NEWS ABOUT: Tasmania
Tasmania stories: 8 news briefs
It raises concerns about crop safety in Tasmania
Livenews (Australia) Jun 25, 09 1:07 PM CDT
(Newser Summary) -
Crop circles popping up in Australia aren’t the work of extraterrestrial visitors, but of stoned wallabies, Livenews reports. Marsupials have been breaking into poppy fields—which supply 50% of the world’s opium to pharmaceuticals—and munching on the crops. Then, “high as a kite,” they spin in circles until they crash, says Tasmania’s attorney general, vowing to review licensing policies and protect the drugs.
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Australia ups protections for devastated, iconic species
BBC May 22, 09 9:31 AM CDT
(Newser Summary) -
The Tasmanian devil, the iconic inhabitant of the island off Australia and the world’s largest surviving carnivorous marsupial, is now officially endangered, reports the BBC. Under attack by a virulent disease characterized by facial tumors, the devil population may be as low as 20,000, down 70% since the mid-1990s. The new status of endangered—changed from "vulnerable"—gives the animals extra protections under Australian law.
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194 animals beached; dozens returned to water
Daily Telegraph (UK) Mar 2, 09 7:46 AM CST
(Newser Summary) -
Rescuers using boats, stretchers, and a jet ski hauled dozens of whales and dolphins back to sea after 200 were beached on an Australian island, the Daily Telegraph reports. Some 59 animals were saved, ABC notes, as rescuers dug trenches and draped cloths over the whales to keep them cool before pulling them to sea. The remaining whales died on the beach.
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Attempt to outlast disease could be evolutionary
Daily Telegraph (UK) Jul 14, 08 8:46 PM CDT
(Newser Summary) -
Tasmanian devils are reproducing at a younger age to offset a contagious cancer epidemic, the Daily Telegraph reports. The ill-tempered marsupials, suffering from tumors that cut their lifespan in half, are now breeding at age 1 instead of 2 or 3. "We could be seeing evolution occurring before our eyes," one expert told the AP—though the devils may still die off in about 25 years.
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As cancer decimates critters, Aussies quarantine them on old prison peninsula
Wall Street Journal May 28, 08 1:22 PM CDT
(Newser Summary) -
The Australian government is stepping in to prevent the Tasmanian Devil from extinction, the Wall Street Journal reports, as the ill-tempered beasties have been dying off thanks to the world’s first contagious cancer, which they transfer by biting each other in the face. So zoologists are now working to quarantine infected devils in a natural prison—the Tasman-Forestier Peninsula.
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Tasmanian Devils transmit it by biting,
dogs with sex
NPR Apr 6, 08 8:31 PM CDT
(Newser Summary) -
Contrary to long-held opinion, cancer can be contagious—and Darwin is to blame, a science reporter told NPR. It turns out cancer cells evolve as species do, and in some rare cases—a cancer affecting Tasmanian devils, two others in dogs and hamsters—the cancers have evolved to allow direct contagion from one host creature to another.
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Mysterious 26-foot sea beast is longer than a bus and weighs a quarter-ton
Associated Press Jul 11, 07 11:26 AM CDT
(Newser Summary) -
A giant squid that weighs 550 pounds and measures 26 feet from the tip of its body to the end of its fearsome tentacles washed up on an Australian beach today. The rarely spotted sea creature is the largest specimen encountered since February, when fishermen in New Zealand netted a 33-foot catch that weighed 1,100 pounds.
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Iconic marsupials
hit by contagious
facial cancer
Der Spiegel May 7, 07 8:33 AM CDT
(Newser Summary) -
Tasmanian Devils, the largest marsupial carnivore and the island's main tourist attraction, are threatened with extinction due to a contagious and fatal form of facial cancer spreading rapidly through the population. "Once they've got a lump, it's a one way trip," one expert says.
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