Potoridae

The marsupial family Potoridae includes the bettongs, potoroos and rat-kangaroos. All are small, brown, jumping marsupials and resemble a large rodent or a very small wallaby.

The potoroids are, like nearly all diprotodonts, herbivorous. However, while they take a wide variety of vegetable foods, most have a particular taste for the fruiting bodies of fungi, and often depend on fungi to see them through periods when there is little else to eat in the dry Australian bush.

There are five species of bettong: including the Northern Bettong (Bettongia tropica) and the Tasmanian Bettong (Bettongia gaimadi). Bettongs were endangered because settlers took much of their habitat and their foxes also killed many of them. At one time, both species lived all over Australia. But today, the Tasmanian Bettong lives only in the eastern half of Tasmania, and the Northern Bettong lives only in three isolated populations in northern Queensland.

• SUBORDER PHALANGERIDA
  • Family Phalangeridae: brushtail possums and cuscuses
  • Family Burramyidae: pygmy possums
  • Family Tarsipedidae: Honey Possum
  • Family Petauridae: gliders and allies
  • Family Pseudocheiridae: ringtailed possums and allies
  • FAMILY POTORIDAE
    • Subfamily Hypsiprymnodontinae
      • Musky Rat-kangaroo, Hypsiprymnodon moschatus
    • Subfamily Potoroinae
      • Rufous Bettong, Aepyprymnus rufescens
      • Tasmanian Bettong, Bettongia gaimardi
      • Burrowing Bettong, Bettongia lesueur
      • Brush-tailed Bettong, Bettongia penicillata
      • Northern Bettoing, Bettongia tropica
      • Desert Rat-kangaroo, Caloprymnus campestris
      • Long-footed Potoroo, Potorous longipes
      • Broad-faced Potoroo, Potorous platyops
      • Long-nosed Potoroo, Potorous tridactylus
  • Family Acrobatidae: Feathertail Glider and Feathertail Possum
  • Family Macropodidae: kangaroos, wallabies, and allies

• DPIWE information on the Tasmanian Bettong