Wildlife experts battling a mystery disease which has killed half the world's population of Tasmanian devils said yesterday that the illness could prove as hard to eliminate as HIV or SARS.
Devil Facial Tumor Disease (DFTD) has nearly eliminated the marsupial predators from the eastern half of Tasmania and there are signs it is spreading to populations in the west, said Nick Mooney, a wildlife management officer with the island state's conservation department.
The disease manifests itself as small lesions and lumps around devils' mouths which grow into cancerous tumors on the face and eventually spread throughout the entire body.
PHOTO: AFP
Death occurs within three to five months, usually from starvation as weakened animals lose the ability to compete for food.
Mooney estimated that from a high of about 150,000 in the mid-1990s, the population of Tasmanian devils has been slashed to 75,000 by DFTD, an illness about which pathologists know little.
"The state population has halved already," he said.
Devils -- muscular, short-legged animals the size of a small dog but with jaws powerful enough to crush bones -- live wild only in Tasmania. There are only about 120 of the animals in captivity, all but one of them in Australia.
The threat to Tasmanian devils is such that the Hollywood entertainment giant Warner Brothers -- which made the feisty creatures internationally famous through the cartoon character "Taz" -- approached state officials to learn more about the crisis.
Experts from around Australia and beyond gathered in the Tasmanian city of Launceston earlier this month to develop a strategy for finding the causes of DFTD and battling the disease.
"Our big problem is that we don't even know for sure if this is an infectious disease or not," Mooney said.
"A retrovirus seems the most obvious suspect, but not all the cancers are caused by these," he said.
"The thing which seems clear is that there is a suppression of the animals' immune system for dealing with cancer, but the pathologists say we might be years away from finding the answer," he said.
Mooney says it is unlikely DFTD will wipe out the iconic Australian marsupial.
"There have been no clear examples of infectious diseases wiping out whole populations of animals because as the animals become rarer, the rate of transmission falls and the population recovers," Mooney said.
A humanoid robot that won a half-marathon race for robots in Beijing on Sunday ran faster than the human world record in a show of China’s technological leaps. The winner from Honor, a Chinese smartphone maker, completed the 21km race in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, said a WeChat post by the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, also known as Beijing E-Town, where the race began. That was faster than the human world record holder, Ugandan Jacob Kiplimo, who finished the same distance in about 57 minutes in March at the Lisbon road race. The performance by the robot marked a significant step forward
Four contenders are squaring up to succeed Antonio Guterres as secretary-general of the UN, which faces unprecedented global instability, wars and its own crushing budget crisis. Chile’s Michelle Bachelet, Argentina’s Rafael Grossi, Costa Rica’s Rebeca Grynspan and Senegal’s Macky Sall are each to face grillings by 193 member states and non-governmental organizations for three hours today and tomorrow. It is only the second time the UN has held a public question-and-answer, a format created in 2016 to boost transparency. Ultimately the five permanent members of the UN’s top body, the Security Council, hold the power, wielding vetoes over who leads the
South Korea’s air force yesterday apologized for a 2021 midair collision involving two fighter jets, a day after auditors said the pilots were taking selfies and filming during the flight and held them responsible for the accident. “We sincerely apologize to the public for the concern caused by the accident that occurred in 2021,” an air force spokesman told a news conference, adding that one of the pilots involved had been suspended from flying duties, received severe disciplinary action and has since left the military. The apology followed a report released on Wednesday by the South Korean Board of Audit and Inspection,
An earthquake registering a preliminary magnitude of 7.7 off northern Japan on Monday prompted a short-lived tsunami alert and the advisory of a higher risk of a possible mega-quake for coastal areas there. The Cabinet Office and the Japan Meteorological Agency said there was a 1% chance for a mega-quake, compared to a 0.1% chance during normal times, in the next week or so following the powerful quake near the Chishima and Japan trenches. Officials said the advisory was not a quake prediction but urged residents in 182 towns along the northeastern coasts to raise their preparedness while continuing their daily lives. Prime
RSS