Nim the Numbata field guide from Nim
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A stripe-coated marsupial that wakes with the sun, eats termites by the tens of thousands, and nearly vanished from the map. About 2,000 remain. This is the animal behind our coach — and the numbers that decide whether it survives.
Myrmecobius fasciatus · Endangered · Western Australia's faunal emblemNumbats are Australia's only fully day-active marsupial — solar-powered, sharp-eyed and always counting: termites caught, ground covered, daylight left. Here's their life, in the numbers that matter.
Almost every Australian marsupial works nights. The numbat clocks on at dawn and off at dusk, because that's when termites move — its whole day is scheduled by its food.
The white bands across every numbat's rump are unique to that individual — researchers tell wild numbats apart by their stripes, like fingerprints.
Unusually for a marsupial, mums have no true pouch — tiny young hold on beneath her, wrapped in fur, before moving to a burrow lined with soft leaves.
The body is barely ruler-length; the bushy banded tail adds another 17 cm, carried high like a flag when it bounds through the woodland.
Numbats have the sharpest eyesight of any marsupial and follow scent trails to shallow termite galleries — spotting patterns is literally how they eat.
Old fallen eucalypt logs are bedroom, bolt-hole and nursery. Losing old-growth woodland means losing the logs — one big reason numbats got rare.
Before European settlement — and the foxes and feral cats that came with it — numbats ranged from western New South Wales through South Australia to the south-west. Today the only natural populations left are in WA's Dryandra Woodland and the Upper Warren (Perup) forests, with new fenced colonies being rebuilt elsewhere.
We're fans, not affiliates — these organisations do the real work. Visit them, learn more, support them directly.
The breed-for-release program rebuilding wild numbers, one carefully raised numbat at a time, since the early 1990s.
perthzoo.wa.gov.au →The community not-for-profit — awareness, education and fundraising for radio collars and surveys that keep released numbats safe.
numbat.org.au →Runs the fenced, feral-free sanctuaries — Yookamurra, Mt Gibson, Scotia, Mallee Cliffs — where new numbat colonies are growing.
australianwildlife.org →
An underdog that lives by daylight, counts everything, spots patterns for a living and comes back from the brink — we couldn't invent a better maths coach. Every clean rep you bank in Nim's world helps his woodland grow. The real woodland belongs to the heroes above.