Have you ever found your lawn riddled with holes or heard a little sneeze from your backyard bushes?

Those are signs you might have a resident bandicoot. Bandicoots are nocturnal, rabbit-sized marsupials known for their pointy snouts, thin tails and large hind feet. Due to these features, they were originally misnamed after a type of rat from India, the pandi-kokku, or “pig-rat” (Bandicota sp.).

Bandicoots are native to Australia and New Guinea, but are recognised as a globally threatened group of animals.

Despite seeming small and innocuous, bandicoots have long been maligned by humans, particularly as digging mammals that rip up farms, parks and even suburban gardens.

Our new study suggests this fraught relationship has lasted over decades – but for reasons you may not expect.

A brief history of bandicoots

For millions of years, various species of bandicoot have roamed the Australian continent, from desert to coastline.

Tragically, since European colonisation, eight of the 15 existing bandicoot (Peramelidae) species have become threatened or gone extinct. The populations that remain have all declined in numbers due to pressures from invasive predators, such as cats and foxes, as well as habitat destruction.

However, humans have also directly contributed to their decline.

Our latest research takes a closer look at how humans and bandicoots have interacted throughout recent history.

We did this by analysing more........

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