Devils as dogs - Australians should forgo pet dogs and cats and instead adopt native animals

New Internationalist, Jan-Feb, 2001

Australians should forgo pet dogs and cats and instead adopt native animals, says Director of the Australian Museum in Sydney, Michael Archer. `There is no animal that human beings have ever turned into a domestic pet that has died out,' he explains as a rationale for this advice. `It's the ones we don't value that go extinct.' And there are practical skills native animals offer, he adds: `If you have a quoll, and a house mouse chews its way in, by the time you count to five the tail is disappearing down the quoll's throat. Another pleasing thing about quolls is that, unlike cats, they don't torment their dinner before they eat it.' As for a guard dog, Archer says: `I think a Tasmanian devil would be a fairly good bet. I recall a man going down the street in Hobart with a Tasmanian devil on a leash. You could see the crowds pulling well back. It would be a very brave intruder who went into a house where something like that was on guard.'

New Scientist Vol 166 No 2236