A recent study of Tasmanian Devils has suggested that the animals are able to overcome the facial tumour which has wiped out much of the population.
Dr Rodrigo Hamede, a professor at the University of Tasmania, says that the devils have the ‘capacity to adapt to the transmissible cancer at genetic and phenotypic levels’, and that this has been evident in Devil populations over the past 20 years.
Dr Hamede says that, although severely threatened, Tasmanian Devils are unlikely to become extinct due to the disease.