Tasmanian Devil by David Owen Read Free Book Online Page A

and possums. If the devil was a food source, the scarcity of devil bones in the cave indicate either its rarity or a disinclination to catch and eat it. Of course, devils also live in caves.
    There is, however, more recent evidence of the devil as a food source. Archaeological work at Victoria’s Tower Hill Beach kitchen middens records 5000-year-old devil bones. Very few middens with devil bones have been found, but this did not stop one authority from declaring, ‘the Aborigines knew how to hunt it, and they used it for food’. 11
    Writing in 1910 Fritz Noetling, Secretary of the Royal Society of Tasmania, cited a complete lack of evidence that Tasmanian Aborigines consumed any of the marsupial predators or monotremes. ‘It is undoubtedly very remarkable that even at the low state of civilisation represented by the Aborigines, human beings preferred the flesh of the herbivorous animals, and declined to eat that of the carnivorous.’ 12 If this is true it may partly explain why in Tasmania devils and humans coexisted for tens of thousands of years prior to European settlement.
    One of the greatest finds in Australian cultural history was made at Lake Nitchie, north of Wentworth on the Victoria–New South Wales border, in 1970. A male human skeleton, possibly 7000 years old, lay in a shallow grave. Unusually tall, he was wearing a necklace of 178 pierced Tasmanian devil teeth, collected from at least 47 animals. It has been speculated that the necklace indicates a dwindling population of Sarcophilus , and that it was considerably older than the skeleton. Archaeologist Josephine Flood went further: ‘Indeed, if such necklaces were common, it is not surprising that Tasmanian devils became extinct’. 13 It is a startling suggestion, that the animal may have been hunted to extinction for its teeth.
    On the other hand, the necklace is one of very few known to exist and required great labour to produce; this suggests it may have been of major significance. It is tantalising to speculate that the devil may therefore have held a special place in at least some societies of the distant past.

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    RELATIONSHIPS IN THE WILD
    I opened the tent zip and stood scanning the area until the beam came to rest on a large full grown Tassie devil looking straight at me only ten metres away. Closer inspection revealed a shiny object (my bloody fork!) hanging out of its mouth. Since I needed that fork more than he did, I charged the devil who dropped the fork and bolted into the bush.
    B RENDAN M C C ROSSEN , M IENA
    T asmania’s devil is twice lucky, having escaped the ancient fate of its mainland counterpart and the overt consequences of European settlement, which in a little over two hundred years has accounted for the extinction of almost half of the Australian continent’s mammal species. Most infamously, the thylacine, the Tasmanian tiger, was hunted during the nineteenth century as a supposed threat to the island’s sheep industry. It has not been seen for over 70 years and in 1986 was declared officially extinct. The devil has replaced the thylacine as the island’s largest marsupial predator, but because devils are also reliant on scavenging, Tasmania no longer has a specialist cursorial (free-running) native terrestrial predator.
    The Tasmanian tiger, a large pursuit predator, and the Tasmanian devil, a medium-sized ambush predator and scavenger, shared more than related names: their relationship in the wild was close and complex. Devils were preyed on by thylacines, but also benefited from the uneaten parts of the thylacines’ prey. Being foragers, devils undoubtedly ate denned thylacine cubs, should they come across them unprotected. As thylacines became rarer, such incidental predation may even have hastened their demise. Old thylacines encroached on the devil’s niche by scavenging. There may also have been competition for dens, given the preference of both species for caves, burrows