User:SpotShark/sandbox

Characteristics
'''Bandicoots have v-shaped faces, ending with their prominent noses. With their well attuned snouts, and sharp claws, the bandicoot is a fossorial digger. They have small but fine teeth that allow them to easily chew their food.'''

Most marsupials, including bandicoots, have a bifurcated penis.

The embryos of bandicoots have a chorioallantoic placenta that connects them to the uterine wall, in addition to the choriovitelline placenta that is common to all marsupials. However, the chorioallantoic placenta is small compared to those of the Placentalia, and lacks chorionic villi.

Bandicoots may serve as a primary reservoir for Coxiella burnetii. Infection is transmitted among them by ticks. These are then transmitted to domestic animals (cattle, sheep and poultry). The infected domestic animals shed them in urine, faeces, and placental products. It is transmitted to humans causing Q fever by inhalation of aerosols of these materials. Main symptoms may be pneumonia and/or hepatitis.

Vernacular names
The name bandicoot is an Anglicised version of a word from the Telugu language of South India which translates as 'pig-rat'. What we now call bandicoots are not found in India and bandicoot was originally applied to completely unrelated mammals—several species of large rats (rodents). Today, these species, belonging to the genera Bandicota and Nesokia, are referred to as 'bandicoot rats'. Blust (1982, 1993, 2002, 2009)   reconstructs the form *mansar or *mansər ‘bandicoot’ for Proto-Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian (i.e., the reconstructed most recent common ancestor of the Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages), but the validity of this reconstruction is doubted by Schapper (2011). It is known as aine in the Abinomn language of Papua, Indonesia.

'''Bandicoots have different names by the indigenous peoples of the Australia-New Guinea region. For example, the Kaurna people refer to the Southern brown bandicoot as the Bung or the Marti.'''