Tasmanian Devil Read Online Free PDF Page B

at least in part on ‘numbers’. Despite decades of research, devil population shifts defy easy explanation. George Davis recalls that, as a boy in Pelham during the early 1940s, the capture of a devil caused excitement because the creature was so rare. David Randall remembers them being very uncommon everywhere in the 1950s, and also in low numbers in the late 1960s. Yet by the early 1970s and again in the late 1980s, farmers in the east and northeast complained of ‘plague numbers’ threatening the sheep industry.

    Devils don’t always benefit from food provided by roadkill.(Courtesy Nick Mooney)
    Interference with food supply may affect devils. Davis recalls night shoots when a bag of three or four wallabies was considered good. The introduction of spotlight shooting in the late 1960s, at the same time as a great increase in the amount of agricultural browsing land, meant that suddenly hundreds of carcasses were being dumped every night. More food meant more devils, and consequently a human-induced alteration to natural population dynamics.
    Roads might be another influence on devils where roadkills are common, for instance near barley fields which are particularly attractive to wallabies. Do devils live in greater numbers near roads which offer up a steady supply of roadkill? It is impossible to know what influence human factors have on devil movements and especially their den sites, which are the critical factors in the home range location. If, over time, human activities have disrupted naturally occurring devil genetic dispersal patterns, the final outcome may be population chaos followed by extinction.

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    EVOLUTION AND EXTINCTION
    Late into the night with our little boat anchored just outside the weedline about thirty metres from shore we heard an ungodly commotion. Spotlight quickly activated to find a Tasmanian devil tearing open the tightly wrapped package of sandwiches which it had somehow managed to get out of an airtight lunch box. In the couple of minutes it took to start the outboard motor and push the boat through the weeds to shore the devil and complete contents of the lunch box were gone. The devil had obviously eaten in silence until it got to the sandwiches. It must have got frustrated with the plastic wrap hence the sudden noisy outburst.
    B RIAN G EORGE , S ORELL
    Long ago, in the Dreamtime, deep in the Tasmanian bush, Wing-go-wing the Tasmanian devil finished eating her dinner. She didn’t, though, have a full stomach and was still hungry. She started hunting again and spied a kangaroo. ‘This would taste just right and fill up the hollow in my stomach,’ she said. Ooroo, the kangaroo, didn’t see Wing-go-wing approaching . . . creeping . . . unseen. Wing-go-wing chased after Ooroo, snapping at its legs. He bounded off as fast as he could, but Wing-go-wing caught hold of Ooroo. Wing-go-wing bit off the bottom of Ooroo’s legs and the end of his tail. Ooroo, though, escaped and bounced into the thick scrub. Wing-go-wing was happy with this little snack and quickly ate what she caught. Ooroo, the now much shorter kangaroo, turned into a pademelon. The pademelon has short legs and a short tail. The pademelon is now always careful of Tasmanian devils and, to this day, wishes it had its longer legs and its longer tail. Wing-go-wing finished her kangaroo nibble but was still hungry. She thought possum would taste nice for dessert. Be-U, the possum, sat in his tree having witnessed what had just happened to Ooroo and he thought he would teach this Tasmanian devil a lesson. Be-U hid behind a stump of an old tree. Wing-go-wing approached, sniffing for possum. Be-U jumped out, holding a sharp stick in one of his paws. He struck Wing-go-wing across the neck and the devil screamed loudly. Be-U, with his other paw, threw white sand at Wing-go-wing and it stuck in the cut. Some of the sand went into Wing-go-wing’s mouth. Be-U scrambled up a tree to see Wing-go-wing