Barred bandicoot
Perameles ? bougainville Quoy & Gaimard,
1824 Peramelidae
(Alecto Edition Plate 2)

BAU03

$650.00

3. Western Barred Bandicoot. Perameles bougainville Quoy & Gaimard, 1824 [W,P&M]
340 x 512 mm
Bauer has painted a pair of animals based on the specimen caught at Fowlers Bay, South
Australia on 28-29 January 1802. In his diary Robert Brown has described how he went ashore at
5 am on 29 January 1802 and “Walked about a mile parallel to the beach. Found a few plants new
but several out of season. On the whole this [is] the most barren spot we have seen. No water.
Prints of naked feet [seen]. [Also] a few old spears & very recent prints of dogs feet uncommonly
large. Caught a small quadruped genus unknown : but from a figure nearly resembling it from Port
Jackson it or a very nearly allied species of the same genus [is] known there”.

Despite this bandicoot having been discovered by the English in 1802 it was two French
zoologists, Jean René Constant Quoy and Joseph Paul Gaimard, who first named and described
the animal in the scientific literature in 1824. They based their information on specimens collected
by the French exploring expedition Uranie and Physicienne in 1817-1820 under the command of
Louis Claude Desaules de Freycinet. Today the western barred bandicoot is no longer found on
the Australian mainland and its distribution is restricted to the Bernier and Dorre Islands in Shark
Bay, Western Australia.
T : 69; W&M : 315, 333; W,P&M : 58-9