The Tasmanian devil – level 2

24-11-2015 07:00

The Tasmanian devil is the largest carnivorous marsupial. It can be up to 76 centimetres long and 12 kilograms heavy.

Before 1996, there were around 250,000 devils in the wild. Now, there are only about 10,000 of them. The population dropped so much because of a cancer. This type of cancer is contagious and it can kill a devil in six months. It is a very nasty disease.

People are trying to help the animals – they built a breeding centre in Sydney. A group of 22 healthy devils flew Sydney to Tasmania and people released them back into the wild.

Difficult words: carnivorous (meat-eating), marsupial (an animal like the kangaroo which carries its babies in a pocket of skin on its body), contagious (a person or an animal can catch a contagious disease), breeding centre (a centre where the animals can have babies).

You can read the original story and watch the video in the Level 3 section.

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