Tag Archive for 'Tasmania'

The Effort to Study the Tasmanian Devil Facial Tumor Disease

Published on November 26, 2009 in Wildlife. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Here is a nice article about a effort on Tasmania to conserve the wild Tasmanian Devil population that continues to be ravaged by the facial tumor disease:

‘Skinny boy’ is back. The three-year-old Tasmanian devil is a serial offender. Thin and hungry, he’d been among the first devils trapped last March during the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery’s (TMAG) field trip to the remote coast south of Cape Sorell, halfway up Tasmania’s west coast. And here he is the very next day, again at the wrong end of a metre-long PVC tube trap.

“He has this big open wound, from under his chin right down his chest,” says scientific officer Billie Lazenby, as she peers down at Skinny Boy in the upended trap while wriggling her hands into disposable latex gloves. “Yesterday it had this yucky flap of skin hanging off it. He’d most likely have gotten it fighting.”

With help from fellow researcher Brian Looker, Billie slides Skinny Boy into a fresh hessian bag, which she carries to where veterinarian Jemma Bergfeld is pulling on her disposable gloves. Brian, meanwhile, wanders away with the empty trap and dons his elbow-length rubber gloves and starts thoroughly cleaning the trap with water, brushes and an industrial-strength disinfectant named Virkon.

All these gloves and cleanliness hint at the reason the TMAG team is here, on this rarely visited stretch of coast. The devils here have never been studied, but mere zoological curiosity wouldn’t have got the helicopter flying here. It was Devil Facial Tumour Disease (DFTD). This deadly, transmissible cancer – responsible for rapidly wiping out three-quarters of devils in areas where it’s found – has invaded about two-thirds of Tasmania. But, it seems, it isn’t here. Not yet. None of the devils trapped so far on this trip has shown signs of the disease.

Softly spoken and reassuringly gentle with her marsupial charge, Billie settles down on the sandy track beside Jemma, who is preparing her tools of trade – needles and phials for collecting blood samples. Billie positions Skinny Boy so that Jemma can extract her samples. He isn’t the first devil recaptured on the 10 km long line of 40 traps, and won’t be the last, according to team leader David ‘Doozie’ Pemberton.

“A lot of animals are incredibly wary of traps,” Doozie says. “Some ?just can’t be trapped. Devils, however… they’re probably the most trap-happy animals I’ve studied.”

Once Billie and Jemma have the blood samples they start examining Skinny Boy’s wound, a fist-sized patch of raw flesh on his chest. “There’s no sign of infection,” Jemma says. “For such a big wound it looks really good. I reckon he’ll be fine.”  [Australian Geographic]

You can read the rest of the article at the link.

Tasmanian Crop Circles Not From Aliens, But Stoned Wallabies

Published on June 27, 2009 in Facts About Australia. 3 Comments Tags: , , .

This is just to darn funny and something that could only happen in Australia:

The mystery of crop circles in poppy fields in Australia’s southern island state of Tasmania has been solved — stoned wallabies are eating the poppy heads and hopping around in circles.

“We have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles,” the state’s top lawmaker Lara Giddings told local media on Thursday.

“Then they crash. We see crop circles in the poppy industry from wallabies that are high,” she said.

Many people believe crop circles that mysteriously appear in fields around the world are created by aliens.

Poppy producer Tasmanian Alkaloids said livestock which ate the poppies were known to “act weird” — including deer and sheep in the state’s highlands.

“There have been many stories about sheep that have eaten some of the poppies after harvesting and they all walk around in circles,” said field operations manager Rick Rockliff.

Australia produces about 50 percent of the world’s raw material for morphine and related opiates.  [Reuters]

I had no idea Australia grew so much opium, especially in Tasmania.  That explains a lot about the people from Tasmania.  ;-)

Faces of Australia: Alexander Pearce

Published on June 3, 2009 in Facts About Australia. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

If you are an American and don’t know who Alferd Packer is or just have a vague memory of hearing this name before than you then have about the same historical memory that many Australians have of the notorious Alexander Pearce.  Packer was a member of a mining party who were caught in a blizzard while crossing Colorado’s San Juan Mountains.  The facts are unclear, but when the miners could not free themselves from the snow, Packer resorted to cannibalism by killing the other miners to survive.  Basically Alexander Pearce is Australia’s very own version of Alferd Packer, however I think can be made that Pearce is far worse.


Alferd Packer

Alexander Pearce was a small blue eyed Irishman that was originally sentenced to hang for stealing six pairs of shoes.  However, the sentenced was eventually reduced to a seventeen year sentence to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania).  A lot of people don’t realize that a sentence to Van Diemen’s Land did not mean you would actually spend time in prison there.  Instead the prisoners were sent to work apprenticeships for various industries on the island and were not kept in jails.  They in fact lived very normal lives as long as they did not break the rules.  The British believed by sending convicts to Australia they would remove the poor troublemaking underclass out of Britain while at the same time giving them job training.  The British also thought that by the time the convicts finished their sentences they may have married, started families, and owned land and not want to move back to the United Kingdom.  For the most part the British were right and this convict system proved to be an ingenious way to colonize Australia. 


Alexander Pearce played by actor Ciaran McMenamin 

Anyway Pearce’s apprenticeship on Van Diemen’s Land was to be a farmhand.  However, Pearce proved to not be a very good farmhand and repeatedly got in trouble.  The British typically punished convicts that broke the rules on Van Diemen’s Land with floggings before they would actually send them to prison.  So criminals that actually spent time in prison in Australia were truly the worst of the worst and that was what Pearce was.  The Hobart magistrates first tried floggings with Pearce, but in less then year after being transported to Australia, Pearce was sent to the notorious Macquarie Harbour Penal Settlement in August 1822.  The prison located on Sarah Island was thought to be escape proof due to its remote location in western Tasmania.  Convicts at the prison were forced to conduct hard labor, eat near starvation rations, and were flogged for the most minor offenses. 


Macquarie Harbour with the Frenchman’s Cap in the background.

Pearce lasted at the prison for only six weeks before he decided to escape with seven other prisoners.  The eight prisoners headed east through the thick bush country.  For the first week they marched through constant rain and sleet, which prevented them from starting a fire.  Two days later the group ran out of food and somebody came up with the idea of eating one of the group for food.  Pearce claimed that the two convicts Robert Greenhill and Matthew Travers are the ones that began the killing by smashing convict Alexander Dalton’s skull while he slept near the Franklin River.  Dalton was chosen because he had volunteered to be a flogger during his time at the prison.  After Dalton was killed he was chopped up and eaten by the group. 


Members of a team who trekked the footsteps of Alexander Pearce stand on the ruins of Macquarie Harbour Prison Settlement.

The group’s two oldest members, William Brown and William Kennerly feared that they could be next to be eaten, so they turned around and headed back to the prison.  These two convicts returned to Sarah Island 22 days after they had escaped.  Though they left the escapees because of their fear of being killed it didn’t matter because both died soon after returning to the prison due to exhaustion. 

The remaining escapees Pearce, Travers, Greenhill, Thomas Bodenham, and John Mather continued to head east to get to Hobart with the understanding that anyone who slept would be killed and eaten.  Bodenham was killed next near the Frenchman’s Cap.  Mather was the next to be killed while he slept near Mt. King William I.  This left Pearce, Travers, and Greenhill.  Travers and Greenhill were good friends and it appeared that Pearce would likely be the next to be eaten.  However, as fortune would have it for Pearce, Travers was bitten by a snake.  He was carried by Pearce and Greenhill for several days until his foot turned gangrenous and was killed while he slept.  This left Greenhill and Pearce to play a game chicken to see who would fall asleep first and killed.  This game went on for many days until Greenhill fell asleep first and Pearce killed him. 

Movie trailer of The Last Confession Of Alexander Pearce that was broadcast on ABC in January 2009.

All the suffering and killing would ultimately be for naught for Pearce because he was captured by colonial authorities 113 days after his escape when he alone made it to settled areas of Tasmania and pro
ceeded to rob the homes of farmers and their sheep.  Pearce had made it a total of 170 kilometers from the prison before his capture.  Pearce admitted to the authorities after his capture that he had eaten his fellow escapees, but the authorities did not believe him.  They thought Pearce was just trying to cover for his mates who were still on the lose.  Pearce was returned to the Sarah Island prison where he was sentenced for a total of seven years.  Pearce returned to the prison as a hero due to his exploits as an escaped convict. 

Instead of lying low and doing his time in the prison, Pearce decided to escape again.  This time he escaped with only one companion Thomas Cox who looked up to Pearce as a hero figure due to his prior exploits.  You have to wonder about the mental facualties of man willing wanting to escape with a convict known as Cannibal Pearce.  Especially since everyone else in the prison was smart enough to not attempt an escape with Pearce.  Anyway Cox’s fate was sealed when Pearce killed and ate him during their escape attempt.  Pearce eventually flagged down a passing boat but the captain searched Pearce and found a piece of human flesh in his pocket.  Pearce claimed that Cox had drowned, but now no one believed him and Pearce with ordered to be hanged.


Before being hanged Pearce was asked by a guard what had caused to him to want to eat another person?  Pearce replied that, “No man can tell what he will do when driven by hunger.”  He then concluded by informing the guard that, “Man’s flesh is delicious, far better than fish or pork.”  Pearce was hanged in Hobart on July 19, 1824 and no, no one ate him afterwards. 

Friday Eco-Fact: How Aggressive are Tasmanian Devils?

Published on May 29, 2009 in Wildlife. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Slate’s Christopher Beam answers a readers question on if Tasmanian Devils are as aggressive as the Looney Tunes character:

A rapidly spreading, deadly facial tumor virus has killed off 70 percent of the wild population of Tasmanian devils, leading the Australian government
to designate the creature “endangered” on Friday. The world’s most
famous Tasmanian devil, the character Taz from Looney Tunes, is
aggressive and excitable. Are the real ones like that, too?

Yes, especially when feeding. Although devils do hunt other
animals—wallabies, possums, and wombats are especially
attractive—they’re primarily scavengers. They scavenge in groups of
five to 12, possibly because it’s easier to pull apart a carcass
together than alone. The competition for limited resources makes each
devil highly protective of its share of the food. While eating, they
emit a blood-curdling screech and nip at one another’s faces, often drawing blood.

Mating
is also a violent process. Males fight over females, and whoever wins
grabs the female by the scruff of her neck and drags her back to a den,
where they mate. (Watch two male devils fight over a female here.)
The male must then defend the female during her 21-day gestation
period, lest other males come and try to mate with her, too. The babies
also have to fight one another—female devils give birth to 40 or 50
young every season, all of whom must compete for their mother’s four
teats. [Slate]

Make sure to read the rest.  

The Tasmanian Devil like most of the wildlife in Australia is a marsupial meaning that it reproduces and nurtures its young inside of a pocket.  It is also the largest carnivorous marsupial in the world.  It used to be the second largest until the Thylacine otherwise known as a Tasmanian Tiger went extinct in 1936.  Another interesting fact about the devils is that they have the strongest bite of any mammal because of its need to break bones when feeding.  

The devils are currently only found on the island of Tasmania though they once populated mainland Australia up to 400 years ago.  It is expected that the devils went extinct on the mainland due to competition for food from the Australian dingo that was introduced to the mainland by Indonesian traders 3,500 years ago.  The fact that the devils are only found on the small island of Tasmania means is what makes the facial tumor disease so dangerous to the species. 

The devil facial tumor spreads from one devil to another when they bite at each other faces while feeding in packs.  The disease then spreads to the neck of the devil where it then suffocates to death.  It is really quite a cruel way to die.  There is so far no cure for the disease that has killed roughly 50% of the devil population on Tasmania.  About 65% of the island has been infected with the disease with only the remote western area of the island free from the disease.  No one knows for sure what caused the virus, but it is suspected that the disease was started from devils foraging in trash cans. The devils immune system were not able to respond to the virus because of the lack of genetic diversity in the devils due to their isolation on Tasmania.

This disease hasn’t stopped the usual global warming alarmists from claiming that climate change is killing the Tasmanian Devils:

Through our growing numbers, our thirst for natural resources and, most
of all, climate change — which, by one reckoning, could help carry off
20% to 30% of all species before the end of the century — we’re shaping
an Earth that will be biologically impoverished. A 2008 assessment by
the International Union for Conservation of Nature found that nearly 1
in 4 mammals worldwide was at risk for extinction, including endangered
species like the famous Tasmanian devil.  [TIME]

It is incredible to me that a major news magazine like TIME could print such blatant propaganda as this.  This is just another perfect example of how the global warming alarmists are obscuring legitimate environmental issues such as the one facing the devils with their misinformation. 

While the alarmist continue their activities the real environmentalists are working hard to save the devils.  To prevent extinction of the species populations of the devils that are free of disease have been moved to the Australian mainland to be kept in zoos and animal sanctuaries such as the Healsville Animal Sanctuary in Victoria. 

The devils are on the verge of extinction, but lets hope that the work of both conservationists and scientists will be able to save this incredibly unique part of Australia’s biodiversity. 

Picture of the Day: Ruins of Tasmanian Prison

Published on April 17, 2009 in Tasmania. 0 Comments Tags: .

The Cannibal Run

Picture of the Day: The Waffle Cone Sponge

Published on February 4, 2009 in Tasmania and Wildlife. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Representing sweet success for a recent expedition off Tasmania, this 1.6-foot-wide (50-centimeter-wide), 6.5-foot-tall (200-centimeter-tall), “waffle cone” sponge is one of many new species found with a remotely operated submersible, scientists announced January 18, 2009.

The submersible, called Jason, is the size of a small car. It trawled the seas around the Tasman Fracture Zone, to a depth of 13,455 feet (4,010 meters)–the deepest such expedition yet in Australian waters. [National Geographic]

Only Two Beached Whales in Tasmania Remain Alive

Published on January 24, 2009 in Tasmania and Wildlife. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Sad news from Tasmania in regards to the recent beaching of 43 whales there:

A pod of about 50 whales, mostly mothers and calves, beached themselves on Perkins Island, north-west of Tasmania on Thursday night.

Marine biologists and Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife staff spent Friday on the island trying to save the seven whales still alive.

Two died on Friday afternoon and another three overnight.

Marine biologist David Penberton said the situation is “very negative but very positive”.

“It’s bad because there are so many animals dead but good because there are two alive who are floating at high tide,” Mr Pemberton said this morning.

“They are just bobbing in the water amongst the dead whales.”

Rescuers will now look at an action plan and work on trying to get the pair out to sea.

That is unlikely to happen until later on today or tomorrow morning.

“I can’t put a time limit on it right now, it’s a long way off because at this stage we are assessing it and looking at the best way to go about and set them out to sea.”  [AAP]

Rescuers in Tasmania Try to Save Beached Whales

Published on January 23, 2009 in Tasmania and Wildlife. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

For whatever reason beaching of whales on Tasmania continues to be a problem:

No hope ... 43 whales died in a mass stranding off the northwest tip of Tasmania / Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife

RESCUERS are battling the odds to save five sperm whales that survived a mass stranding on the northwest tip of Tasmania.

Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife spokeswoman Liz Wren said four staff members had made their way in a dinghy to Perkins Island, near the mouth of the Duck River at Smithton, where 48 whales beached themselves last night.

“They are stabilising the five surviving whales and are monitoring them until the next high tide due this afternoon, which will give them an opportunity to rescue them,” Ms Wren said.

She said the area where the whales had stranded themselves was treacherous, with numerous sandbars making navigation difficult.

She said some of the surviving whales were up 18m long.

Department of Primary Industries and Water spokesman Warwick Brennan said sperm whales were the “lords of the sea”.

“They weigh up to 50 tonnes and have a lot of blubber so they easily overheat,” he told The Mercury. [News.com]

Just a couple of months ago 64 whales were found beached on Tasmania as well.  The first beaching happened near Stanley, Tasmania with this one happening at Perkins Island just a short distance to the west:

Locations of whales beached in Northwest Tasmania.

The Bass Strait between Tasmania and the Australian mainland is known for its treacherous currents.  I wonder if the beaching of whales that continues to happen regularly in Australia has anything to do with the current that flow through the Strait that possibly the whales use to help navigate?

Picture of the Day: Australia’s Newest Bizarre Species

Published on January 21, 2009 in Tasmania and Wildlife. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Finds of strange sea life continued to be discovered in the waters around Australia:

An oddity among oddities, this newly discovered carnivorous sea squirt traps fish and other prey in its funnel-like front section, scientists announced today. Most of the 2,000 or so known sea squirt species are filter feeders that strain plankton from seawater.

Tethered to the seafloor 13,143 feet (4,006 meters) underwater, the 20-inch (50-centimeter) sea squirt, or ascidian, is one of the deepest-dwelling animals ever found in Australia. The new species is one of many new deep-sea creatures discovered on a recent expedition that used a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) near southern Tasmania, Australia.

The joint U.S.-Australian endeavor explored the Tasman Fracture Zone, a crack in Earth’s crust 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) to more than 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) deep.  [National Geographic]

Scientists Track 11 Whales Rescued in Australia

Published on November 25, 2008 in Environment and Tasmania. 0 Comments Tags: , .

The story of the eleven pilot whales that beached themselves on a Tasmanian beach has been making some pretty big global headlines:

Australian scientists are using satellite technology to track 11 whales that survived a mass stranding in the southern state of Tasmania over the weekend. The long-finned pilot whales were the only survivors of a pod of 64 found beached near the small town of Stanley. From Sydney, Phil Mercer reports.

Volunteers spent the weekend tending to the stranded whales, which had beached themselves near Stanley on Tasmania’s north-west coast. Fifty-three of the large marine mammals died but rescuers did manage to save 11 others.

They were taken back into deeper water. Tracking devices the size of a matchbox were attached to the dorsal fin of five long-finned pilot whales.

The devices show the whales have been swimming freely in open seas in Bass Strait, the large body of water that separates Tasmania from the Australian mainland.

Scientist Rosemary Gales hopes the global positioning technology will last.

“That is a little bit of an unknown because we haven’t done this before. It partly depends on how often the fin, the dorsal fin is out of the water because it can only transmit out of the water and then that in turn has an effect on its battery life. But we are hoping several weeks at this point,” said Gales.  [Voice of America]

Let’s hope these tracking devices do work and that these whales do no beach themselves again. 


Photo from ABC

You can see video of the rescue operation here.