The common echymipera (''Echymipera kalubu''), or common spiny bandicoot, is a

bandicoot Bandicoots are a group of more than 20 species of small to medium-sized, terrestrial, largely nocturnal marsupial omnivores in the order Peramelemorphia. They are endemic to the Australia–New Guinea region, including the Bismarck Archipelag ...

. It is long-snouted even by bandicoot standards. The upper parts are a coarse reddish-brown, flecked with spiny buff and black hairs. The tail is short and almost hairless. Length varies between , with the tail accounting for an additional ; the weight is from .

Names

The name kalubu, from which the scientific name is derived, is from the

Ma'ya language Ma'ya is an Austronesian language of the Raja Ampat islands in West Papua, Indonesia. It is spoken by about 6,000 people in coastal villages on the islands Misool, Salawati, and Waigeo. It is spoken on the boundary between Austronesian and P ...

of the

Raja Ampat Islands Raja Ampat, or the ''Four Kings'', is an archipelago located off the northwest tip of Bird's Head Peninsula on the island of New Guinea, in Indonesia's Southwest Papua province. It comprises over 1,500 small islands, cays, and shoals surrounding ...

Distribution

The common echymipera is native to

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Located in Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the wide Torr ...

. Its presence in the

Admiralty Islands The Admiralty Islands are an archipelago group of 18 islands in the Bismarck Archipelago, to the north of New Guinea in the South Pacific Ocean. These are also sometimes called the Manus Islands, after the largest island. These rainforest-co ...

is due to human introduction several thousand years ago, but not before 13,000 B.P. However, unlike

Phalangeridae The Phalangeridae are a family of mostly nocturnal marsupials native to Australia, New Guinea, and Eastern Indonesia, including the cuscuses, brushtail possums, and their close relatives. Considered a type of possum, most species are arbore ...

species (

cuscus Cuscus ( or ) is the common name generally given to the species within the four genera of Australasian possum of the family Phalangeridae with the most tropical distribution: * '' Ailurops'' * '' Phalanger'' * '' Spilocuscus'' * '' Strigocuscus ...

), which have historically been widely introduced and distributed by humans, the

Peramelidae The marsupial family Peramelidae contains all of the extant bandicoots. They are found throughout Australia and New Guinea, with at least some species living in every available habitat, from rainforest to desert. Four fossil peramelids are descr ...

(

s) have generally not been spread as much via human introductions. It is hunted for human consumption in New Guinea.Margaretha Pangau-Adam & Richard Noske & Michael Muehlenberg. Wildmeat or Bushmeat? Subsistence Hunting and Commercial Harvesting in Papua (West New Guinea), Indonesia. ''Hum Ecol (2012) 40:611–621. The Common echymipera is a host of the

Acanthocephala Acanthocephala (Greek , ', thorn + , ', head) is a phylum of parasitic worms known as acanthocephalans, thorny-headed worms, or spiny-headed worms, characterized by the presence of an eversible proboscis, armed with spines, which it uses to p ...

n intestinal parasite ''

Australiformis semoni Moniliformidae is a family of parasitic spiny-headed (or thorny-headed) worms. It is the only family in the Moniliformida order and contains three genera: ''Australiformis'' containing a single species, ''Moniliformis'' containing eighteen speci ...

''.

References

Peramelemorphs Marsupials of New Guinea Mammals of Papua New Guinea Mammals of Western New Guinea Least concern biota of Oceania Mammals described in 1829 Taxa named by Johann Baptist Fischer {{marsupial-stub