How many Tasmanian devils are there? As of November 2026, the Tasmanian government says no one knows how many devils live in the wild. Numbers are thought to be 10,000 to 100,000, because population estimates exist for only a few places chosen for trapping. Researchers combined 35 years of spotlight counts of devils seen at night, 10 years before and 25 years after the disease was found, with 21 years of estimates of how many devils live in an area, made at places where devils were trapped.
Scientists also follow single devils. A San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance library fact sheet, citing a 1990 study, gives individual overlapping home ranges of 4 to 27 square kilometers (1.5 to 10.4 square miles), with males having larger ranges than females. Animal Diversity Web says a devil travels an average of 3.2 km in a night within a relatively small home range. A devil may travel as far as 16 kilometers (10 miles) in one night looking for food. The same fact sheet, citing a 2008 study, says a tracked male devil was recorded travelling 50 km (31.1 miles) in 48 hours.
A devil's skull has a strong central ridge with very strong jaw muscles attached. In very old males the head and neck can make up nearly a quarter of the animal's weight. A devil's big head and heavy teeth are made for crushing bone, and its strong jaws and teeth let it eat nearly all of its food, even bones and fur. The Tasmanian government says there is no good measurement of how hard a devil can bite, but that a 10 kg devil has a bite as powerful as a 40 kg dog.
Devils hunt by a combination of ambush and short pursuits, according to the Australian Government's species profile. Devils mostly eat animals that have already died. They prefer to eat carrion because they do not have to spend energy hunting it, but when there is little carrion they will actively hunt. They also hunt live prey such as small mammals and birds. Devils are gorge feeders. If a devil is not interrupted, it can eat up to 40 per cent of its body weight in 30 minutes. On average a devil eats about 12 per cent of its body weight a day in the wild. So a big meal could keep it going for about three days. By eating dead animals, devils help keep the bush clean.
A devil has a keen sense of smell that it uses to find food. Its hearing is excellent, and it seems to be the co-dominant sense along with its sense of smell. Devils also have many long whiskers, in clumps above the eyes and on the muzzle, that help them forage in the dark and judge their spacing from one another when feeding together.
The Tasmanian government counts at least eleven distinct devil sounds, including a snort, a bark, a screech and a sneeze. Devils leave droppings at shared latrine sites, and these act as messages. A devil can learn which other devils are nearby, including their sex and breeding status.
Fossils show that Tasmanian devils once lived on the Australian mainland, and they disappeared from it about 3,500 years ago, long before Europeans arrived.
A necklace made of 178 pierced devil teeth, found at a burial site about 7,000 years old, shows that Aboriginal Australians interacted with devils.
Devil facial tumour disease (DFTD) was first detected in 1996. It is a cancer that is believed to spread from one devil to another through biting. It is one of only a small number of recorded cancers that can spread from animal to animal like a contagious disease. The disease cells are not rejected by the devil's immune system because the cancer is able to hide from it. As of November 2026, the Tasmanian government says that in diseased areas nearly all sexually mature devils, older than two years, become infected and die of the disease. As of November 2026, surveys that count devils seen at night show about 80 per cent fewer devils across most of Tasmania since the disease appeared.
As of November 2026, the Tasmanian government says a second kind of the transmissible cancer, DFTD 2, was first recorded in 2014. It had been found only in the Channel area, and it began in a male devil.
Where the disease has been present for several years, females begin to breed at 1 year old instead of 2. This stretches the breeding season from February to July.
In the 1830s bounties were offered for devils, and over the next century devils became very rare. Tasmania protected devils by law in 1941, and their numbers slowly rose. The Save the Tasmanian Devil Program, an initiative of the Australian and Tasmanian governments, was set up in 2003. Australian zoos help by breeding devils as an insurance population. As of November 2026, the record shows that devils bred at Healesville Sanctuary in Victoria were released in 2013, 2015 and 2017 to places free of the tumour disease on Maria Island and the Tasman Peninsula.
A baby devil grows inside its mother for only about 21 days before it is born. Newborn devils are tiny, about the size of a grain of rice. A mother devil carries her babies in a pouch for about four months, and baby devils are called imps. Her pouch has only four teats, so no more than four babies can stay in it. The Tasmanian government says young devils are weaned at five to six months old, when they weigh around 3 kg. Devils become adults at about two years old, and young devils usually leave their mothers and live on their own by about December.
Words to know
- ambush: hide and surprise
- carrion: dead animals
- latrine: shared dropping spot
- bounties: paid rewards
- weaned: off mother's milk
- insurance: safe backup
