(Eastern Quoll [Dasyurus viverrinus]. Photo by Ways, 10 Dec. 2009, Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under Creative Commons.)
The Zealous Quoll
A mouse-like marsupial with white spots, full-black eyes, and a long, feline tail, the Australian quoll lives a short and fiery existence. There are four species, ranging from the size of a hamster to that of a large fox: northern, eastern, western, and spot-tailed. Carnivores of indiscriminate taste, they scarf down frogs, bugs, reptiles, bird eggs, and small mammals, as well as carrion, or whatever they can find in a trash bin. The spot-tailed, or “tiger,” quoll, being the largest, can eat echidnas and bandicoots, and the kitten-sized northern quoll will sneak up trees to hunt birds.
Aside from their broad diet, quolls can also make their dens in a wide variety of locations, whether in logs, trees, rocks, or soil. The northern species can even make its home in termite mounds. Surely, only the boldest creatures could deal with that many bedbugs…
The quoll’s zeal for life also extends to its mating habits. Most quolls reproduce before spending even a full year outside of their mother’s pouch. Taking one species as an example, Bush Heritage Australia asserts, “After an exhaustive effort, most male Northern Quolls die after their first mating season, with females only faring marginally better. Few live beyond their second breeding season.” Perhaps they have good reason to hurry, having a lifespan of only two to four years in the wild, but from Bush Heritage’s description, it almost sounds like their ardor itself burns them out.
All that to say, quolls are highly adaptable, passionate, and opportunistic creatures. As they burrow dens into rock and wood and soil, eat everything they can hunt or scavenge, and hurtle on to sexual maturity and death, the Australian quoll exudes zeal, grasping any and every opportunity to live and flourish.
(Tiger Quoll. Photo by Michael J. Fromholtz, 27 Mar. 2011, Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under Creative Commons.)
Monsters’ Blood
One of my aims in making this post was simply to research and celebrate a creature that I’d never heard of before. However, humans have subjected nature to a long series of abuses, so when doing research on any animal, you often discover monsters in its shadow.
The Australian quoll faces several threats. The western and spot-tailed species are near-threatened, and the northern and eastern species endangered. Beyond our hacking away the trees and vegetation that form quoll habitat, we’ve also introduced cats and foxes to prowl around their homes. Another introduced species, the poisonous cane toad, turns the quolls’ opportunistic appetite against them. As the quolls eat these toxic invaders, they become poisoned and die off, leading to their local extinction in some areas. Beyond that, according to one study in Wildlife Research, human-induced climate change may also threaten local populations of corbie larvae, a key source of winter food for the eastern quoll, thus spurring on the decline of this already endangered species.
(Cane Toad, Bufo marinus. Image by sandid from Pixabay.)
Looking for something a bit more poetic or hopeful, I searched online for some aboriginal stories surrounding the quoll, only to discover another monster in the quoll’s mythic ancestor: a man-quoll hybrid named Kinie Ger. (This story came from William Ramsay Smith’s Myths and Legends of the Australian Aborigines, the accuracy of which has been questioned.) With the limbs of a man, and with the head, body, and tail of a quoll, this creature stalked around Australia with a spear and an insatiable bloodlust, killing animals and humans alike for sport. A crow and an owl, in revenge for their children’s murder, finally ambushed Kinie Ger and speared him to death. The quoll (as we know it today) was born from the monster’s blood.
In exploring the quoll’s past, I even encountered the monster of colonialism. Further research taught me that William Ramsay Smith, the Scottish anthropologist who published the book of mythology I was reading from, had plagiarized his book from an aboriginal author named David Unaipon. Another point of ignominy for Smith was his trafficking of aboriginal bodies from their burial grounds. The more that I researched the quoll, it seemed, the more abominations I found.
The Unbroken Chain
So, my study of this clever, zealous, and beautiful creature, the Australian quoll, had led me to the monsters of climate change, colonialism, and Kinie Ger himself. At times, it feels like every beautiful thing we see in nature arises from the blood of atrocity.
Yet, the story of Kinie Ger is not only a tale of horror, but of redemption and survival. For generations, clawing itself out of the blood of human evil and mass extinction, the quoll has grasped on every possible means to live. It stalks, breeds, and scavenges, slashes its dens into logs and rocks and termite mounds. It bites through scale and bug-shell and hide, and it leaps up through tree limbs to scarf down the chicks of its old nemeses, the owl and crow. It has even ingrained itself in local totemistic rituals, scorching its image into the eternal life of the Dreaming.
Every new generation of quoll has been a victory over the monsters arrayed against it. When the creature first arose from the blood of Kinie Ger (if I can be allowed a poetic interpretation of this myth), it was in defiance of the evil that came before it, a decision to live despite it. In the Australian quoll, there’s a tale of ingenuity, zeal, beauty, and dogged survival, each four-year generation giving rise to the next in a fiery and unbroken chain.
(Spotted Quoll. Photo by SeanMack, 1 Apr. 2005, Wikimedia Commons. Copyrighted under GNU Free Documentation License.)
Ways to Help
If, after reading this post, you have any desire to donate in support of quolls, feel free to follow these links to Bush Heritage or to the World Wildlife Fund!
Bush Heritage:
WWF: