4 ms·

They recently found a new disease free group of Tasmanian Devils down in a remote spot in Tassie. I didn't read the article, so maybe that is in there. If a gro

• pvaldes 8y ago
  This is a recolonization probably, Tasman devils do it all the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metapopulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metapopulation When the last tasman devil in an area dies, the area is totally cleaned from Tasman devil canker also. A very remote area can be reached only by healthy animals. The only able to endure the travel of several weeks or months. The area will remain clean for a while. Eventually the boom of animals born in the area with higher survival chances will extend and recolonize the wide empty space between the populations with and without canker. With a lot of luck all the diseased populations could collapse in this time, and the species could be free of the cancer eventually. With bad luck, an ill animal could get trapped in a truck, travel and be released in the clean area. Being isolated, the remote population would quickly vanish. The difference with tylacine is that tasman devils have several uncorrupted backups in zoos and also in the wild.