A contagious cancer is threatening Tasmanian devils with extinction, but these unique carnivores -- and their human helpers -- are adapting at breakneck speed, giving new hope for their survival.

Evolutionary change is usually measured over millennia, but in the craggy mountains of northern Tasmania, it can be seen in real time.

Three decades after the first cases of a fatal transmissible cancer scythed through Tasmanian devil populations, experts are seeing dramatic changes in the 15 percent of creatures that have survived.

The cancer spreads via the bite of an infected individual, usually during mating or when they challenge each other jaw to jaw.

But scientists have reported that the famously feisty devils -- now numbering 15,000-18,000 -- are fighting back, with the first signs of an immune response reported.

The disease is still almost always fatal, and a second strain is being investigated, but antibodies have been detected in infected animals for the first time and more than two dozen have contracted the cancer and survived.

"We have seen animals that are not contracting the disease. We have seen animals that even if they contract the disease, they survive for much longer," said Rodrigo Hamede at the University of Tasmania.

"We are also seeing a small number of animals that have managed to regress tumours -- in other words to cure themselves of the cancer."

Experts working with the marsupials every day also report significant behavioural changes taking place that have helped steady population numbers.

Chris Coupland is the senior keeper at "Devils @ Cradle", a refuge that allows tourists to see the elusive animals up close, but which also keeps an insurance population -- a kind of Ark, safe from the rising tide of disease.

"The rate of decline was serious and the risk of extinction was there," he says while playing with two young, relatively tame devils he hand-raised. "It's still there."

Coupland reports a number of promising trends, particularly devils mating at a younger age and females being on heat more than once a year.

"For the first time we had multiple oestruses, and that's becoming more common," said Coupland, adding that it was probably due to a lower population density.

Coupland says they are also seeing the survivors become sexually active at an earlier age.

With fewer devils, food is more abundant and competition is reduced, allowing the animals to reach mating weight more quickly.

"These days they seem to be breeding at one (year old), whereas historically it was two."

Together these trends are helping population numbers stabilise.

Humans are also doing their part, developing databases of devil DNA that allows a handful of centres to breed the animals with maximum genetic diversity.

"We have to be cautious of the concept of functional extinction of the animals," said Coupland.

If devil numbers were to get closer to 10,000, then that is a real risk.

Devils are still listed as endangered on the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) red list, "right at the upper end of animal conservation classification," he added.

The fate of devils on mainland Australia, where they were wiped out by dingoes, or the extinction of the island's Thylacine or "Tasmanian tiger" offers a cautionary warning.

But Hamede says the startling rate of devils' adaption to the disease is a reason for optimism and could provide clues about human cancer treatment.

Adaption happens "all the time with diseases," he said. "But they happen on evolutionary timescales, they are not happening in six to eight generations (12-16 years). This is an incredibly fast evolution."

Rare Sumatran tiger cubs make public debut at Sydney zoo
Sydney (AFP) March 29, 2019 - Three rare Sumatran tiger cubs ventured into public view for the first time Friday in what Sydney zookeepers called a "wonderful success" for the future of the critically endangered species.

Two female cubs -- Mawar, which means "rose" in Indonesian, and Tengah Malam ("midnight") -- and their brother Pemanah ("archer") were allowed outside their closed dens to explore the more natural outdoor tiger compound at Sydney's Taronga Zoo.

Zookeeper Louise Ginman said the move from the dens to the outdoors for the cubs, which were born on January 17, posed a challenge for their mother, Kartika.

"Now that they are moving about a larger space and learning to climb terrain, she will have a much harder time controlling them," Ginman said.

Sumatran tigers are classified as critically endangered, with as few as 350 remaining in patches of forest on the Indonesia island of Sumatra, where their natural habitat has been devastated by illegal wildlife trade and jungle clearing for palm oil plantations.

"This birth is such a wonderful success for the conservation of this fragile species, and I am so excited that we can now invite guests to share our joy," Gilman said.

"It's such a shock that these three little cubs represent one per cent of the remaining wild population, but with zoo-based conservation programs worldwide and the support of our guests here in Sydney, there's still hope for the future of this species," she said.

After spending winter in a fridge, Minsk bats return to the wild
Minsk (AFP) March 27, 2019 - After spending the winter months hibernating inside a fridge at a rescue centre in Belarus, a group of bats awaken and are released into the wild.

To ensure a good winter's sleep, each bat was tucked up inside a cloth bag by volunteers at the centre, then hung up inside an ordinary domestic fridge -- giving them just the right amount of moisture and cold.

The Kozhanopolis centre, which is located in Minsk, takes in bats that are found by members of the public after struggling to find a safe place to hibernate.

"In winter, bats fall into a very deep sleep and for hibernation, they need fairly cold and moist environments," says the centre's head, Alexei Shpak.

"They fly into people's balconies, into apartment block entrances, ventilation shafts, cellars and so on. Sometimes people just find them on the ground in the snow."

The right conditions for a bat to hibernate are temperatures between zero and five degrees Celsius (32 to 42 Fahrenheit) and moisture levels of more than 50 percent, and the bat shelter has found an easy way of providing these.

"That's exactly what a fridge does. Just the most ordinary fridge," says Shpak.

The centre only has one fridge but it has enough space for the 32 bats the spent the winter hung up in bags.

Some of the bats at the centre are "old-timers" who have been sleeping in the fridge since mid-December, he says.

The bats are two different types found across Europe: parti-coloured bats and serotine bats.

The centre has no state funding but has premises provided by a state educational facility and equipment paid for by crowd-funding.

With the arrival of spring and as outside temperatures rise above 10 degrees Celsius (10 degrees Fahrenheit), Shpak and the three other volunteers at the centre carefully remove the bats from their cloth bags so that they wake up naturally.

- Hand-fed with grubs -

"When they sense a higher temperature, their body temperature starts going up a little bit and they wake up," Shpak says.

The black bats stretch their wings as they get a weigh-in to check they are healthy. They are hand-fed with grubs and given a drink of water through pipettes to bring up their strength.

In the evening, a procession of interested locals follow Shpak and the volunteers to a city park where they gently coax the bats onto trees, from where they will return to their previous haunts.

Those watching talk about their prejudices about bats and how seeing them released back into the wild has changed their feelings.

Anna, a school teacher who came with her small daughter, smiles as she talks about getting close to the bats.

"They're so ugly, really, but when you pick them up, they're very pleasant to touch, so small and furry. And you realise this is a kind of miracle."

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US zoo to return beloved giant pandas to China
Los Angeles (AFP) March 26, 2019
Two giant pandas that have been a star attraction at the San Diego Zoo for decades will soon be returned home to China, officials announced. Bai Yun, the 27-year-old female giant panda, and her son, six-year-old Xiao Liwu, will be repatriated to their ancestral homeland in late April. "Although we are sad to see these pandas go, we have great hopes for the future," Shawn Dixon, chief operating officer for San Diego Zoo Global, said in a statement issued Monday. "Working with our colleagues in Ch ... read more