In spite of their ferocious reputation, Tasmanian devils have a timid nature. Australia Zoo / EPA
Phil Mercer, Foreign Correspondent
September 18. 2010
SYDNEY // With a spine-chilling scream that terrified Australia’s early European settlers, the carnivorous Tasmanian devil has a fearsome reputation. But in recent years it has been humans, in the form of scientists, who have been trying to save the animals from extinction.
An aggressive cancer is slowly wiping out the species, with its population falling by 60 per cent in the past decade.
Last week scientists said they had made a breakthrough in the fight to save the animals by mapping its genome for the first time. There is hope that charting the devils’ full DNA sequence will open new paths to understanding and combating the mysterious cancer that causes disfiguring facial tumours.
“This sequence is invaluable and comes at a crucial time,”said the lead researcher Elizabeth Murchison. “By comparing our draft sequence with samples taken from many hundreds of devils suffering from this cancer, we can begin to look at the spread of the disease.”
Ms Murchison, from the Australian National University, said the information would allow scientists to identify which mutations had actually caused the devils’ cancer “and perhaps allow us to target those mutant genes with particular drugs”.
The breakthrough comes after researchers suffered a setback last month when a Tasmanian devil that showed rare signs of resistance to the cancer died.
For several years the animal, named Cedric, was a beacon of hope for researchers after showing signs of immunity to the tumours.
The unique marsupials exist in the wild only in Tasmania, Australia’s rugged southern island state, where they are listed as endangered. The size of a small dog, the stocky, dark-furred marsupials have powerful jaws and a scream that led to their demonic name.
For scientists working to unlock the secrets of the virus that threatens to render devils extinct within 25 years, the untimely death of Cedric was a blow.
“He had genetic differences that we thought might lead us to find a solution to the facial tumour disease,” said Dr Barrie Wells, a veterinarian and animal welfare officer at the University of Tasmania. “It looked like Cedric might have special properties. He was a valuable animal and he did resist this disease in a way that other devils did not.”
Cedric was born in captivity and spent his whole life in research facilities, where over six years he was subjected to various tests and injected with malignant cells. He was euthanised by Dr Wells’s team at the end of August after finally succumbing to cancer.
“His death has set us back because when we thought we were close to an answer, we were not,” Dr Wells said.
The highly contagious cancer, which first emerged in the mid- 1990s and has never been seen in nature before, is transmitted between animals during rowdy communal squabbles over food or aggressive mating rituals. The search for a cure has been hampered by the contagion’s ability to mutate into several different strains.
While science struggles to find an effective treatment, breeding centres have been set up across the Australian mainland to establish “insurance” populations of healthy devils. Sydney’s Taronga Zoo is home to a small group of six adults and four juveniles, which could hold the key to the long-term survival of a species in peril.
“They have big personalities. They are very outgoing and get up to a lot of mischief,” explains Lisa Cavanagh, a keeper at the zoo, as two energetic juveniles tear into an early-morning meal of raw rabbit meat, emitting the occasional growl and squeal, while their father soaks up the sun in a nearby enclosure.
Bunyip, aged 18 months, and Devitt are unlikely to ever be released into the wild and are part of a 50-year “Noah’s ark” project to protect vulnerable captive specimens from the seemingly unstoppable sickness.
“It is an amazing disease when you see what it can do to an animal. It affects their mouth and their eyes. It is an open wound once it gets to the final stages. They live with it for about three to six months. They die not only from the cancer but from starvation. It is just the most devastating disease,” Ms Cavanagh said.
The image of the endangered Tasmanian devil has been given a makeover at a new exhibition at Taronga Zoo to raise awareness of the plight of a flesh-eating marsupial that has a fearsome reputation.
Portrayed as crazed by the Warner Brothers cartoon character Taz, the animal has never attracted the sort of public sympathy afforded to Australia’s koalas or kangaroos.
The idea is that if visitors to the zoo see how endearing and unassuming the devil usually is, they will be encouraged to support breeding programmes.
“They’ve got massive teeth and can open their mouths very wide and if there’s a bit of sun behind them their ears actually appear to glow red because of how thin the skin is, so there are a few things that do fit the name.
“However, their behaviour doesn’t quite match it,” said Nick de Vos, manager of the devil breeding programme at Taronga Zoo. “They are actually quite shy and retiring.”
Kerry Addison, a tourist from Melbourne, and her 10-year-old daughter, Rosemary, were among those happy to see one of Australia’s most distinctive mammals at such close quarters.
“They are so cute. I want one,” enthused Rosemary, while her mother said: “I think preserving as many animals as we can is important. Using the zoo to tell children about how to look after animals is a great thing. They look sweet but because they are called devils you might think they are an aggressive animal but they are obviously not and bound around quite happily.”
foreign.desk@thenational.ae
* With additional reporting by Agence France-Pressehttp://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100919/FOREIGN/709189890/1002/rss
