Trowunna Wildlife

the tenth of the fifth

We went to see little wombies, yay! And not just see them, we got to hold them! They are supercute. Especially Magie, the six month old, very heavy wombat in the second picture. This one right below grew up with dogs, so now he thinks she's a dog. She'd stand up on her back legs and lean towards your legs like dogs do. Except for she's got much more power and causes you to loose your balance sometimes.

Meet Maggie.

And on we go to pat the devils. Their teeth can actually break your bone. This one is a puppy, used to people.

Lots of Kangaroos here too

The devils feeding

This wildlife park has a program - they're trying to make disease-free population of the devils. They often suffer from a face tumor, which doesn't look good and when developped it causes them to starve to death as they cannot hunt. So Trowunna is picking the best genetic material and having experts take care of the population. They have to do this unless they want Tasmanian devil to disappear as Tasmanian tiger did. These 8 guys will stay in captivity for the rest of their life. They first have to see if they survive with no tumor and it may take several generations. Then they will let some out.
Luckily, it's not the whole Tasmanian population with the cancer gene. There's one part of Tassie where it hasn't been not found yet. In other part, some of the devils developped natural antidote. So things are looking good.