Tasmanian Devil (19 page)

Nick Mooney has for many years played a key role in the management and research of
Tasmania's wildlife. (Kate Mooney)

Fortunately, the threat proved to be an unintentional beat-up. Sampling outside the Cradle Mountain area by Nick Mooney revealed the worm to be naturally present in about 30 per cent of the devil population. Government veterinary pathologist Dr David Obendorf confirmed that no crossover risk existed. ‘Wherever you find Tasmanian devils you find the parasite but that's no reason for killing Tasmanian devils.'
¹⁶
It was a strange way to discover more about the tough little ambassador.

In the space of twelve months, in 1991 and 1992 three very different accounts of the devil were published by the world's foremost devil experts. The University of Tasmania conferred David Pemberton's doctoral thesis, ‘Social organisation and behaviour of the Tasmanian devil,
Sarcophilus harrisii
'; Eric Guiler published his 28-page
The Tasmanian Devil
, which covers a year in the life cycle of the animal; and Nick Mooney's ‘The Devil You Know' appeared in the Winter 1992 edition of
Leatherwood: Tasmania's Journal of Discovery.
Despite its brevity Mooney's article is one of the first genuinely informed accounts of the animal written for the general public. Mooney had been studying and interacting with devils for years; the importance of ‘The Devil You Know' is its wealth of previously unpublished and logical assumptions about the animal, including:

• The demise of the thylacine probably resulted in diminished competition for, and predation on, devils. It is also reasonable to suppose that the niche of devils then expanded as it has for hyaenas as the number of lions diminished in Africa. I wonder if devils now may be of a larger range size and more predacious than before, gradually evolving to soak up the empty (or good as empty) thylacine niche.

• It is a pity that the first exotic eutherians our marsupials had to deal with were probably the very cream of that group as far as survival goes: humans, dogs, foxes, cats and rodents. For a long time this ‘unfair' competition has clouded the true success of marsupialism.

• Small devils have a variety of natural competitors and predators including (previously) thylacine, people, other devils, quolls and large birds of prey. Eagles and people are probably two of the main reasons devils and many other Australian animals are nocturnal, directly to avoid predation and indirectly to minimise competition.

• Unusual items I have found in devil scats include: part of a woollen sock; a wallaby foot complete with snare; part of a dog or cat collar; 27 whole echidna quills; stock ear tags and rubber lamb ‘docking' rings; head of a tiger snake; aluminium foil, plastic and Styrofoam; ring off a bird's leg; half a pencil; leather jacket (fish) spine; boobook owl foot; cigarette butt; part of a ‘steelo' pot scraper. I have also had part of a leather boot and the knee of a pair of fat-stained jeans eaten after being left outside a tent (not with me in them).

• I have made some observations of sheep and lamb–devil interactions using military style ‘starlight scopes'. Large devils will check out a flock by sniffing from 10–15 m. The sheep will group and face the devil, stamping their feet as their usual threat. If the sheep are all healthy and alert and no carrion or afterbirth is available the devil(s) quickly move on. Sick or injured stock attract much more attention. Healthy sheep without lambs usually ignore devils.

The devil's varied and indiscriminate diet results in
disproportionately large scats. (Courtesy Nick Mooney)

• Although devils use their extraordinary strength to escape traps they rarely use it to enter places to eat.

• The mechanism of foraging seems to be almost ceaseless patrolling . . . I have followed individual devils for more than 11 km along beaches and through the snow before losing their tracks.

• Human interference can be important, either by providing extra food or extra mortality, especially with illegal poisoning. Often, as in some rural areas, it is a bit of both resulting in unusually high population turnover.
¹⁷

Like the earlier articles by Mary Roberts and Jack Bauer, Mooney's field observations cut right through much of the dogma that continued to be associated with the devil.

8

IN CAPTIVITY

At the devil pen the rock wall prevented my son from catching a good view, so I picked him up and we leant over for a better view. My overpriced but much-loved sunglasses fell into the pen. I contemplated retrieving them, but we then watched in awe as two devil diners crunched silently on them until they had completely devoured them. Since then I've never spent more than twenty dollars on a pair of sunglasses.

R
ICHARD
P
ERRY
, W
EST
H
OB
A
RT

T
asmanian devils are easy to capture and easy to keep captive. Nocturnal by preference, devils in captivity are usually displayed during daylight and fed at optimal visiting times. They have always been regarded as curious creatures, a legacy of nineteenth-century attitudes ranking marsupials as inferior to placentals. They were displayed in zoos across the world from the mid-1800s until well into the twentieth century, when export restrictions came into place. This chapter looks at three contemporary instances of devils in captivity.

Toren Virgis is head keeper at the Bonorong Wildlife Park, not far from Hobart, which is the most visited wildlife park in Tasmania. It is laid out to ensure maximum interaction with its wildlife. Visitors enjoy the experience of stepping around lazing kangaroos and wallabies, and many line up to be photographed with sleepy koalas, while a variety of wild parrots and wattle-birds make merry in the trees. First-time visitors might expect this tranquillity will be shattered at the devil enclosures. It never is—and for Toren Virgis that's a good thing. He is greatly concerned to strip away the myths surrounding the animal. What worries him is that it's adults who tend to need more educating than children.

A devil resting in a log den, Bonorong Wildlife Park. (Courtesy
The Mercury
)

Virgis identifies several typical visitors, including US tourists who are surprised that there is a ‘real' Tasmanian devil; those who assume devils are vicious and dangerous; and a few Tasmanians who simply dislike them. Dispelling the assumption of viciousness isn't hard: most of the Bonorong devils tolerate being picked up, stroked, even tickled. Less easy to change are ingrained attitudes. A Tasmanian sheep farmer told Virgis that the sooner DFTD wiped the devils out the better. And on one occasion Virgis was educating a class of schoolchildren about devils when a boy said, ‘But my dad likes to shoot them!'
¹

Bonorong's devil population averages about eight, sharing four enclosures, with larger enclosures being built for expanding numbers as a response to the disease crisis. Virgis knows his devils intimately. Thus wild-born Gunter, three years old, has a dominating, aggressive nature, and will charge screaming at the keeper, only to stop short. It's a social manoeuvre, a dominance tactic. Flash, on the other hand, born at the park, is a three-year-old male described by Virgis as a ‘timid wuss'.
²
He believes this may be because Flash spent his early years with three females, who bullied him. Each devil, he says, has a distinct personality.

It took him some time to get to know them. He started at Bonorong in a part-time capacity and had been advised by a previous keeper to take a rake with him into the enclosures, to keep the devils at a distance. Virgis did this for two months. The devils didn't like it—it ‘antagonised them'3—and neither did he. In exasperation he dispensed with the rake, got down to their level and took it from there. In the three years since, he's had just a few bites on his hands, which he calls nips, generally associated with food he's carrying.

To minimise the confinement behaviour so often associated with captive animals, such as incessant pacing, Bonorong's devil enclosures are designed to mimic natural conditions. But confinement it is, including daylight feeding and a reversal of nocturnalism and solitariness. Not that the devils seem to mind. They're treated daily to rabbit and a chicken drumstick, a supplement such as a raw egg, or mince with grated carrot or apple. The rabbit is pre-frozen to kill fleas. Virgis regularly buries food treats: devils like digging and it gives them something to do. One of those treats is ‘bloodsicles', frozen cubes of blood.

The animals are rotated between enclosures for compatibility and, near mating time, as a way of finding good mate-matches. Their faeces are also rotated, again near mating time, to stimulate males into a sense of competition. In Virgis' opinion it's laziness rather than wild-latrine mimicry that has some wildlife parks leaving faeces where they are deposited.

One feature of their captive state which interests him, and that can't easily be tested in the wild, is that females tend to dominate throughout the year, except for the two-month breeding period. Then, he says, the females are ‘edgy' and the males ‘lose it'.
⁴
It is a clear case of role reversal, the males becoming highly energised, aggressive and dominating, the females submissive.

Virgis is well aware that captive breeding isn't a magic solution to the decline of the devil. He goes back to education, to attitudes, and laments in particular Tasmania's hunting culture—gun users don't only hunt for the pot. The wildlife parks are already playing a central role in combating DFTD through their greatly stepped-up breeding programs. And information comes to them: a visitor to Bonorong, a South African dentist, remarked casually to Virgis that a mystery disease killing bovines and carnivores in southern Africa, in which cancerous lesions developed about the face and mouth, had been traced to poison baiting. Virgis passed the information on to the relevant authorities. It may well come to nothing. But by the accumulation of such information difficult problems are finally solved.

Angela Anderson is resident zoologist at the Tasmanian Devil Park, a tourist attraction and wildlife rehabilitation centre at Taranna, near the Port Arthur Historic Site on the Tasman Peninsula. Anderson studied in Glasgow before taking up an internship in wildlife rehabilitation at the Wildlife Centre in Virginia, USA. There she specialised in birds of prey, treating up to 40 at a time. Across the world at the Tasmanian Devil Park a new raptor rehabilitation centre opened in 2001 and Anderson successfully applied for the position.

The Tasmanian Devil Park has a resident population of about fourteen devils. The two enclosures have sturdy metre-high walls to allow for easy viewing. However, this ease of viewing can present problems. Captive devils are inquisitive and will stand up against the inner wall, and visitors have been known to try and pat them. Children are sometimes held over the walls by their parents for a closer look, despite bold signs warning of the dangerous bite of devils. None of this is advisable. The question most frequently asked by visitors is whether they can pick one up.