Tasmanian Devil Facts

A Tasmanian devil looks like a small, heavily built dog, squat and muscular with a disproportionately large, broad head, 20 to 31 inches in body and about a foot at the shoulder, with strong sexual dimorphism — males up to 26 pounds, females 9 to 15. Its most distinctive feature is its jaws: relative to body size the devil has one of the strongest bite forces of any living land mammal, powered by massive temporalis muscles anchored on a bony skull crest, and its jaws open to an 80-degree gape that lets it shear hide, shatter ribs, and crush skulls to eat marrow, fur, and bone. The coarse black fur often carries white chest or rump patches, and — like many marsupials — the devil stores fat in its tail, so a plump tail signals a healthy animal and a thin one starvation. Long whiskers and an acute sense of smell suit its nocturnal life. It belongs to the carnivorous-marsupial family Dasyuridae alongside the quolls and extinct thylacine; its genus name Sarcophilus means "flesh-lover," and though devils once ranged across mainland Australia they vanished there roughly 3,000 years ago and now live only on Tasmania.

The Tasmanian devil is endemic to Tasmania, off Australia's southeast coast, and is adaptable across much of the island. It is most abundant in coastal scrub, dry sclerophyll forest, and mixed temperate rainforest, where dense undergrowth offers daytime shelter and denning cover, and it also uses grassland, pasture, and forestry plantations wherever food is reliable, avoiding only the highest alpine peaks and dense city centers.

The Tasmanian devil is an opportunistic carnivore. It can hunt small wombats, wallabies, birds, reptiles, and large insects, but much of its diet is carrion. A devil can eat up to 40% of its body weight in one feeding. Several animals may gather at a large carcass, where calls, lunges, and bites help establish feeding order. Strong jaws allow them to consume meat, organs, fur, and bone.

Tasmanian devils are primarily solitary and nocturnal, forming no packs and roaming independently across overlapping home ranges of up to 20 square kilometers, sheltering by day in hollow logs, dense brush, or old wombat burrows. Despite the solitary life they have a rich vocal repertoire for encounters at carcasses and in the mating season — raspy coughs, growls, shrieks, and the echoing scream that named them. Threatened or stressed, a devil performs a wide, teeth-baring "yawn" that looks aggressive but is actually a sign of fear, and it can release a pungent, skunk-like odor (not sprayed).

Devil reproduction is intense. Mating is in March, males aggressively guarding females, and after only about 21 days' gestation the female gives birth to 20 to 30 tiny joeys, each about the size of a grain of rice. They scramble up her fur to the rear-facing pouch — but she has only four teats, so the first four to attach survive and the rest perish. The survivors stay attached in the pouch about 100 days, then are left in a den while she forages, weaning around 9 months before dispersing. Wild devils have a tragically short lifespan, typically 5 to 6 years, up to 8 in captivity.

The Tasmanian devil is Endangered with a sharply decreasing trend. The primary cause is a catastrophic transmissible cancer, Devil Facial Tumour Disease (DFTD), first found in 1996 and spread by biting during mating and feeding frenzies; it grows tumours on the face and mouth that eventually stop the animal eating, killing it by starvation within months, and it has wiped out more than 80% of the wild population. Major conservation efforts are under way — the "Save the Tasmanian Devil Program" maintains disease-free insurance populations in captivity and on islands, while researchers work on a vaccine and study wild devils showing signs of natural genetic resistance.

• IUCN Red List of Threatened Species: Tasmanian Devil
• San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance: Tasmanian Devil
• Australian Museum: Tasmanian Devil