TAZ-manian Devil

Six Word Photo Story: Freestyle

Light and Shadow create cartoon Devil.

The play of light and shadow on a pane of glass painted a portrait of TAZ, the Tasmanian Devil— a cartoon character from Looney Tunes.

My girls used to watch Looney Tunes while growing up. Sometimes, I watched along. Taz was my favorite character.

Taz is brutishly funny. He ceaselessly tries — and spectacularly fails — to make a meal out of Bugs Bunny.

Turns out the real-life Tasmanian Devil is as fearsome as his cartoon namesake — kind of.

Devils are the largest carnivorous marsupials in the world. Until recently, their habitat was restricted to the Australian (island) state of Tasmania. In 2011, conservationists re-introduced them into the Australian mainland.

To the first European settlers in Tasmania, the animals’ hellish shrieks — in the dead of night — sounded like the screams of devils. Hence the name.

Devils weigh only 30 lbs. and measure 2 ft. from tip to tail. And yet they boast the strongest, most bone-crunching bite among living mammals relative to size.

They beat out such formidable competitors as the spotted hyena and African lion.

Devils achieve this feat thanks to a disproportionately large upper body and mouth. Their jaws angle open to an astonishing 80-degrees, supplying leverage to clamp down on bone and sinew.

(Most human jaws open to about 25 degrees, hippos to a cavernous 150.)

As hunters and scavengers, Devils are vital to their ecosystem.

Currently, conservationists are hard at work trying to get this Tasmanian icon off the Endangered list.

Thanks for reading!

Enjoyed reading some wonderful Six-word-photo-stories by Vidya Sury, Collecting Smiles, Sandi Parsons, and Dennett.

A couple of my other stories:

Thank you Mary Chang Story Writer for publishing my story!