Tasmanian Devil - Relationship With Humans

Relationship With Humans

At Lake Nitchie in western New South Wales in 1970, a male human skeleton wearing a necklace of 178 teeth from 49 different devils was found. The skeleton is estimated to be 7000 years old, and the necklace is believed to be much older than the skeleton. Archeologist Josephine Flood believes the devil was hunted for its teeth and that this contributed to its extinction on mainland Australia. Owen and Pemberton note that few such necklaces have been found. Middens that contain devil bones are rare—two notable examples are Devil's Lair in the south-western part of Western Australia and Tower Hill in Victoria.

In Tasmania, local Aborigines and devils sheltered in the same caves. Tasmanian Aboriginal names for the devil recorded by Europeans include "tarrabah", "poirinnah", and "par-loo-mer-rer". According to Fritz Noetling, the Secretary of the Royal Society of Tasmania in 1910, there was no evidence that Tasmanian Aborigines ate any carnivorous animals. Owen and Pemberton feel this may have contributed to the devil's survival prior to European settlement.

It is a common belief that devils will eat humans. While they are known to eat the bodies of murder victims or people who have committed suicide, there are prevalent myths that it eats living humans who wander into the bush. Despite outdated beliefs and exaggerations regarding their disposition, many, although not all, devils will remain still when in the presence of a human; some will also shake nervously. It can bite and scratch out of fear when held by a human, but a firm grip will cause it to remain still. Although they can be tamed, they are asocial and are not considered appropriate as pets; they have an unpleasant odour and neither demonstrate nor respond to affection.

Until recently, the devil was not studied much by academics and naturalists. At the start of the 20th century, Hobart zoo operator Mary Roberts, who was not a trained scientist, was credited for changing people's attitudes and encouraging scientific interest in native animals such as the devil that were seen as fearsome and abhorrent, and the human perception of the animal changed. Theodore Thomson Flynn was the first professor of biology in Tasmania and carried out some research during the period around World War I. In the mid 1960s Professor Guiler assembled a team of researchers and started a decade of systematic fieldwork on the devil. This is seen as the start of modern scientific study of it. However, the devil was still negatively depicted, including in tourism material. The first doctorate awarded for research into the devil came in 1991.