Bandicoots are a group of more than 20 species of small to medium sized, terrestrial, largely nocturnal marsupial omnivores in the order Peramelemorphia.

[1] They are endemic to the Australia–New Guinea region, including the Bismarck Archipelago to the east and Seram and Halmahera to the west.

These noses make them, along with bilbies, similar in appearance to elephant shrews and extinct leptictids, and they are distantly related to both mammal groups.

They also have low total water evaporative rate and effective panting mechanisms which further aide their survival in hotter temperatures.

[7] Classification within the Peramelemorphia was previously thought to be straightforward, with two families in the order—the short-legged and mostly herbivorous bandicoots, and the longer-legged, nearly carnivorous bilbies.

The name bandicoot is an Anglicised version of a word from the Telugu language of South India which translates as 'pig-rat'.