HARRASSING wallabies could be the next big thing in Australia. But this
bizarre-sounding activity isn’t a hobby of mindless thugs. It’s an innovative
new strategy to protect a species.
By showing tammar wallabies a stuffed fox and then chasing them with a net,
biologists have taught captive-bred tammars to be more afraid of the predators
that helped make them extinct across much of mainland Australia.
What’s more, trained animals can pass their newfound skills on to untrained
animals—the first clear demonstration of social transmission in
marsupials. Such social learning could be vital to conservation efforts, because
it’s not possible to train every reintroduced animal and their wild-born
offspring.
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Tammars are usually only mildly fearful of foxes and cats, which were
introduced by European settlers. But with four training sessions, most learn to
hop as far from a stuffed fox as possible, says Andrea Griffin of Macquarie
University in Sydney. And the animals seem to remember their training for
several months. The trained tammars also fled from stuffed cats, but were
unperturbed by a stuffed goat, suggesting that they innately recognise
predators.
“This shows that they are not sitting ducks. They have strong responses that
can be reactivated,” says Graeme Coulson of the University of Melbourne.
Historically, dingoes and the now extinct thylacines preyed on tammars.
But Coulson still doubts that trained wallabies will fare better in the wild,
where finding food may take priority over watching out for foxes. Griffon hopes
to test the training programme during a planned reintroduction of tammars to
South Australia.