Endangered
Eastern quoll
Dasyurus viverrinus
Eastern quoll is a mammal in the family Dasyuridae (order Dasyuromorphia) — Dasyurus viverrinus, recorded as Endangered and tied to Australia.
Appearance
Females possess a relatively shallow, fur-lined pouch formed by lateral folds of skin.
Eastern quolls are about the size of a small domestic cat, with adult males measuring 53 to 66 cm (21 to 26 in) in total length, among them the 20 to 28 cm (7.9 to 11.0 in) tail, and having an average weight of 1.1 kg (2.4 lb).
Published measurements include mass about 0.0125.
Range and habitat
The eastern quoll was formerly found across much of southeastern mainland Australia, from the eastern coasts of South Australia, through most of Victoria, to the mid-north coast of New South Wales. It likely became functionally extinct across its entire mainland range by the early 1960s, but remains widespread but patchy in Tasmania and Bruny Island. Within Tasmania, eastern quolls inhabit rainforest, heathland, alpine areas, and scrub below 1,500 m (4,900 ft).
Endemic to Australia, they occur on the island state of Tasmania, but were considered extinct on the mainland after 1963. The species has been reintroduced to fox-proof fenced sanctuaries in Victoria in 2003 and to the Australian Capital Territory in 2016.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
Eastern quolls are solitary predators, hunting at night for its prey of insects, small mammals, birds, and reptiles. Although the majority of their diet consists of meat, they also eat some vegetable matter, among them fruit during the summer, and grass year-round.
Eastern quolls are prey for Tasmanian devils and masked owls. Eastern quolls are nocturnal, and spend the day resting in dens, although they may also use natural rock crevices or hollow tree trunks. Home ranges are typically around 35 ha (86 acres) for females, and 44 ha (110 acres) for males, with the latter increasing dramatically during the breeding season.
In crisis
An Australia-wide group of institutions collaborate in the Tasmanian Quoll Conservation Program to manage the breeding of eastern and spotted-tailed quolls to directly support wild populations within Tasmania and eastern quoll conservation programs across Australia.
Eastern quoll is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Eastern quoll, Wikidata item Q194516. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
