The spotted-tailed quoll is mainland Australia’s largest marsupial carnivore. As an apex predator, it plays an important role in regulating populations of its prey. Two subspecies — Dasyurus maculatus gracilis and Dasyurus maculatus maculatus — differ subtly in body size, coat colour, patterning and genetics.

Did you know?

The spotted-tailed quoll was one of the first Australian animals to be encountered by Europeans. Arthur Phillip’s party collected one at Port Jackson in 1788.

Home range

• Quolls are solitary with home ranges of up to 4000ha. Female home ranges are generally much smaller than this, although still several hundred hectares in size.

Distribution

Spotted-tailed quolls are found in:

• Tasmania and forested areas of South Australian–Victorian border to Cooktown in north Queensland.
• Queensland distribution is patchy along the east coast. Quoll hotspots are in the Border Ranges and the mountains and tablelands between Townsville and Cooktown.

Description

• Longer than 75cm nose to tail tip, therefore, larger by three or four times than any of the other five species of quoll.
• Hindfoot length greater than 55mm.
• The only quoll species in which spots continue from the body onto the tail.

Signs

• Scats left within its habitat:
  • on prominent rock outcrops, creek beds and escarpment lines
  • have a distinctive musky smell (not the sharp unpleasant smell of fresh cat, dog or fox scats)
  • twisted ropey appearance
  • often deposited in communal latrine sites, where dozens of scats can accumulate during a season.
• Repeated attacks upon caged poultry (often the first noticeable sign) in which:
  • only the head or parts of the neck are consumed on the first night
  • quolls return to these carcasses day after day until all is consumed.
• Tracks in soft ground.

Sounds

The low-pitch hiss and screech on this recording are both quoll calls.

Habitat

• Forest and woodland, including rainforest, and wet and dry sclerophyll forest and woodland.
• Within these habitats, rocky escarpments or boulder piles are favoured.

Ecology

Life history

Quolls live for less than 3-4 years. Females rarely breed after the age of 3 years. This probably explains their threatened status: populations die out if recruitment (i.e. new animals born or moving into the population) is low for as few as 2–3 successive years.

Breeding

• Quolls are solitary. However, both males and females mate with multiple partners during their brief autumn and winter breeding period.
• Spotted-tailed quolls have a single litter of up to 6 young each year, born between May and August.
• Each litter is sired by more than one father.
• Young are carried in a rudimentary pouch and, when they become too large, they are left behind in a nursery den while the mother forages.
• Young quolls become independent at about 100 days.

Food

• Opportunistic predators and scavengers of anything of animal origin.
• Hunt on the ground and in trees for rodents, bandicoots and possums — their main prey.
• Females and juveniles eat smaller prey than the larger males and include more reptiles and birds in their diet than males do.
• Prey or carrion can be too large to be eaten in one sitting, so quolls return daily until the meal is completely consumed (see Signs above).

More information

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