What is a quenda?

Quenda are any of four species of bandicoot from the genus Isoodon that are found in southwestern and eastern Australia and on Rottnest Island. Like some other marsupials they are omnivorous and nocturnal. Quendas eat seeds, berries, flowers, insects, lizards, bird eggs, baby birds, baby rabbits and the like. Quendas are around 25–34 centimetres (9.8–13.4 in) long with a 14–19 centimetres (5.5–7.5 in) tail and weigh just about a kilogram. Quendas usually make ground nests out of dry leaves; females usually have two litters a year each of some fourteen offspring which emerge from the pouch after fifty days at which stage they cling with hooked digits from beneath and ride about till weaned after twenty eight weeks. Quendas usually have a life span of four or five years though some captive exemplars have outlived a decade. Quendas once provided a popular fur for use in millinery. One quenda species, the Golden Bandicoot Isoodon auratus, has been considered extinct since approximately 1931 despite several uncorroborated claims of sightings on both the Australian mainland and the offshore islands around there since that time.