By Vanessa Thomas and Nat Warburton. Numbats are the only strictly termite-eating marsupials. They are endangered and only found in a few small areas of south-west Western Australia.

Numbats have evolved a range of adaptations to collect their tiny prey, including a long snout, a very long stick tongue and powerful forelimbs with long claws to break into termite nests.

In a study just published in the Journal of Morphology, we compared the jaw muscle anatomy of the numbat to its carnivorous relatives. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jmor.21684

The jaw muscles of the numbat were greatly reduced in size and complexity in comparison to quolls, such as our native chuditch. This finding corresponds with their reduced dentition and the observation that numbats don’t chew their food – they just swallow termites whole. However, we also found an interesting change in the anatomy of the muscle that opens the mouth that seemed to point to a closer relationship with the actions of the tongue.

Using contrast enhances microCT scanning, this study is the first to describe the arrangement of the jaw muscles in these groups of marsupials and provides a new view on the evolution of the anatomy that corresponds to how these animals collect and process their chosen prey.

This project is part of a collaboration between Murdoch University researchers and the Centre for Microscopy, Characterisation and Analysis (CMCA at UWA) is shedding new light on the anatomy of Western Australian Wildlife.

You can access the full paper Open Access here:

Thomas, V. J., Shaw, J., Tay, N., & Warburton, N. M. (2024). Comparative three-dimensional jaw muscle anatomy of marsupial carnivores (Dasyurus spp.) and the termite-eating numbat (Myrmecobius fasciatus). Journal of Morphology, 285, e21684. https://doi.org/10.1002/jmor.21684