The Adorably Ferocious Tasmanian Devils Are Being Driven to Extinction By Face-Melting Disease
Posted by DerekMead on Monday, Nov 21, 2011
As cute as they are, especially compared to their tornado-like cartoon brother, Tasmanian devils are dastardly little shrieking beasts with skull-crushing jaws. Following the extinction of the Tasmanian tiger in 1936, they’re now the largest carnivorous marsupial on Earth, a rare distinction that makes them an important subject of study and an excellent poster animal for conservation.
Unfortunately, the Tasmanian devils are disappearing too. Already confined solely to the Australian island state of Tasmania, Tasmanian devils have been plagued by a horrifying disease, Devil facial tumor disease, or DFTD, has ravaged the devil population, leading to inbreeding and decreasing genetic diversity that threatens to wreck what’s left of the species.
DFTD is a particularly nasty disease because it more or less causes the devil’s face to swell into a tumorous, rotting mess. It’s even more frightening because it’s one of the few cancers that is also contagious, spread by the animals biting each other. As the Tasmanian devils are quite feisty creatures, that happens a lot.
With such a small population of genetically similar animals, the Tasmanian devils have no natural defense against DFTD. Eighty to ninety percent of the devil population has already been stricken with DFTD. It’s a depressing example of how much more at risk small populations of animals are from being ravaged by disease, and a stark reminder that conservation efforts can quickly come too little, too late.
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Writer, photographer, record collector and all around science nerd with a zoology background. Follow me @drderekmead.
