How can you resist an animal called a quoll? The quoll – a carnivorous marsupial – is about the size of a cat, but even cuter (if possible). Here’s one:
As you’ll have noticed, this quoll is spotted – hence its name, Dasyurus maculatus. For reasons best know to Aussies, it used to be called the [...]
October 2007
The Tasmanian Devil suffers from a horrible viral cancer which is killing off the population. Conservationists are trying to take measures to save them.
Faculty of Life Sciences trivia quiz: which member of staff has a scar from a Tasmanian Devil bite?
Highlight this line to get the answer: Andrew Loudon
October 2007
Matt Kaiser (Postgrad) pointed this out: The albino koala that appeared in an earlier Z-Letter item is a fraud. Or at least, it’s not an albino, according to a video from The Guardian [that has since been removed for copyright reasons - hence the lack of link]. Not convinced, myself… But if it IS an albino, how come [...]
September 2007
BBC video here. Aaah. But more seriously, albinoism occurs regularly in (to my knowledge) all mammals. Is it the same gene that is mutated each time? Why do albinos have visual problems?
(NB see other posts on albinism – they update this story)
February 2007
Last year ago, the Z-letter carried an item about the nasty virus which is threatening the Tasmanian Devil. A conference has taken place in Tasmania to pool ideas about how to fight the disease.
BBC report here, Nature article on the virus from 2006 here, Nature news piece from 2006 here (Uni/Athens needed for both these), a good book about [...]
November 2006
A new study suggests that the decline in Australian marsupials may have been partly caused by the decline in the numbers of the top predator – the dingo.
BBC summary article here; original article here (open access).
