Contagious cancer threatens future of devils (CNN)

(CNN) -- Australia's iconic Tasmanian devil -- widely known as trouble in Looney Tunes cartoons -- has been put on the country's endangered list, environmental officials announced Friday.

"My decision to uplist the Tasmanian devil is based on advice from the Threatened Species Scientific Committee, which lists the devil facial tumor disease as the major threat to the devil," Environment Minister Peter Garrett said in a statement.

"This disease has led to the decline of about 70 percent of the Tasmanian devil population since the disease was first reported in 1996."

The disease has devastated the animals, native to the Australian state of Tasmania, an island off the southeastern coast.

Devil facial tumor disease is one of only three cancers known to spread like a contagious disease, according to the Tasmanian government's Web site. As the name implies, it causes tumors on the face and neck, and sometimes other parts of the body, and it's passed by biting.
***
more: http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/05/22/tasmanian.devil.threatened/index.html




This story has been slowly developing over the last several years. The new listing reflects the growing seriousness of the problem.

I keep clicking on this headline and expecting to find an article about how Dick Cheney contracted cancer...

Sigh.