Bettongs and Potoroos

(Family: Potoroidae)

In most respects, the potoroids are similar to their close relatives, the kangaroos and wallabies, but are much smaller. The teeth pattern of the potoroids is simpler, with longer upper incisors, larger canines, and four cusps on the molars. 

They are ground-dwelling marsupials with large hindfeet, and can hop like kangaroos when evading danger, although they push off with their hind feet and land on their forelegs when grazing.

The potoroids are, like nearly all diprotodonts, herbivorous. However, while they take a wide variety of plant foods, most have a particular taste for the fruiting bodies of fungi. The digging associated with thir feeding habits makes the family crucial for the maintenance of the friable soils they create.

Bettongs and Potoroos have been impacted greatly by feral animals, altered fire regimes and loss of suitable habitat, with only two-thirds of the group remaining today and 4 of those 8 species listed as threatened.