"No one is really sure exactly how the cartoon character Taz originated. Some theorize that it may have been an inspiration of Errol Flynn, a native Tasmanian and a 1930s star of such movies as The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). His father, T.T. Flynn, was a professor who did some of the first studies of the Tasmanian devil's biology. "One story is that a producer from Warner Bros. saw a devil in a traveling zoo," says Nick Mooney, a wildlife biologist for Tasmania's Department of Primary Industries, Water and Environment. 'The animal was driven crazy by confinement and was racing around in its cage, sort of like in the cartoon.' "

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Tasmanian Devils originally ranged through much of Australia (not fully clear), but some 400 years before European colonization began in 1788, came to be restricted the large Southern Island that gave their name.  Tasmania would be the 42nd largest U.S. State after S. Carolina and before West Virginia at 26,421 square miles.  Put another way, Tasmania is just over 2/3 the size of the whole of Ireland. 

The Devil is the only remaining carnivorous marsupial (after the disappearance of the stripey marsupial wolf, or Thylacine last in captivity in Hobart, capital of Tasmania, in 1936).  Marsupials, with pouches, are a sub-class of mammals (oh, excuse us!, infraclass, claims Wikipedia in their tedious, been-to-college vernacular).

The Devils were so named by Europeans for their ferocity, and trademark piercing screams. The strongest bite among any mammal, it is said, and reportedly a real threat to livestock.  The size of a small dog, it's meat is said to taste like veal.  Malevolent toward one another, they are surprisingly tolerant of wildlife officials, and often rest calmly when physically handled.  But all is not well.

The poor Devils now mostly have a hideous transmissible cancer on their faces(!) and mouths; they contract this from biting into one another's faces (which they spend a lot of time doing), and the population may be about 80-90% down according to the worst estimate.  This horror dates to around 1996 and its origins are unknown; infectious cancers are exceedingly rare and there are only probably three such types in the world.  Of course, frequently biting into the large cancerous facial lesions of other infected Devils makes potentially every one of them a member of the at-risk population, regrettably.   

Curiously the cells transmitted are not those either of the infect-ing Devil or the infect-ed; but of a Devil from around 1996 who somehow caught the ailment and is long deceased (Devils survive only three months with this scourge, not being able to eat when the fast-growing tumors expand to obstruct their mouths).  If they are thus alien tissue, why don't their bodies reject the alien cancer cells?  That's what most animals would do!  Well, Devils on Tasmania are almost genetically identical and no one knows the reason for that; the result is that their immune systems don't recognize the cancerous cells of that long-deceased infected relative as foreign, and just accept the wretched infection as if their own tissue. 

But wait!  Tasmania is big enough, you see, that the population in the Northwest is just different enough genetically, that a Devil named Cedric from there did reject cancer cells and this meant in a nature series that I saw, cue the lights, there is hope and we will beat this thing!  Hollywood ending, as Cedric points the way! 

Except, uh, that Cedric later caught a mutant form of the cancer, or at any rate was somehow infected by December 2008.   They have cut out the tumors in order to (maybe) save Cedric's life, but the hope that Cedric brought has dwindled.   There is no durable strategy for the wild Devils now, except by quarantining tiny, uninfected populations, for example, in a fenced-off area of the island (Tasman Peninsula), also on an island nearby, and through maintaining captive (zoo and other) populations.  Hobart, which housed that last marsupial wolf, has stepped up to support a captive population.  

To review:  the entire population is at risk, there is no cure and none really expected (even though post-operative Cedric may be still alive), and substantially all Devils in the wild are slated to die in perhaps 10-20 years!

If every individual in the wild expires, then presumably captive Devils can be reintroduced after a time. But first one must make quite certain that the contaminated wild ones are all good and dead, not one survivor, ghastly as this is.  It complicates things further that Devils also eat carrion; there is little doubt they would eat a deceased Devil and there may be risk of infection there as well; little is known.  In incidentally, they typically live perhaps eight years in the wild, but the longevity world record is not known.    

Something already wiped out much of their population in (presumably) epidemics of 1909 and 1950, by the way, and they obviously recovered.  They are important to Tasmania incidentally in controlling the red fox, an appalling threat to the island introduced by "ecoterrorists" in 2001. Tasmania is over 1/3 covered by parks and refuges, and many of Australia's vanished animals live now only the island (what kind of awful person would introduce foxes intentionally into the fragile ecosystem is difficult to imagine).  

Warner Brothers, responsible for the undersigned's logo and the wonderful Taz character has stepped up to offer support, as has Ted Turner.  In the Northwest, the population is still little-affected by the way, so there remains a flicker of hope that they could somehow be resistant, despite Cedric's predicament.  Maybe. There is now talk of fencing off the entire Northwest; no one seems to know if that is realistic.

Save the Tasmanian Devil's site is http://tassiedevil.com.au/.  If you are in a position to help, please do so.  In any case, thank you for reading, and don't be afraid to tell others.

-O.T.