All the bettongs in the US are Woylie, there are no Tasmanian or Northern Bettongs here and there probably never were historically. I'd imagine this is one of the examples where the USDA reports are not to be fully trusted.
~Thylo
~Thylo
The brush tailed bettong
- Thread starter Onychorhynchus coronatus
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Onychorhynchus coronatus
Well-Known Member
That is quite a shame.
Did you see the video I posted above ?
I think it really highlights how engaging these animals can be for people and how they can be excellent animals for educators to use in talks.
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There's only one person - to my knowledge - that does it and actually gets public attention. She has a monopoly over Wisconsin. She's been educating for 35+ years (and was a teacher for several years before that), so I'm hoping to take over Wisconsin once she retires.
I've seen that video before. It's the same female that they have now. She was born at their facility back when Animal Wonders Montana had a breeding pair. Either the breeding pair or one of their offspring was sent to Oak Creek.
The facilities themselves are calling them northern, not just USDA. One place has both northern and woylie.
They look very similar.
How are these two taxa best distinguished?
Onychorhynchus coronatus
Well-Known Member
It seems like you have a good strategic plan figured out and I wish you all the luck in the world with achieving this, I'm sure you are going to do very well
By distribution mostly. They are really similar. Northern Bettongs tend to be a straight silvered-grey whereas Brush-taileds usually have a buffy wash on the face and parts of the body, but it's not the kind of differentiation which one could make definitely from a photo and it is in any case not a particularly reliable distinction. Northerns are slightly smaller as well, but again that is not something which can be reliably used as a distinction.
In terms of zoos, the most important distinction is that Brush-taileds are commonly held in captivity outside of Australia - because they had an established captive population within Australia from which they could be exported - and Northerns are not at all. I understand that TinoPup doesn't know how Australia's marsupial exports work, but saying that Roadside Zoo X "has other rare animals" has literally no bearing on whether they could have Northern Bettongs.
I've been looking through all my books and really I can't see how anybody can distinguish between these two species with confidence. I would have no problems distinguishing between burrowing, eastern, rufous and brush-tailed bettongs but between brush-tailed and northerns, it would be very hard.