Animals

Bandicoots are mostly solitary animals, which means they are generally on their own. They are marsupials about the size of a cat. They have a pointy snout, humped back and a thin tail. A female bandicoot has a backward facing pouch. This is so that when she is digging, she doesn't fill her pouch with soil.
Bandicoots live on the ground in areas where there are low-growing plants. In some parts of Australia, they even visit people's gardens.
They search on the ground looking for insects,spiders, seeds, berries and other similar food. When looking for food they dig in the soil and rummage in the fallen leaves on the ground. They hold their food in their front paws to eat it.
Bandicoots are mostly active at night and in the day they generally shelter in nests that are piles of leaf litter scratched together. When moving fast they bound and gallop.
Marsupials are not pregnant for very long, so that when the young are born, they are very tiny and hardly developed at all. They move into their mother's pouch to complete their development. Unusually for marsupials, bandicoots in the womb are attached to it by cords, and after they are born, the young climb the cords to reach the mother's pouch. The young of the Northern Brown bandicoot and the Long-nosed bandicoot are in the womb for only twelve and a half days, the shortest time of any marsupial. Inside the pouch, the young drink milk from teats, as they grow and develop.