Life is tough if you are a male northern quoll: you spend your life ferociously searching for a mate, fighting off other males only to die after sex - and all before your first birthday.

University of Queensland PhD student Jaime Heiniger has been studying the reproduction rituals of quolls on Groote Eylandt in the Northern Territory.

As to why the quoll has a lifespan of only 12 months, Ms Heiniger has a theory.

"It could likely be that they shag themselves to death," she said.

"The males move a really, really long way during the breeding [season]. So it can increase their home range to about 10 square kilometres, which is just massive, over that period.

"And during that time they lose all their weight, their condition and muscle mass."

Ms Heiniger said this unusual reproductive strategy was known as semelparity, and although common in the animal kingdom, it was "rare in mammals".

"Such population-wide male die-offs are most likely due to the physiological stress of sex and the intense fighting among males," she said.

A battle from birth

Once common across Australia’s Top End, northern quolls (Dasyurus hallucatus) have suffered from the invasion of the cane toad, fire and introduced predators, such as foxes and cats.

University of Queensland researcher Jaime Heiniger releases a northern quoll on Groote Eylandt. ( Supplied: Jamie Heiniger )

But Groote Eylandt, about 640km east-south-east of Darwin, is free of cane toads and home to a healthy quoll population.

As part of her research, Ms Heiniger studied more than 200 quolls on the island.

She said given males only have about three weeks to find mates, their ability to fight off other males and cover long distances to find females is of critical importance.

"The performance of males peaks during breeding and rapidly decreases afterwards when compared to females," she said.

"We found that not only are there large changes in both male performance and home range throughout their life cycle when compared to females, but there’s also a lot of variation among individuals that may profoundly influence their reproductive success."

Female northern quolls are a little luckier and tend to live a few years longer, with the oldest recorded female in the wild being three years of age.

A separate study on the lowland savannas of Kakadu National Park observed quoll breeding in late May to early June, with all observed matings occurring within a two-week period.

But breeding was recorded in July on the Mitchell Plateau in Western Australia, leading researchers to conclude quolls get amorous earlier at locations closer to the coast.

First-time quoll mothers produce large litters of predominately male babies - if breeding occurs in the second year litters are smaller and predominately female.

Researchers have found juvenile northern quolls have a high rate of survival when they stay in the pouch, but once they leave the pouch - with eyes still closed - baby quolls stand a low chance of survival with mum away foraging for food at night.

Many young quolls are orphaned before they are old enough to be independent, further increasing the mortality rate.

Feisty, with a good set of teeth

If young quolls do make it out of the den, they can look forward to a diet that includes beetles, grasshoppers, lizards, frogs, spiders, scorpions, centipedes, fruit, road kill and rubbish left by humans.

Once common across the Top End, northern quolls have suffered from the invasion of introduced predators. ( Jonathan Webb )

Perhaps understandably, the northern quoll is described by the Department of the Environment as the most aggressive of all quoll species, with faeces and a body that "smell strongly".

Ms Heiniger has experienced quoll rage first hand.

"They are feisty. They vary, you can get some nice ones... but they do have a good set of teeth on them and will attack you," Ms Heiniger said.

She presents her PhD research into northern quolls today at the Ecological Society of Australia conference in Alice Springs.