Have You Heard About This? The Devil Cancer Crisis

The Tasmanian Devil of Australian fame has been threatened with complete extinction for decades now. Depending on your point of view about the planet’s largest and most aggressive carnivorous marsupial, this is either very bad or very good news. But in a development that is likewise very good or very bad news, it appears that the Devil has no plans to go gentle into that good night. The BBC is reporting that a species of tumor which has been attacking and consuming the faces of youngsters fresh from their mothers’ pouches may be on its way out:

“There's fresh hope for the survival of endangered Tasmanian devils after large numbers were killed off by facial tumours. The world's largest carnivorous marsupials have been battling Devil Facial Tumour Disease (DFTD) for over 20 years. 

But researchers have found the animals' immune system to be modifying to combat the assault. And according to an international team of scientists from Australia, UK, US and France, the future for the devils is now looking brighter. 

"In the past, we were managing devil populations to avoid extinction. Now, we are progressively moving to an adaptive management strategy, enhancing those selective adaptations for the evolution of devil/DFTD coexistence," explains Dr Rodrigo Hamede, from the University of Tasmania. First discovered in north-eastern Tasmania in 1996, the disease has since spread across 95% of the species' range, with local population losses of over 90%. 

Dr Hamede's team has been collecting epidemiological evidence over the past 10 years. The group has plotted scenarios based on current infection rates in the wild, and in their forecast for the next 100 years, 57% of scenarios see DFTD fading out and 22% predict coexistence.”

Scientists are frankly baffled about the phenomenal comeback underway. Is the tumor somehow growing weaker, at the end of its pathological lifespan, or are those young devils simply growing stronger in their resistance to the disease entity that’s been stalking them for so many years? Oddly, many Australian zoologists seem to be looking to America for a solution.

“Them Yanks knows something about this, mate,” confided one grizzled old vet, “And I’m thinking we may be getting some helping hands from across the waters before this is done and dusted.”

We’ll see about that, won’t we?

Tasmanian Devil babies are called ‘Imps.’ Does this mean 

they’re more cute than carnivorous? No. They’re known 

and feared in fact for their “predatory cuddling” behavior.