Happy World Numbat Day! 🐹 🤎 🖤 🧡 🦘 🦘 🦘 🐾

Every Numbat has it's day, and today is all for the Numbat!

One of Australia's most unusual and endearing little mammals, the Numbat, also known as the Banded Anteater, is neither an anteater nor a rodent, but a marsupial and the sole surviving member of its family, Myrmecobiidae.

Unlike most marsupials, numbats are active during daylight hours, spending much of their waking lives in pursuit of their favourite delicacy—termites! An adult can devour an astonishing 20,000 termites a day, using its exceptionally long, sticky tongue, measuring approximately 4 inches, to extract them from crevices, fallen logs, and underground tunnels.

Despite their formidable appetites, numbats are rather petite, weighing only around 0.9–1.5 pounds, similar to a small guinea pig. Their striking reddish-brown coats, decorated with black-and-white bands, provide excellent camouflage among the leaves and fallen timber of Australia's eucalyptus woodlands. Each numbat's stripe pattern is distinctive, rather like a fingerprint!

Another peculiarity is that female numbats lack the familiar marsupial pouch. Instead, their tiny joeys cling to their mother's teats and surrounding fur until they are sufficiently developed to be left safely in a burrow!

Unlike their talkative convention attendees, Numbats are generally quiet animals, but they do make several sounds, particularly when communicating with one another

- Soft clicking or ticking sounds during social interactions.
- Low growls and grunts when disturbed or threatened.
- Hissing or sharp defensive sounds when frightened.
- High-pitched squeaks from young numbats calling to their mothers.

Go Numbats!

Wheek! Wheek!