Menaced Marsupials
Along with my open-bound, black dinosaur sketchbook, I've also been drawing my way through a smaller red book I purchased in Denmark a few years ago. I have an irrational weakness for blank, hardcover notebooks like this and for a while I wasn't sure how to fill it. Candidates included scenes from classical operas or ballets, Greek gods, heroes, and monsters, and DC or Marvel characters, but I eventually decided to devote it to endangered animals -- in part because of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) 's Red Book of Endangered Species, but also because I had recently read Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction. In a few decades, some of these creatures would join the ranks of the thylacine, the dodo, and the mammoth, so why not capture them on the page before we have nothing left but photos and taxidermy? It would also be a chance to draw more mammals (and eventually birds and amphibians) when the vast majority of my animal drawings have been of non-avian dinosaurs.
The first animal group I approached were the Australian marsupials, many of which have been pushed to brink not by European invaders such as dogs, cats, and rabbits, but also the infamous and nigh-invincible cane toad, first plopped on to the continent in 1935.
Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii)
Current Range: Tasmania
Conservation Status: Endangered
Along with my open-bound, black dinosaur sketchbook, I've also been drawing my way through a smaller red book I purchased in Denmark a few years ago. I have an irrational weakness for blank, hardcover notebooks like this and for a while I wasn't sure how to fill it. Candidates included scenes from classical operas or ballets, Greek gods, heroes, and monsters, and DC or Marvel characters, but I eventually decided to devote it to endangered animals -- in part because of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) 's Red Book of Endangered Species, but also because I had recently read Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction. In a few decades, some of these creatures would join the ranks of the thylacine, the dodo, and the mammoth, so why not capture them on the page before we have nothing left but photos and taxidermy? It would also be a chance to draw more mammals (and eventually birds and amphibians) when the vast majority of my animal drawings have been of non-avian dinosaurs.
The first animal group I approached were the Australian marsupials, many of which have been pushed to brink not by European invaders such as dogs, cats, and rabbits, but also the infamous and nigh-invincible cane toad, first plopped on to the continent in 1935.
Northern quoll (Dasyurus hallucatus)
Current Range: Northern Australia
Conservation Status: Endangered
Numbat (Myrmecobius fasciatus)
Current Range: Southern Australia
Conservation Status: Endangered
Northern hairy-nosed wombat (Lasiorhinus krefftii)
Current Range: Northeastern Australia
Conservation Status: Critically Endangered (pop. 163 in 2010)
Current Range: Tasmania
Conservation Status: Endangered
In contrast to other endangered marsupials, the biggest current threat to Tasmanian devils is devil facial tumor disease (DFTD), a gruesome parasitic cancer spread by face-biting as shown in the first drawing. The tumors disfiguring the devil above are mild compared what a quick Google image search of DFTD will show you.
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