Over the past decade, a form of cancer has killed almost three out of four Tasmanian devils, the world's largest marsupial carnivore and inspiration for the cartoon character Taz. Animals with the disease develop tumors on their heads and in their mouths, making it difficult for them to eat. Most animals die within months of the lesions appearing, often from starvation. The condition, Devil Facial Tumor Disease, was first noticed by a photographer in 1996. Since then, the estimated population of the animals, which are found in the wild only in the Australian island state of Tasmania, has dropped from 200,000 to between 50,000 and 60,000, according to researchers say. Two-thirds of the remaining Tasmanian devils are thought to be affected, and scientists wonder whether they will be able to find a cure in time to save the rest. "The process is now in the works to have it listed as an endangered species," said Hamish McCallum, chief scientist of the Devil Facial Tumor Program, which is financed by the government. McCallum's researchers say they suspect that the disease is spread when cancer cells are passed between animals, usually by biting. "The best hypothesis is that it is transmitted as part of biting, and most of the biting happens at the time of mating," he said. But beyond this, little is known about the cancer. No other species has shown signs of it. "It might have been pure chance or bad luck, or a devil might have come across a powerful carcinogen or mutagen in a dump, but no one knows," McCallum said. And there is no test to detect the disease in pre-tumorous animals. Tasmanian devils have a reputation for bad temper. But Rodrigo Hamede, a specialist on the cancer who traps and monitors the animals, says it is not deserved. They are reputed to have gotten their name from their black color and the diabolical noise they make. In Hamede's hands, the devils are placid. To check their mouths for tumors, he gently blows on their snouts, triggering their threat response, which is to open their mouths and bare their fangs. As he tenderly handled a female devil with a huge tumor covering most of her head, he said, "I'd hoped I wouldn't see her again." Hamede caught her three months earlier as part his monitoring effort, and she had been badly diseased then. He said he had hoped that nature would have put her out of her suffering by now. He releases the animals back into the wild with a microchip, regardless of how ill they are. "If the devils are ever going to develop immunity — and to my mind that is the best bet — by removing creatures you are making it less likely," Hamede said. The trapping program has taught McCallum's team how quickly the disease can work. "The chance of any animal caught as an adult surviving to the next year is close to zero," he said. Those running the Devil Facial Tumor Program say they are hoping that unaffected populations will remain in remote and isolated pockets of the island, but they are taking no chances. They are running a pilot program on an isolated peninsula where all the diseased devils they capture are killed. There is some evidence that this approach is working to protect the overall population because, over time, the average age of the animals they capture has become older, suggesting that more animals are avoiding the cancer and surviving longer. But the program is expensive, and McCallum said his team was not yet sure about its effectiveness in stopping the disease. They are also considering establishing a new colony of wild animals on an island off the Tasmanian coast but say the potential for destabilizing that island's ecology by introducing a large predator needs further study. As an interim emergency measure, they have sent 47 disease-free devils to wildlife parks on the Australian mainland, creating what they call an insurance population to guarantee that the species does not die out completely. McCallum calls it an imperfect solution. "If all you end up with is a bunch of captive populations, you've failed," he said. More animals are going to be sent out of Tasmania, but as the disease spreads it is harder to find healthy animals. Because there is no way to identify animals carrying the disease before the tumors appear, devils intended for transfer have to be taken from areas that researchers are certain are outside the cancer zone. "This is our last sure year to take specimens out of the wild," says Nick Mooney, a conservationist with the Department of Primary Industry and Water, an arm of the Tasmanian government that oversees the devil program. Mooney does not underestimate the size of the challenge facing the devils. "Islands have a miserable history of extinctions, especially if you are a large predator," he said. In its recent history, Australia has seen more mammal extinctions than any other land mass, mostly because indigenous species were squeezed out by nonnative animals introduced by settlers. Mooney says that even if the devil can ultimately be saved, Tasmania's ecology has already been severely disrupted. The decline of the island's most important predator could lead to a population explosion among prey species like rats and small kangaroos, or it could leave a vacancy for an immigrant species. He is particularly worried that without the devils, foxes — which are present in small numbers — could become more established in Tasmania, and feral cats, which are already killing rare indigenous wildlife, could multiply. That, in turn, would make recovery of the devil population far less likely. Please help us save these poor crechers. | How can you help sponsor at your local zoo or donate and shop on donate and shop or even help other communities such as: The little devil which seems to be the most cutest animal is actually a man eating scavenger, in other words its name says it all. The tassie devil which means the tasmanian devil is like kangaroos because it has a pouch which holds its babies but this creature is not always nice and sweet as you think because after it has grown little bigger it has to learn how to make a kill and other ways to survive. A tasmanian devil will not get any bigger then a small dog it is a mammal and is a member of a family called Dasyuridae. The tasmanian devil became endangered because it was threatening the livestock in tasmania and soon where hunted down by the local farmers or people, this lasted until 1941 when they became officially protected. But since the late 1990s devil facial tumour disease has reduced the tasmanian devil population and so the tassies still suffer. |
