The tammar wallaby is a small macropod native to South and Western Australia. Though its geographical range has been severely reduced since European colonisation, the tammar is common within its reduced range and is listed as of Least Concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. It has been introduced to New Zealand and reintroduced to some areas of Australia where it had been previously eradicated. Skull differences distinguish tammars from Western Australia, Kangaroo Island and mainland South Australia, making them distinct populations groups or possibly different subspecies. Around the size of a rabbit, the tammar is among the smallest of the wallabies. Its coat is largely grey. It has colour vision, can drink seawater, and can hop efficiently using tendons that act like springs. A nocturnal species, it spends nighttime in grassland habitat and daytime in shrub. It is very gregarious and has a seasonal, promiscuous mating pattern. A female tammar can nurse a joey in her pouch while keeping an embryo in her uterus. The tammar is a model species for research on marsupials, and on mammals in general. It is one of many organisms whose genome has been sequenced. The tammar wallaby was seen in the Houtman Abrolhos off Western Australia by survivors of the 1628 Batavia shipwreck, and recorded by François Pelsaert in his 1629 Ongeluckige Voyagie.[4]:53 It was first described in 1817 by the French naturalist Anselme Gaëtan Desmarest, who gave it the name eugenii based on where it was found; an island he knew as Ile Eugene in the Nuyts Archipelago off South Australia which is now known as St Peter Island. The island's French name was given in honour of Eugene Hamelin, commander of the ship Naturaliste;[5]:333 whose name is now the specific name of the tammar. The common name of the animal is derived from the thickets of the shrub locally known as tamma (Allocasuarina campestris) that sheltered it in Western Australia.[6] The tammar is classified...