The Tasmanian Devil

While we're on the subject of animals terrorizing Australia, this is a good time to take a closer look at the Tasmanian Devil. While many of us outside of the island state of Tasmania might associate the Tasmanian Devil with the Looney Tunes cartoon character, real tasmanian devils are very interesting, albeit emotionally unstable animals. Like the cartoon version, tasmanian devils in the wild will eat just about anything, and they use their powerful jaws to devour all parts of their prey in an uncontrollable rage. They were named "devils" in part after humans witnessed their eating habits. But in fact, these marsupials fly into a frightening, psychotic rage pretty much anytime something doesn't go their way, such as when they encounter rival males or predators.  Combined with their pungent, foul odor and the belief that they were attacking livestock, tasmanian devils didn't traditionally win many human friends.

That has changed recently. Since the 1990s, tasmanian devil populations haven been fighting a contagious cancer called devil facial tumor disease. The facial cancer epidemic causes the normally ravenous devils to eventually die of starvation, and in a twist of fate, humans are now working to save them.

[Tasmanian Devil markingsCC BY-SA 2.0

Willis Lim - http://www.flickr.com/photos/willislim/3172976845/in/photostream/]

Cane Toads

In certain regions of Australia, cane toads are everywhere.  In fact, there are so many giant cane toads littering fields and roads that locals play a game to see how many they can hit with their car. The unattractive, bulbous creatures are not native to Australia and are considered an invading menace by the population.

Cane toads were originally brought into the country from Hawaii in the 1930s in the hope that they would eat and eradicate the cane beetle, a pest which at the time was devastating the sugar cane harvest.  That didn't work.  Instead, the original 3,000 cane toads proceeded to lay oodles of tadpoles, multiply like wildfire, and cover the region like a plague.  Today, cane toads blanket several states of Australia and continue to expand at an alarming rate.

To learn more about cane toads, their sworn enemies, and the strange few who love them, check out the highly entertaining film Cane Toads: An Unnatural History or the recent sequel Cane Toads: The Conquest.