Posted on 05/30/2005 10:37:38 PM PDT by neverdem
LAUNCESTON, Tasmania - Even by the brutish standards of Tasmanian devils, Rosie, Harry and Clyde have led a lamentable life.
A year ago, when the three were each the size of a sesame seed, they wriggled out of their mother's birth canal and undulated their way to her pouch. There, each locked onto a teat and grew like gangbusters.
But tragedy struck. Within months, their mother developed devil facial tumor disease - a mysterious malady that in the last three years has killed nearly half of all the world's devils, marsupials that are found only in Tasmania. Shortly after she died, the baby devils, grown to the size of tiny puppies, were found dangling from their mother's pouch, starving to death.
Rescued and reared by hand, Rosie, Harry and Clyde recently joined six similarly orphaned devils at the Launceston Lakes and Wildlife Park, all in strict quarantine. The fate of their exotic species - Sarcophilus harrisii - may lie in what happens to these rambunctious youngsters in the next 12 to 18 months.
"If they contract the disease, devils may be headed for extinction in the wild," said Nick Mooney, a wildlife biologist with Tasmania's Department of Primary Industries, Water and Environment in Hobart. "If they're free of the disease, we may have reason for hope."
Right now, wildlife experts are struggling to comprehend the nature of the fast moving epidemic. Moving at a rate of 6 to 10 miles a year, it is 100 percent fatal. Only the west coast, isolated by mountain ranges inhospitable to devils, is disease free. Nearly half of the estimated 150,000 devils in Tasmania are now dead.
Devil facial tumor disease is grotesque; the mother of Rosie and her brothers died when grotesque tumors ballooned out of her face and neck, choking off her...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Tom McHugh /Photo Researchers
In Tasmanian devils, tumors may be spread with biting.
Carl Moore
Nick Mooney, a government biologist, is trying to save devils from extinction.
Carl Moore
HOPE OF A SPECIES Clyde, whose mother died of facial tumor disease, is in quarantine with eight other young Tasmanian devils as scientists struggle to contain the epidemic. 
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
Okay, who wants a puppy?
ping
Seriously cute; can they be made into pets?
Looks like he does...for dinner.
No, Clyde's still too little. The grown one looks like it could do a teacup chihuahua or something like that, though.
With teeth like that, they darn sure aren't herbivorous.
Only if you like to lose fingers.
Adapt or die! Buh-bye, devils.
Shagsworth, what are y'all doing to your devils? :)
Now that I think about it, Clyde could probably do a teacup dog, too...just not in one bite.
:-D
"Yo quero Taco...AUUUUGGGGHHHH!!!"
Better get em fixed first!
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Devil sex turns up the volume. In March and April, males engage in vicious, blood-soaked combat, said Dr. Menna Jones, a wildlife biologist who also works in the environment department. Females select "big butch dudes," Dr. Jones said, and allow themselves to be dragged by the scruff of the neck into a burrow. There they scream and fight for several days, mating many times for hours at a time. At the end of such bouts, the male thrusts his sperm into the female every two minutes.
Jones is wrong. I'm sure this was Hugh Grant and that black hooker mating in his car. LOL
Your tagline, is that from the Ghoul in Cleveland?
It goes back to Andy's Gang ...a kid's show in the 50's with Andy Devine
Ok, I guess the Ghoul ripped it off in the 70s, then LOL.
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