Species profile
Sarcophilus harrisii
Tasmanian devil
EN · Endangered — Endangered — very high risk of extinction in the wild
About this species
Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii) is part of the curated SpeciesWatch catalogue and is classified as Endangered. Pound for pound, the Tasmanian devil has one of the strongest bites of any living mammal — its jaws can crush bone and eat an entire carcass, fur and all. Its recorded population direction is decreasing, so the category needs to be read alongside continuing losses of individuals or local populations.
Habitat, behaviour and ecological role
This profile associates the species with terrestrial, forest. These labels summarise environments used during different stages of its life rather than drawing an exact range boundary. The species is threatened by a contagious facial-tumour cancer spread through biting; conservationists are breeding an insurance population to outlast the disease. Its anatomy and behaviour are responses to those environments, while movement can connect distant places requiring different forms of management.
Why this species is at risk
Despite the terrifying screams that echo for kilometres at night, devils are mostly scavengers and solitary hunters of insects, birds and small mammals. The catalogue records 2 principal pressures for this profile: Devil facial tumour disease, Roadkill. They should not be treated as isolated causes. Habitat change, exploitation, pollution, disease and climate stress can reinforce one another, while the importance of each pressure varies between regions and through time.
Conservation outlook
Biosecurity, health surveillance and careful management of small populations help contain risks that can spread rapidly. Actions need long-term monitoring and revision as evidence changes; a positive intervention in one place does not by itself represent recovery across the species.
Editorial review: 2026-08-21
Threat factors
Known occurrences
Dots are georeferenced occurrence records from OBIS (marine) and GBIF (global), not individual animals and not a complete range map. Up to 500 recent API results are cached; the profile renders at most 500 points.
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Listen to this species
Loongana · 0:19 · https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/