Tasmanian Devil | 台北市立動物園資訊網

TheTasmaniandevilisNOTjustaLooneyTunescartooncharacter!Itisamostunusualmammal,foundonlyontheislandstateofTasmania,apartofAustralia.

Once found throughout Australia, Tasmanian devils slowly lost ground to the introduced dingo. But they did well on Australia’s island state of Tasmania, where there were no dingoes. When Europeans came to Tasmania in the late 18th century, they considered Tasmanian devils and Tasmanian tigers to be nuisances and pests, because the native wildlife hunted the settlers’ sheep and chickens. By the 1830s, bounties were placed on the devils and tigers until they neared extinction by the turn of the century. In fact, the Tasmanian tiger became extinct in 1936. Devils gained legal protection in 1941, giving the population a chance to gradually increase.

Sometimes residents of Tasmania still think of devils as pests, but this is because their numbers increase each summer when the young leave their mother to live on their own. However, only about 40 percent of these survive the first few months because of com...