[www.nytimes.com]

Half the population has died in the last few years from an unknown disease causing massive facial tumors.

The current explanation (no sign of a responsible virus can be found), is that it's a transmissible TUMOR.....

Tasmanian Devils went through a major genetic bottleneck at some point, and have extremely low genetic variation. (You could almost certainly make transplants between any two individuals with little or no chance of tissue rejection).

It is suspected that a random mutation in a cell from one Tasmanian Devil led to a facial tumor (ALL sampled tumors have had the exact same mutation). Then, another Tasmanian Devil bit the first on the face (they do a LOT of roughhousing, which gets especially bloody during sex)... IN the tumor... and cells from the tumor ended up transplanted into the other Tasmanian Devil (taking root in a bite on THAT Devil's face, or perhaps inside it's mouth). Due to the specie's genetic uniformity, the newly infected Devil's immune system didn't reject & attack the foreign cells.... and the tumor started growing in IT.

Exponentially, the tumor then spread to other Devils, and others, and even more others. Currently, something like 2/3 of Tasmania has infected Devils. They are hoping it doesn't spread to offspring, and trying to isolate a breeding population to preserve the species.

It sounds like there is no hope of fighting the disease, the species' only chance is to let them die off naturally (or deliberately wipe them out in the wild) & then reintroduce them from the captive stock.

The world is scary, sometimes.

Kenuchelover.