by David Owen
In June 1987 the rural Tasmanian Country took a less lighthearted view:
Farmers in Tasmania’s North-East are concerned about large numbers of Tasmanian devils in the area. While the devils are causing problems with livestock, the farmers are at a loss to know what steps can be taken about what they consider to be plague proportions of the wholly protected native animals . . . Waterhouse farmers, Lindsay and Lois Hall, say they can barely set foot outside their back door without running into devils. Mrs Hall said that 25 years ago she would see ‘the odd one’. However, she said, on their cattle grazing property, large numbers were now seen during the daytime and were creating havoc. Mrs Hall said the Tasmanian devils took their chickens and ducks and chewed the ears and tails off newborn calves if they were too slow to stand up. She said the devils had also been known to take a litter of pups.
Mrs Hall said she believed the problem started when, about six years ago, large numbers of Tasmanian devils were brought to the area from Cape Portland where they were becoming a nuisance. Since then they had bred up to plague proportions. Mrs Hall believes because there were so many Tasmanian devils in the area there was a shortage of food and the animals were in poor condition and mangy. ‘I wouldn’t like to see them go because they are a unique animal,’ she said.9
Mrs Hall’s sympathy for the devil was admirable, given the dislike of it held by many in rural industries. But a few others were beginning to see a different value in the animal. A metamorphosis, dollar-inspired though it may have been, had begun back in the mid-seventies when a prominent businessman and member of the then Tasmanian Tourist Authority suggested that the devil be used to attract tourists. A sixteen-week global study trip had shown him:
The official logo of the Tasmania Parks & Wildlife Service. (Used with permission of and © the Tasmania Parks & Wildlife Service)
Tasmania is almost unheard of throughout the world, and those who know of our State, know it only because of its connection with the Tasmanian devil . . . Now is the time for us to sell, sell, sell our natural product through our tourist industry . . . Many parts of the world are suffering from the thoughtlessness that has accompanied industrial expansion, and we must do everything we can to preserve our unspoiled environment.10
Luring tourists to a place for its wildlife is understandable. Taking an animal out of its natural habitat to attract tourists to that place is a different matter. So it was that in 1981 the Tasmanian government proposed to use a devil as a central feature of a tourism task force visiting New Zealand. The animal would then be donated to a university for scientific study. It’s hard to imagine a lone devil in a cage enticing anyone to visit its homeland, and the Australian government in any event refused an export license. When this failed, donation became the next option, and attention turned to Japan.
The State government found a way around the issue, donating four devils to Osaka Zoo in 1984. According to the official ministerial news release, they were being given
to the Japanese people . . . The gift of the devils will help to cement the bonds which are being developed between Tasmania and Japan . . . The devils will be unusual but important ambassadors for our State . . . The Japanese people were fascinated by the devils, and their interest in the animals would focus attention on Tasmania. The Japanese press had already given extensive coverage to the pending arrival of the animals, describing them as the ‘strangest of all animals’ and ‘with strong teeth, even to bend iron stick’ . . . Osaka Zoo officials had prepared a special home for the devils, and plans also were being made for an official receiving ceremony.11
A few years later three more devils, the youthful Mo, Mavis and Mary, were presented to the Sapporo Maruyama Zoo in Japan’s Hokkaido state. The Tasmanian official accompanying them on the flight, Ray Groom, the Minister for Forests, Mines and Sea Fisheries, expressed the hope that they would breed in captivity, again ‘putting Tassie in the spotlight’.12 Needless to say, they didn’t breed, but as a marketing ploy it worked; the devil was to become as significant as the koala as an iconic Australian image.
This new-found respect for the animal in its home state was not before time. While devils continued to be regarded as pests in some agricultural areas, public sensitivity to its status rebounded on the university, which since the time of Flynn had been associated with research for its protection. A saga which made international news in 1985 started with a front-page report in The Mercury headlined ‘Uni’s Devilish Experiments Anger Animal Libbers’:
Animal Liberationists have warned they will picket and possibly invade a University of Tasmania seminar in Hobart tomorrow to protest against experimentation on and slaughtering of at least 11 Tasmanian devils. The seminar, in the university’s zoology department, has been arranged for the presentation of reports on research to ascertain the temperature regulation of Tasmanian devils’ brains.
The experiments were by an honours student working on his Bachelor of Science honours thesis. A spokesman for the Tasmanian chapter of Animal Liberation, Mrs Pam Clarke, yesterday said the experiments had been futile. Several animals which had had sensitive temperature recording instruments called thermocouples implanted in their brains had been found to be useless for the experiments because the thermocouples had corroded. ‘The devils, a part of our unique wild fauna, have been through a horrendous series of experiments,’ she said. ‘We were horrified to read that many of them died during the implantation operations and also during other experiments,’ she said.
The survivors had been forced into prolonged exercise on an enclosed treadmill. An electric shock grid had been put at the rear of the treadmill ‘to encourage the animals to continue running’, but this was discontinued because ‘it caused unnatural responses and also affected the chart recorder’.
Mrs Clarke said the distressed devils had suffered substantial injuries to their tails and paws when caught between the treadmill and the boundary wall. Animal Liberation also has claimed that an unspecified number of native cats and possums have been slaughtered in university-sanctioned experiments. ‘Animal Liberation calls on the university to open its doors on the secrecy surrounding animal experimentation and appoint a member of an animal welfare organisation to its animal ethics committee,’ Mrs Clarke said.
The head of the pathology department in the university’s medical faculty, Prof Konrad Muller, yesterday defended the experiments on the grounds that the research was important. A similar appraisal of another animal’s brain, for instance a rabbit’s, would not have given the desired results. The 11 Tasmanian devils had been ordered by Dr S. C. Nicol, of the university’s physiology department, with the permission of the State National Parks and Wildlife Service. Of the 11, six had been killed and their brains immediately examined. The other five had been used in a series of tests to determine the regulation of their brain temperatures.13
These allegations were not met with silence. The story continued on the front page of the next day’s paper:
A senior lecturer at the University of Tasmania yesterday lashed out at what he called ignorant and ill-informed criticism of experiments . . . they had considerable scientific merit and had resulted in the discovery of a blood cell which controlled the temperature of the marsupial’s brain. ‘The experiments have a number of implications to the evolution of marsupials and the evolution of mechanisms which keep body temperature constant in all mammals, and for understanding the devil’s way of life,’ Dr Nicol [sic] said . . . He said the results had been enthusiastically received by the Australian Journal of Zoology and another Australian university which was doing similar experiments . . . The experiments were part of a thesis by an honours student for his bachelor of science degree. Dr Nicol said the student was not Australian, and poor expression had made the experiments appear worse than they really were . . . Dr Nicol said that [the thermocouples] had broken in their rubber casing, and were useless for the experiment, but had not caused the animals any extra discomfort. He also dismissed claims that devils had been forced to
run for unnatural periods of time on a treadmill. ‘The treadmill experiments involved only two animals which ran at 7 kmh . . . In the wild the animals keep this sort of speed up for hours.’14
A ministerial statement defended the university, which was not surprising given that the government had issued the experiment permits in the first place. The minister curiously observed that devils were in abundance, as if that overrode questions of ethical treatment of individual animals. The issue duly blew over.
Devils weren’t long out of the news, however. Tasmanians awoke one morning in July 1988 to a front-page horror headline: ‘Devil’s Disease—State’s Tough Little Ambassador Threatens Livestock’.15
The discovery of the deadly animal parasite Trichinella spiralis for the first time in Australia—in devils—had potentially disastrous national ramifications. Not only might it migrate to livestock (pigs are the main host) or to humans (causing eye and heart damage), but both Tasmania’s and the country’s disease-free livestock status might also be seriously jeopardised. The infected devils all came from an area near iconic, isolated Cradle Mountain. How could a foreign parasite make its way there? Tourists? It was speculated that a devil or devils must have eaten an infected product, most likely illegally imported salami, because curing and smoking meat doesn’t kill the worm.
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.
RICHARD PERRY, WEST HOBART
Tasmanian 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 screamin
g 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.