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Tim ' Conrad age 14, of Gastonia, North Carolina, for his question:

Where is the bandicoot found?

This depends upon which bandicoot    you wish to find. The one with polyprodotont dentition and diprotodont syndactylous feet enjoys life in Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea. The so call pig rat bandicoot is at home in India and Ceylon. These two animals share the same name and look somewhat alike. But they are not related to each other. The Indian bandicoot is a rodent; the Australian bandicoot is a marsupial.

The pig rat bandicoot makes a great nuisance of himself in the gardens and rice fields of India and Ceylon. He resembles a brown rat with a nine inch body plus a skinny seven inch tail. However, his nose is blunter, his ears are rounder and his longer fur is mingled with a few bristles. This rodent digs elaborate burrows for himself, though he betrays the entrance with a mound of dirt. He eats a few insects, but his favorite groceries are seeds and grains, which he hoards in underground storerooms. This bandicoot, alias the pig .rat, alias the Indian mole rat, is rated a pest because he helps himself to cultivated grains and cereals. Being a rodent, naturally he is a mammal.

The other bandicoot lives on the opposite side of the globe. He is a marsupial of the family Peramelidae, the pouched badgers. No doubt he was named a bandicoot because the settlers of Australia thought he resembled the Asian bandicoot. Naturally a rodent is not related to a marsupial, but the marsupial bandicoot shares his range with quite a variety of first cousins. The long hosed bandicoot is plentiful in eastern Australia. He resembles a smallish rabbit with stiff, light brown fur, tinged with purple and enhanced with a white vest, trousers and tail. He has a ratty tail, floppy rabbit ears and extra long hind legs which he uses to leap around like the kangaroos.

The bilby bandicoot makes a living in the arid deserts of central Australia. His fur is slaty blue grey. He sleeps sitting up on his haunches with his floppy ears folded flat and his pointed nose tucked comfortably between his dainty little hands. Like. ail marsupial bandicoots, he can dig as well as a badger. Australian observers report that he can burrow faster than a man can dig.

The barred bandicoot is a native Tasmanian. His rump is marked with a fancy design of dark stripes. Sometimes he is adopted as a family pet, though like all bandicoots he tends to be shy and becomes very frisky only after everybody else has gone to bed. The mouse bandicoot and two larger cousins share the jungles of New Guinea. Altogether there are 20 species of these small marsupials in Australia and on nearby islands. The females bear one, two, three or four helpless little infants and nurture them in their fur lined pouches.

The bandicoot's polyprotodont dentition merely means that he has more than his share of teeth. He catches worms and snails and kneads his meat into a ball before eating it. He also eats roots and often helps himself to potatoes and other cultivated tubers. His toes are joined together, leaving the claws free. These diprotodont syndactylous feet are fine for digging and super fine for combing thick bandicoot fur.

 

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