Tasmanian devils need to evolve to be less aggressive if they are to avoid going extinct, suggests new research.
The study sheds new light on an infectious cancer threatening to wipe out the species’ wild population, which only exists on the Australian island of Tasmania. The tumours caused by the devastating disease, known as devil facial tumour disease (DFTD), interfere with feeding and affected animals often starve to death.
Dr Rodrigo Hamede and his team at the University of Tasmania investigated the connection between the infection of DFTD, which is spread when one animal bites another, and the number of bites that an animal received.