother doesn't teach the young to hunt. They do it instinctively, so captive-raised Eastern quolls are not disadvantaged when they're introduced into the wild.
Androo moved on to another enclosure, where we saw another species of quoll. It was larger and more powerful-looking. “That's the big tiger quoll, also called the spotted-tailed quoll, a female.”
She had a muscular back and longer legs than the Eastern quoll. In the sun, her fur glinted chocolate brown. White spots ran the length of her body and all the way down her long, bushy, impressive tail. She looked intimidating. Her head was round and hulking and her back was humped like a devil's.
“Now that's a predator,” said Alexis.
Spotted-tailed quolls dispatched their prey—possums, birds, rabbits, chickens