Greater bilby

Bilbies dig for food at night.

They eat seeds, bulbs, bugs and spiders. They sniff out food with their long noses.

Bilbies are omnivores. At night they dig in the soil for seeds, bulbs, fruit, fungi, insects, termites, worms and spiders, and sometimes small lizards. A favorite is the bush onion, or yalka, which grows on desert sand plains after fires.

A bilby finds food with its excellent sense of smell and licks it up with a long, sticky tongue. Bilbies hardly need to drink, because they get most of their water from their food.

The omnivorous diet includes grass and sedge seeds, bulbs, fruit, fungi, insects and larvae, termites, worms, spiders and small lizards (Australian Wildlife Conservancy; Save the Bilby Fund). The bush onion (yalka), which appears after fire, is a favored food.

Bilbies forage by smell, dig with strong forelimbs and take food with a long, sticky tongue. They obtain most of their moisture from food, an adaptation to arid country without permanent water.

Bilbies sleep in burrows in the day.

At night they come out to dig. Their burrows give homes to other animals too.

Bilbies usually live alone. They spend the hot day in burrows that spiral down about 2 to 3 meters, where the temperature stays around 23 to 24 degrees Celsius. One bilby may have as many as 12 burrows.

They come out about an hour after dark and go back an hour or so before dawn. Bilby burrows are useful to other animals: spinifex hopping mice and mulgaras live in them, and echidnas and sand goannas shelter in them.

Bilbies are solitary and nocturnal, emerging about an hour after dusk and returning about an hour before dawn. Spiral burrows reach about 2 meters (Save the Bilby Fund) to 3 meters (Australian Wildlife Conservancy) deep, keep a steady 23 to 24 degrees Celsius, and an individual may use up to 12.

By digging, a bilby can turn over several tonnes of soil a year, mixing in organic matter and loosening hard ground so that plant material can decompose and seeds can sprout (Australian Wildlife Conservancy; Save the Bilby Fund). Brush-tailed mulgaras and spinifex hopping mice live permanently in bilby burrows, and 16 other threatened species have been detected using them.

Cats and foxes hunt bilbies.

People build big fences to keep bilbies safe, and help them have babies.

The greater bilby is Vulnerable. In its 2015 assessment, the IUCN estimated about 9,000 grown-up bilbies left in the wild, with their number falling. Its biggest danger is feral cats and foxes, animals brought to Australia by people. Its white tail tip, which may once have helped it escape, now acts like a flag that cats and foxes can see at night. Changed fire patterns, lost habitat and rabbits add to the problem.

To help, people keep bilbies inside big predator-proof fences, breed them for release and look after the Indigenous Protected Areas where most wild bilbies live.

The IUCN lists Macrotis lagotis as Vulnerable (Burbidge and Woinarski; assessed June 2015, published 2016, marked as needing an update), estimating about 9,000 mature bilbies in about 20 locations, with a decreasing trend. Predation by feral cats and foxes is the most significant threat, with altered fire regimes, habitat loss and competition with rabbits, which also support more predators (Australian Wildlife Conservancy). Artificial water lets predators persist in arid areas where bilbies were once safe.

The lesser bilby was lost in the 1950s. Recovery now relies on Indigenous Protected Areas, which hold over 80 percent of wild populations, on predator-exclusion fences and on captive breeding under a national recovery plan (Save the Bilby Fund).