Adult male Rock Ringtail

Rock Ringtail Possums

Rock Ringtail Possums, Petropseudes dahli are one of three rock-dwelling species of marsupial possum. The other two are Scaly-tailed possums, Wyulda squamicaudata and the Mountain Pygmy Possum, Burramys parvus.

My main goal for my Doctoral thesis was to find out interesting unknown behaviours of a particular mammal in the wild. I was impressed by the field work and lifestyle of Jane Goodall, immersing herself in the chimpanzee’s environment but I found primates a bit too creepy to want to study them. While I worked this out, I was employed as a Research Assistant at Sydney University and part of a team carrying out a population and viability study of a wild population of koalas. My boss, Professor Ian Hume asked me to study koalas for my PhD but I knew they would soon bore me as their social behaviour is limited. Also, it sometimes snowed at the Koala study site and I don’t like being too cold. Perusing my 2nd Edition copy of The Complete Book of Australian Mammals edited by Strahan (1991), I sifted through all the potential candidates for a study that I knew needed to sustain my interest for at least three years of my life. What persuaded me to pick the Rock Ringtails was in the lines of the chapter written by J.E. Nelson and J.A.Kerle; ‘Although common within this preferred habitat, it is very secretive in its behaviour and difficult to trap, so little is known of its biology’ and ‘aggregations of up to 9 have been observed’. There would likely be enough in one area to have enough numbers to study, they sound like they must have a complex social system and once I worked out how to catch them, I would be rewarded with my coveted behavioural gold.  I wanted to change those words of ‘not much is known of its biology’. The other lure was something my third year undergraduate Invertebrate Zoology lecturer said to me in third year. She said, ‘Myf you can’t just go out there and study some endangered animal’. This was after she once asked us to write down our goals for her. 

The new information about Rock Ringtails in The Mammals of Australia, Edited by Steve Van Dyck and Ronald Strahan 3rd Ed 2008 in the chapter Rock Ringtail Possum M.J. Webb, J.A. Kerle and J.W. Winter in the pages 243-244. https://www.amazon.com/Mammals-Australia-Third-Ronald-Strahan/dp/1877069256

I am rather proud to say that now we know about their behaviours of communication, scent-marking, parental care, feeding, vigilance, home range and habitat use. The 4th Edition is being compiled as I write this. There is also a Field Companion to The Mammals of Australia

https://www.amazon.com/Field-Companion-Mammals-Australia-Steve/dp/1877069817

I have published my findings in journals, magazine articles and of course my thesis.