Slender-tailed Dunnart
S5, profile
Slender-tailed Dunnart
S5, Head
Animals
Plants
Info
| Slender-tailed Dunnart S5, profile | | Slender-tailed Dunnart S5, Head | | ||
Animals Plants Info |
 | Class: | Animals (Animalia) - Chordates (Chordata) - Mammals (Mammalia) | ||||||||||||
| Order: | Carnivorous marsupials (Dasyuromorphia) | |||||||||||||
| Family: | Carnivorous Marsupials (Dasyuridae) iNaturalist Observation | |||||||||||||
| Species: | Slender-tailed Dunnart (Sminthopsis murina)| This Photo: | 🔍S2, Female, Anterior, Released🔎 | Thank you Sam Gordon (SamGordon) for confirming the id of this species for us General Species Information: Found on Ellura (in the Murray Mallee, SA), the Riverland and elsewhere ~56mm body & nose plus ~48mm tail length gives ~104mm total length. 5 front feet toes/fingers, 4 visible rear feet toes with a 5th tiny one half way up the foot. A small mouse like marsupial. Females have a pouch Apart from the front toe count (4 in mice, 5 here), compared to a house mouse, Dunnarts have pointed snout, bigger eyes (but this is harder to make out in daytime as they squint a lot more as seen in the photo's here) & shorter, hairy tail. They are similar in size. If you see one hopping, it's most likely a dunnart. If you see it running or walking it could be either. Dunnarts have an ear notch, which is hard to distinguish from the tear in the mouse that we have shown below. We don't get Antechinuses in the Murraylands, with the only other similar animals in our region being the Fat-tailed Dunnart (Sminthopsis crassicaudata, Rare) which matches this one exept for the thickness of the tail and the introduced house mouse. S1 & S2 were found on an expedition North of here, with a team of people helping with id's. S3 was found in our garage today, which we measured. We saw one a few days ago diving for a hole in the frame under the floor (we assume to a nest in the earthwool insulation) of the garage. This morning it was sitting on the floor near it's hidy hole, but didn't move. Took the photo's, then Marie picked it up and said it was really cold. It had been 3.5 deg overnight, and suspect it got trapped out in the cold, rather than returning to it's warm nest. We took it inside to the warm lounge room and let it warm up for 30 minutes. Then released it by it's nest, where it happily took off. We saw it, or others, 4 times today! We found one trapped in a stainless steel sink we've imbeded in the floor. It let me pick it up and put by it's hidy hole. Perhaps it got trapped in here overnight? We've now put a stick in the sink so it/they can get out. What a wonderful day Normally these are quite ferocious and will happy bite if handled, defending themselves. We've heard them referred to as cousins to the Tasmanian Devil. Dunnarts are happy to sleep with house mice, sharing their warmth, then eat them when they get hungry! Handy to have around We didn't release S3 outside, as we didn't want it to loose it's nest. It's quite possible there's a litter of 8 joeys in the nest that need care & feeding. Thanks to Wayne Donald, from Entwood Sanctuary, for letting us know that many of these little Australian Marsupials copulate to their deaths. The reasoning seems to be that once they've spread their genetic material, they die leaving more food & resources for the females and joeys. As such, those (or the one we picked up twice) were/was probably male near the end of it's life. It fits the behaviour we found. Warmth having little to do with it, just giving it a rest spurred it on to find another female. Similar Species: Western European House Mouse (Mus musculus ssp domesticus)
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