Dasyurid News.

[den]

Toxic flame retardant found in tasmanian devils. Is this the cause of the lethal facial tumour disease?

And in other, unpublicized news, Western Plains Zoo (now renamed Taronga Western Plains) has a colony of 12 devils that are not on display. They are trying to get them to breed as part of the species rescue programme.

Comments

[lizardling.livejournal.com]

Wait... how would devils get into flame retardants? Or do the chemicals leach out and get into the soil/water?

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

That's what they are trying to figure out. My guess is it's related to the chemical they use on bushfires.

[zhenzhi.livejournal.com]

ye, what the ??? how did they get that in them? from bushfire retardant or something?? really wierd. and really awful too. :-(

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

my guess is bushfire retardant.

[makovette.livejournal.com]

It's a communicable disease, which means it's unlikely to be a chemical issue at it's core. There's most likely a virus or similar undiscovered pathogen here.

DDT wrecked havoc in the North American environment causing serious problems for raptors, budios (eagles and hawks) and other avian species through egg shell thinning, birth defects and so on, however none of those problems were communicable diseases.

The PPM (or more likely, PPB) levels of any chemicals detected have to be pretty minute give how large OZ is and how few people, relatively speaking, live there. A mechanism whereby exposure to minute amounts of contaminant could weaken an animals immunity to allow an otherwise inert pathogen to cause the tumors while perhaps logical, seems to be rather far fetched.

The article is too topical and fails massively to provide any hard details, even the name of the fire retardant is skipped. More real information is needed here, as this summed up is merely alarmist journalism in my opinion.

Let us know if you stumble across any real world hard info out there...

Thanks,
Mako

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

will post more as I find it.

The trouble with devils is that they are genetically close so a cancer is one will grow in another because they are, from the cancer's POV, the same animal. Cheeters have the same genetic problem.

And Tassie is a very small state/moderately sized island.

[tropism.livejournal.com]

Well, there go my plans to use tasmanian devils as a fuel source...

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

It was such a good one, too. If you can ignore the screaming.

[jamesb]

Maybe you could use them as alternate noise generators in the Britten-Norman Islander BN-2. Many years ago, Britten Norman perfected the fine art of producing lift as a secondary effect of noise, with the engines and propellers tuned to generate sufficient noise to achieve flight. Running them on Tasmanian Devils should increase efficiency.