Spotted-tailed Quolls are intelligent, bold and curious. This one wanted to know more about my insulated mug on the camp table. Photo: Ian Fraser.
This column is prompted by a very special visitor to our campsite on a recent short holiday to some of the World Heritage rainforest parks in north-eastern NSW. However this visitor has Canberra connections too, as it is the only quoll species now found in the ACT, hence this column.
The very handsome Spotted-tailed Quoll is the largest marsupial carnivore surviving on mainland Australia but is generally shy and keeps to more remote areas, in dense forest or rocky habitats.
They are robust, mostly rusty red with white spots, including on the tail as per the name. This distinguishes them from the other three Australian species, which are also considerably smaller. A big male Spotted-tailed Quoll can be nearly a metre long from nose to tail tip, and weigh at least five kilograms.
Until recently however the Spotted-tailed Quoll was only the third-biggest marsupial predator on the mainland, but the spread of dingoes over the past 4000 to 5000 years eliminated the thylacine and Tasmanian Devil from mainland Australia, both vanishing around 2500 years ago.
The one that visited our camp was, I think, a young male and he was very curious, unafraid and very agile, approaching us for a sniff and getting up onto the table and even the benchtop of our trailer without difficulty. I must say it was one of the highlights of my fairly long Australian natural history life.
Spotted-tailed Quolls are very proficient hunters; young quolls rely on small mammals, reptiles, birds and insects, while adults focus on medium-sized mammals such as possums, young kangaroos, small wallabies, bandicoots and rabbits as well as scavenging carrion. Most of their hunting is done on the ground but they also climb easily and well.
A 2005 study published in the prestigious Royal Society Proceedings compared the bite force of a range of modern carnivorous mammals, relative to their different body weights. Marsupials in general rated more highly than other mammals, and the Spotted-tailed Quoll’s bite ranked only just behind the Tasmanian Devil’s, and considerably above those of big cats, wolves, hyenas and bears.
Spotted-tailed Quoll inspecting the campsite in Werrikimbe National Park in northern NSW. But you could be as lucky in a Namadgi NP campground too! Photo: Ian Fraser.
They were very common locally in the 19th century but unfortunately they discovered the benefits of chook runs as a source of food and the reaction from our forebears was swift and brutal. In the early 1860s vast quantities of strychnine baits were laid and the abundant Spotted-tailed Quolls rapidly became very rare in the region.
The smaller Eastern Quoll was common then too, but since 1963 they have been extinct on the mainland, surviving only in Tasmania. Foxes, dogs and cats seem to have been the main culprits in their disappearance.
Surprisingly the last recorded Eastern Quoll population was in the Sydney suburb of Vaucluse. However there have been successful reintroductions – including at Goorooyaroo Nature Reserve in the northern ACT – into predator-proof sanctuaries.
Spotted-tailed Quolls however are still hanging on in the ACT and there have even been a couple of records from suburban Canberra in the past couple of decades. These include a road-killed quoll by Johnson Drive in Tuggeranong in 2016 and a very much alive one which sought refuge in a front yard eucalypt in Charnwood back in 2010. I recall that that one was reported initially as an ‘orange possum’, which I can easily understand, especially given that he was up in a tree.
He was eventually coaxed into a net by some bold and determined rangers and later released into Namadgi National Park. It seems that such wanderers are usually young males forced out of their fathers’ territories.
Spotted-tailed Quoll displaying the bite that ranks him number two in the world, taking size into account, among land-based carnivores. Photo: Ian Fraser.
Perhaps unexpectedly for what is such an unfamiliar animal group today, the word ‘quoll’ was one of the first Australian mammal names to be recorded in English. Joseph Banks learnt it from the local Guugu Yimithirr language speakers in the place where Cooktown now stands, when Cook’s crew was forced ashore for some weeks after damaging the Endeavour on a reef. He wrote it in his notebook as ‘je-quoll; he also recorded there the name ‘kanguru’ for the first time.
‘Quoll’ didn’t come into widespread use in Australia though until the 1960s. Until then they were just ‘native cats’ or ‘tiger cats’ for the big one, spots notwithstanding.
The area of north-eastern NSW where we encountered our very welcome guest is now Australia’s hot spot for them. It seems that extensive areas of natural forest with lots of tree and fallen log hollows, and abundant prey, plus a relatively low fox population, suit them well. How I’d love to see them commonly in the ACT again too.
