Tasmanian Devil

The name comes from the first European settlers in Tasmania in the early 1800s. Living in the bush around Hobart, they heard unearthly screams, growls and coughing sounds coming out of the dark at night, and when they finally saw the black animals with red ears and wide open jaws fighting over carcasses, the name devil seemed to fit. Early records called it the native devil, and one early naturalist even used the scientific name Sarcophilus satanicus. The name that stuck is Sarcophilus harrisii, which means "Harris's meat lover", after George Harris, the surveyor who first described the animal scientifically in 1807. The reputation was unfair. Devils are not especially aggressive toward people; the noise is mostly a way to settle who eats first at a shared meal without serious fighting. Still, the image of a snarling, spinning beast was so strong that it inspired the Looney Tunes character Taz in 1954, which made the Tasmanian devil famous around the world even among people who have never seen a real one.

A Tasmanian devil is about the size of a small dog but built much more heavily, with a big head, a thick neck and short, strong legs, the front ones longer than the back ones, which gives it a rolling gait. Adults measure 52 to 80 cm from nose to rump, plus a tail of about 23 to 30 cm. Males are clearly larger than females: most males weigh 8 to 12 kg and some reach about 14 kg, while females usually weigh 6 to 8 kg. The coarse fur is black, and most devils have a white band across the chest and sometimes white patches on the rump, although some are completely black. The thick tail is where the devil stores fat, so a plump tail is a sign of a healthy, well fed animal. The small, rounded ears are thinly furred and turn bright red when a devil is stressed or excited, as blood rushes to them, which adds to its fierce look. Its jaws can open very wide and carry large teeth that keep growing slowly throughout life. Pound for pound, it has the strongest bite of any living mammal predator.

Today wild Tasmanian devils live almost only on Tasmania, the island state off the southeastern tip of mainland Australia. They once lived across the whole Australian continent, but they disappeared from the mainland around 3,000 years ago, probably because of a mix of a drier climate, growing human populations and competition with the dingo, which never reached Tasmania. On the island they are found from sea level to the highlands, in dry eucalypt forest, coastal heath and scrub, open woodland and the edges of farmland, and they are most common where open country meets forest, which gives them both prey and cover. During the day they rest in dens in hollow logs, caves, rock crevices, thick bushes or burrows, often old wombat burrows. A devil uses several dens and moves between them. Two populations now live outside their natural range. Since 2012 a disease free group has lived on Maria Island, off Tasmania's east coast. In 2020 the Aussie Ark sanctuary in Barrington Tops, New South Wales, released devils into a large fenced reserve, and in 2021 the first joeys were born in the wild on the mainland in about 3,000 years.

Tasmanian devils are carnivores that eat mostly carrion, but they also hunt live prey when they can. Wallabies, pademelons, possums and wombats make up much of their diet, often as carcasses, along with birds, lizards, frogs, insects, fish washed up on beaches and dead sheep or other livestock. Young devils climb trees and catch smaller animals, while adults are mainly scavengers that use their excellent sense of smell to find a carcass from far away. A study of bite strength in 2005 found that, relative to body size, the devil has the most powerful bite of any living mammal predator, stronger than a wolf's or a tiger's. That bite lets it eat almost everything: meat, skin, fur, organs and bones, so a devil can clean up a dead wallaby so thoroughly that almost nothing is left. A devil can eat up to about 40 percent of its body weight in half an hour, then go several days without food. By clearing away carcasses, devils limit the flies and disease that rotting animals attract, and farmers often benefit when they clean up dead stock.

Once the sun goes down, the Tasmanian devil gets to work. It is mostly solitary and does not defend a territory, but it has a home range that overlaps with those of many other devils, and it can travel up to about 16 kilometers in a night searching for food along tracks, creeks and fence lines. When several devils find the same carcass, things get loud. They scream, growl, snort, sneeze and gape with wide open jaws, and their ears flush red. These displays sound terrifying, but they are mostly a way to settle who eats and in what order without real fighting; a sharp sneeze often starts a challenge. Up to a dozen devils can feed on a large carcass at once, and the noise can be heard several hundred meters away. Bites still happen, especially on the face and rump, and many adults carry scars, which is exactly how facial tumor disease spreads. Devils are good swimmers and young ones climb well. During the day they rest quietly in their dens or bask in the sun. Despite their reputation, they are shy around humans and retreat rather than confront them.

Devils mate in March, and about three weeks later, in April, the female gives birth to as many as 20 to 30 tiny young, each about the size of a grain of rice. They must crawl through her fur into the pouch, which opens toward the rear, but the mother has only four teats, so at most four joeys survive; the rest die within hours. Each surviving joey fixes onto a teat and stays attached as it grows. After about 100 days, the joeys have fur, their eyes open and they begin to let go of the teat. At around four months they leave the pouch and are left in a den, often a grass lined nest, while the mother forages, and they sometimes ride on her back. They are weaned at about five to six months and become independent at around nine months, in late spring or early summer. Females normally breed for the first time at two years old and can raise a litter a year. Since facial tumor disease arrived, many females die before their third year, and in diseased areas more females now breed at just one year old, a change that helps populations hold on.

The main reason Tasmanian devils are endangered is devil facial tumor disease, one of the very few cancers in the world that spreads from one animal to another like an infection. The cancer cells themselves pass between devils through bites during feeding and mating. Tumors grow on the face and mouth and often spread to other organs, and most infected devils die within six months to a year, usually from starvation as the tumors stop them eating. The first case was photographed in 1996 in northeastern Tasmania, and the disease spread across most of the island, causing local declines of around 82 percent. In 2014 a second, unrelated transmissible cancer, DFT2, was discovered in the south of the island, near Kingborough and the Huon Valley. The disease is not the only problem. Thousands of devils have been killed on roads, because they feed on roadkill at night and are hard to see, and new roads through devil country add to the toll. Before any of this, devils were trapped and poisoned for more than a century by farmers who blamed them for killing sheep and poultry, and the government even paid bounties for them, until they were protected in 1941. The IUCN has listed the species as Endangered since 2008.

A 2021 study led by the University of Tasmania estimated that about 17,000 Tasmanian devils remain in the wild, down from a peak of around 53,000 in 1996, before facial tumor disease took hold. The same study predicted that the decline would level off, and there are hopeful signs: devils persist in areas where the disease has been present for more than 20 years, and genetic studies show some populations are evolving resistance, with a few animals even recovering from their tumors. The Save the Tasmanian Devil Program, run by the Tasmanian government, leads the response. It keeps a disease free insurance population of several hundred devils in zoos and wildlife parks across Australia and in free ranging groups, including on Maria Island and the Forestier Peninsula, and releases devils to strengthen wild populations. Researchers are also working on a vaccine. Conservation has its costs: after devils arrived on Maria Island, they wiped out a colony of little penguins estimated at about 3,000 pairs in 2012, a reminder of how strong a predator they are. On the mainland, the Aussie Ark sanctuary has bred hundreds of joeys since 2011.

Seeing a wild devil is hard, because they are nocturnal, shy and much rarer than they used to be. Night drives in the northwest and the Tasman Peninsula, or a stay near Cradle Mountain, give the best chance, though most visitors see them as roadkill rather than alive, so driving slowly after dark helps. The easiest way to see devils up close is at Tasmania's wildlife parks and sanctuaries, many of them part of the insurance population. Devils@Cradle, at the entrance to Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park, runs night feeding tours where you can hear the famous screams. The Tasmanian Devil Unzoo on the Tasman Peninsula, near Port Arthur, combines devils with free roaming wildlife. Near Hobart, Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary is known for rescue work and devil talks; in the north, Trowunna Wildlife Sanctuary near Mole Creek has bred devils for decades; and East Coast Natureworld at Bicheno also keeps them. Outside Tasmania, devils can be seen in several Australian zoos, at Aussie Ark in New South Wales, and in a few zoos abroad that take part in an ambassador program with the Tasmanian government.