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Tasmania, Australia (pte043/31.05.2005/14:57) - During the last three years a strange new disease has killed off nearly half the Tasmanian devil population in Australia. The marsupials, indigenous only to Tasmania, are plagued by a disease that is spreading at a rate of 6 to 10 miles a year, and is 100 per cent fatal. Only about half of the world's 150,000 Sarcophilus harrisii are still alive.
Nick Mooney, a wildlife biologist with Tasmania's Department of Primary Industries, Water and Environment in Hobart http://www.dpiwe.tas.gov.au , says: "The devils may be headed for extinction in the wild."
"If they're free of the disease, we may have reason for hope," he added.
The disease takes the form of a tumor on the animal's face, ballooning out of the neck and eventually choking it to death. Scientists have been baffled by the disease's mode of transmission. They have been confronted with the curious phenomenon that the disease could be caused by a transmissible tumor cell that moves from one animal to the other when the devils bite each other - an idea that defies all rules of modern biology.
The first cases of the devil's disease were photographed in 1996. In 2001 it became apparent that it had spread rapidly and widely. Scientists are now testing toxins to determine if Tasmania's widespread use of agricultural chemicals and pesticides is the cause of the devils' cancer.
The Tasmanian devil was named by early European settlers for the spine-chilling screeching they let out during combat, eating and copulation. They live in dens and scavenge for food, much like hyenas. Their life span is only six years.
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