Facial tumours kill off Tasmanian devils
A mysterious disease has wiped out 90 per cent of some populations of Tasmanian devils in the past
three years. The facial tumours may have killed one third of the Australian island's total
population, a workshop in Tasmania heard last week.
Scientists fear that the problem is having knock-on effects on other species. Although Tasmanian
devils are mainly scavengers, they also eat sick or small mammals and a range of invertebrates.
"These animals are very important in the whole ecology of Tasmania," says the meeting's organiser,
Rob White from the University of Tasmania in Hobart. Reports suggest there are more than the usual
number of carcasses of wild animals such as wallabies in areas where devil numbers have fallen.
And the number of cats seems to be increasing. Farmers have reported an increase in lambs aborted
due to toxoplasmosis infection, which is carried by feral cats.
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Comment: In a twist of evolutionary fate, foxes seem to have taken root in Tasmania for the first
time. We hadn't seen foxes down here till last year. Feral cats and foxes will take over the top of
the food chain if devils die out. I've seen the effect of this face cancer - very ugly. It just eats
away their face skin around the rear of the muzzle.
Gene linked to poorer memory
One form of a common brain protein makes us rather worse at remembering things, researchers have
discovered. It is a first step towards finding the genes for intelligence.
Human intelligence is partly inherited - studies of parents and children show that about half our
cleverness, or lack of it, is down to genes rather than environment. Now Dominique de Quervain and
colleagues at the University of Zurich in Switzerland have found one of those genes.
People who inherit the less common form of a serotonin receptor have worse short-term memory than
people with the more common form. It is not - by itse lf - a gene for intelligence.
But scientists suspect that eventually, a set of such genes will be identified that together make
the difference between a smart brain and a dull one. Intelligence is made up of many things
including concentration and reasoning, but memory is certainly important.
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Comment: I seem to have a gene for writing things down, which more than compensates for the lack-of-
memory gene.
Kind Regards, Robert Karl Stonjek.