{"id":11187,"date":"2024-02-09T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-09T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/?p=11187"},"modified":"2024-01-24T05:57:06","modified_gmt":"2024-01-24T05:57:06","slug":"these-fierce-tiny-marsupials-drop-dead-after-lengthy-sex-fests-and-sometimes-become-cannibals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/these-fierce-tiny-marsupials-drop-dead-after-lengthy-sex-fests-and-sometimes-become-cannibals\/","title":{"rendered":"These fierce, tiny marsupials drop dead after lengthy sex fests \u2013 and sometimes become\u00a0cannibals"},"content":{"rendered":"\nAndrew M. Baker<\/a>, Queensland University of Technology<\/a><\/em><\/span>\n\n

If you are exploring our beautiful Australian wilderness this year, keep an eye out for animals behaving in interesting ways. You never know what you might see, as our research team discovered.<\/p>\n\n

In 2023, our colleague from Sunshine Coast Council, Elliot Bowerman, took a two-night trip to New England National Park<\/a> \u2013 its 1,500 metre-high mountain peaks are some of the loftiest on Australia\u2019s mid-east coast.<\/p>\n\n

On the afternoon of 17 August, Elliot trekked the path to Point Lookout. While inspecting some plants on the trail, he heard a rustle in the bushes ahead and peering more closely, saw something of interest. A small mammal had abruptly appeared, dragging the carcass of another mammal, which it then began to devour.<\/p>\n\n

At first glance, this was not so strange. Mammals eat each other all the time. However, it is<\/em> unusual to see small mammals during the day at such close quarters, so Elliot recorded the scene, taking a video on his mobile phone.<\/p>\n\n

It was only several days later when looking over the footage that our research team realised it featured something rarely seen in the wild, the record of which is now published in the journal Australian Mammalogy<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A native marsupial\u2026 cannibal<\/h2>\n\n

The furry critter on film was an antechinus<\/a>, a native marsupial denizen of forested areas in eastern, south-western and northern Australia. Antechinuses usually eat a range of insects and spiders, occasionally taking small vertebrates such as birds, lizards, or even other mammals. <\/p>\n\n

But this camera footage<\/a> clearly showed a mainland dusky antechinus (Antechinus mimetes mimetes<\/em>), and it was eating a dead member of its own species!<\/p>\n\n

\n