Western Quoll

The western quoll (Dasyurus geoffroii) is Western Australia's largest endemic mammalian carnivore. One of the many marsupial mammals native to Australia, it is also known as the chuditch. The species is currently classed as near-threatened. == Taxonomy == The western quoll is a member of the family Dasyuridae and is most closely related to the bronze quoll (Dasyurus spartacus), a recently described species from New Guinea that was for some time believed to be an outlying population of the western quoll. Its species name, geoffroii, refers to the prominent French naturalist Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, who named the genus Dasyurus in 1796. The species has occasionally been placed in the genus Dasyurinus. It is also known as the chuditch () in Western Australia (from Noongar djooditj); chuditch serves as both the singular and plural form. Other common names include atyelpe or chilpa (from Arrernte), kuninka (from Western Desert language); idnya (Adnyamathanha people of the Flinders Ranges) and the archaic western native cat. == Description == The western quoll is about the size of a domestic cat. It is coloured a rufous brown and has 40–70 white spots on its back with a creamy white underside. Its spots help diminish its outline…