A friend of mine tells me that in real life the Tasmanian devil does whirl around in circles, and this inspired the mini-hurricane Taz seen with Bugs Bunny. True or false?
Your friend is putting you on.
From here:
No but they sound surprisingly like the cartoon character.
The Tazmanian Devils are nothing compared to the Drop Bears.
<snerk>
Yeah, you gotta watch out for those Drop Bears. Twist your head right off, they will.
In a commentary on one of the “Looney Tunes Golden Collection” DVDs, there’s a discussion of the origin of the cartoon devil. Warner Brothers was trying to come up with a new opponent for Bugs Bunny. Pretty much every possible character was thrown out for discussion, including pirates, blah, blah, blah, and nothing was working. Finally, Sid Marcus, one of the writers, said “We’ve tried everythng except a Tasmanian Devil”. The writers, who had no real idea what a Tasmanian Devil was, went running for an encyclopedia much like Bugs does in the cartoons, and ran with it. There was never much attempt to portray a real devil, any more than a real Road Runner.
They’re nothing compared to the Snow Snakes up here.
Not to mention the Fur-Bearin’ Trout!
Only after they drink a jug of XXX.
Hijack: These mice are also called “Punk Rockers” because of their behavior. I guess not everyone is a Taz fan, or wants to prevent some sort of species miscommunication.
Of course, neither the Tasmanian Devil nor the Dropbear can hold a candle to the carnivorous mammals of New Zealand, which are both far more aggressively voracious and far more reclusive than those of Australia!
Yes, that was a spoof post! But it should be fun to see where it goes.
Myself, I live in mortal fear of the Claw Shrimp.
Here’s a video of snarling Tasmanian Devils in case anyone thought I was joking about the sound-alike claim.
I saw a film on the mating rituals of Tasmanian Devils. Who’d have thunk of having one’s face chewed off as being foreplay.
The swirling that the cartoon Tasmanian Devil does is, I believe, based on a Dust Devil. So they combined two different kinds of “Devils” to make up the character.
I heard an interview about tasmanian devils on NPR. It seems they have, what was reported as, the only communicable cancer. They bite each other and the cancer is spread, endangering the species. There is supposed to be a small island, where the cancer has yet to appear and it’s hoped that this small population will survive. This was several days ago and I just recall bits of it. Maybe one our Oz members has more info.
Actually, they act that way after drinking Fosters. The centrifugal projectile vomiting is not a pretty sight.
Indeed. If you ever come across this beast, run! Run very fast! These malevolent creatures will kill you as soon as look at you! And they can easily outpace a human on land.
By “land” I mean “sea”. By “you” I mean “certain species of fish”. And by “malevolent” I mean “incredibly cute”.
Here is an example of one of their relentless attacks on humans:
Ant’e got nothing on the New Jersey Devil. That’s why we havn’t put up any eco distroying factories in the the south of NJ, we’re afraded
But to the OP, I don’t think they twist around but they’re nasty little creatures.
I wouldn’t exactly call the Māori reclusive. 