The Devil You Say

As opposed to how we see him on the Looney Tunes cartoons, the Tasmanian devil actually exists, and is a carnivorous marsupial of the family Dasyuridae.

You remember that family. They lived around the corner and they had that one kid who wouldn't come out of the house to play. He slept in the grocery cart while his mom shopped, and the other kids called him "Waffle Face."

With my basic knowledge of zoology, I know that carnivores are meat eaters, and marsupials are like kangaroos in that the mother totes them around in a pouch. And from my basic knowledge of theology, I can tell you with assurance that something named the devil is not something you want to be around.

This devil got his start in Australia, but couldn't get along with the neighbors and wound up on the island of Tasmania.

That's all we used to know about these creepy critters...their terrifying screams, their fierce way of chowing down on whatever they felt like...but now we know they GLOW in the DARK!

Researchers at Toledo Zoo in Ohio discovered that the Tas Devil lights up like a police car with a drunk driver ahead of it when exposed to ultraviolet light.

I must have cut Biology the day they talked about this, but it's called biofluorescence. Some organisms can absorb and re-emit blue light as other even more vibrant colors. Animals and others who can do this have proteins in their skin that soak up the sun and glow like Joseph's amazing dreamcoat.

Not so long ago, the zoo staff discovered that wombats and platypuses (platypi?) had the gift of glow, so they just had to put the devil under the glow light to check him out, and yes! He did.

A full report on just why people in a zoo were holding a UV light up to their animals is forthcoming, I'm sure.

Anyway, under the blue light, the Tasmanian Devil's snout, eyes, and inner ears turned blue.

In a previous experiment in an apple orchard near my childhood, I ate six green apples and turned six shades of green. 

Biofluorescence is not unheard of in the animal world, most commonly occurring in deep-sea marine creatures who use the light to attract prey.

It is yet to be determined whether the interesting trait serves an ecological purpose in Tasmanian devils or if they are simply blessed with natural selfie lighting.