What鈥檚 the one sure-fire way to save an animal from extinction? Turn it into a pet, says Michael Archer, director of the Australian Museum in Sydney. With many of the country鈥檚 native animals in serious trouble, he wants Australians to stop canoodling with dogs and cats and cuddle a quoll or a possum instead. Besides, says Archer, native animals are kinder to the environment-and a lot more fun. Stephanie Pain meets the man with a mission to make you love marsupials.
Why should Australians swap their traditional pets for native animals?
Australia is fundamentally different from every other continent and it鈥檚 filled with unique animals. Since Europeans arrived, native species have been disappearing almost as fast as those obliterated by the last great mass extinction 65 million years ago. And what we lose here, the whole world loses. Traditional methods of conservation clearly aren鈥檛 enough, so we have to explore every other strategy that could help. Keeping some native animals as pets may well be part of the formula.
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Which native animals do you have in mind?
There are many. For every introduced animal that people are familiar with as a pet, there is a native animal that would be equally suitable and satisfying. I would particularly recommend quolls and some of the smaller possums and native rodents. The western quoll used to be spread across all the states except Tasmania. Now it鈥檚 only in Western Australia. The spotted tailed quoll is also vulnerable. Eastern quolls were common even in the Sydney region. They disappeared sometime in the 1950s and now survive only in Tasmania. Some of the hopping mice-exquisitely beautiful rodents-are also endangered.
How will turning them into pets help?
There is no animal that human beings have ever turned into a domestic pet that has died out. It鈥檚 the ones we don鈥檛 value that go extinct. As people become more familiar with animals as pets, their interest and concern for them grows. There鈥檚 no way they鈥檇 tolerate the idea of them going extinct.
But how do you know that they鈥檒l make good pets?
Australian animals make just as great pets as cats and dogs. I had a western quoll when I lived in Perth. It was the most wonderful animal I鈥檝e ever interacted with. Quolls are as clean or cleaner than a cat but as bright and as much fun as a puppy, and they stay friendly throughout their life. They love to play and, if raised as a youngster, bond strongly with people. They do like to sleep during the day, but that suits our modern lifestyle. By the time I came home from work he was awake and wanted to play which was perfect for both of us. The hopping mice would also make brilliant little pets. They鈥檙e gentle, very clean and breed well in captivity.
The cat was domesticated to do a particular job. Is there a marsupial 鈥渕ouser鈥� to take its place?
If you had a quoll, and a house mouse chewed its way in, woe betide that mouse. By the time you count to five, the tail is disappearing down the quoll鈥檚 throat. Another pleasing thing about quolls is that, unlike cats, they don鈥檛 torment their dinner before they eat it.
Some people keep dogs to guard their home. Could you find a marsupial to do that?
I think a Tasmanian devil would be a fairly good bet. I recall an old picture of a man going down the street in Hobart with a Tasmanian devil on a leash. You could see the crowds pulling well back. And having been on the receiving end of a Tasmanian devil鈥檚 bloodcurdling warning scream, it would be a very brave intruder who went into a house where something like that was on guard.
Animals are usually easier to domesticate if they are social sorts-like the wolf. Does that apply to marsupials?
Yes. Many Australian animals, particularly the longer-lived ones, are highly sociable. Some are not. Quolls are certainly very social. Sugar gliders are extraordinarily social-to the point where they obsessively mark each other to make sure that they share precisely the same scent. When I had a yellow-bellied glider, it used to sit on my shoulder and rub the back of my neck with the crown of its head. It was its way of bonding: 鈥淵ou鈥檙e family, this is our scent. Now you have it too.鈥� But there鈥檚 no way you could keep the mouse-sized Antechinus and not get savaged every time you picked it up. The only time they stop biting each other is when they mate. Wombats and the large kangaroos are also less social than quolls. They鈥檙e cute and normally friendly when little, but when they grow up they can become rather indifferent to humans.
Skippy is not the ideal pet then?
No. Skippy isn鈥檛 the ideal house pet but it might be the ideal animal to keep the backyard trimmed. Different people want different things from their pets. People who like cats probably don鈥檛 want an animal that slobbers on them, but people who like dogs probably expect lots of drool and licks. Australian mammals present a similar range, from full-on social to slightly aloof.
People who lead urban lives choose pets to suit their lifestyle. Is there a marsupial that would suit life in a high-rise?
Yes, absolutely. There are the so-called 鈥減ocket pets鈥�, such as sugar gliders and native mice. Quolls are cat-sized. My quoll had the run of a two-bedroom flat for four years and it was perfectly happy. Most of Australia鈥檚 mammals fall into that size range or smaller and appear to adapt well to this sort of habitat.
Do we know enough about these animals to keep them happy and healthy?
We know enough to get started. We know a lot about rodents, enough to see you through most problems. And enough people have kept quolls to know what they need. I built mine a large exercise wheel but he spent far more time running around the flat playing with other things, including its human occupants. Nothing ever amazed me quite as much as the behaviour of a much smaller brushtail phascogale. It would race in its wheel to get it up to high speed and then drop, do a 360-degree barrel roll and land running-something I鈥檝e never seen a mouse do. Sometimes they would even climb on top of the wheel and run it like a circus barrel. They do it for fun, absolute outrageous fun. Many other marsupials are just as playful. Wallabies even like surfing in the ocean. People have watched them get in the water and surf in, then go back out and do it again. My guess is that as we learn more about Australia鈥檚 native animals, particularly through being close, we will find many more reasons for trading in our cats and dogs.
How will vets cope when people start to bring these strange animals to the surgery?
I would sometimes take my quoll to a vet just for a routine check-up. He would ask me, 鈥淚s it OK?,鈥� and I鈥檇 say, 鈥淚 don鈥檛 know, he seems fine to me.鈥� So he鈥檇 take his temperature, and I鈥檇 say, 鈥淲hat does it tell you?鈥� and he鈥檇 read out the temperature. 鈥淕ood or bad?鈥� I鈥檇 ask and he鈥檇 say, 鈥淗aven鈥檛 the faintest idea.鈥� But that was years ago and there鈥檚 a lot more understanding of native animals now. Some vets are already beginning to specialise in treating them.
You don鈥檛 just want people to keep native pets, you want to rid the whole continent of cats and dogs. Why?
That sounds like an extremist point of view, but I have to be honest and say yes, I鈥檇 like to see the vast majority shipped off anywhere else. It isn鈥檛 just because they are non-Australian species. Cats in particular do terrible damage to our environment. An enormous number of native animals are killed by them each day-and not just ones gone wild but domestic cats that are being fed out of a tin. These individuals can overkill because they don鈥檛 depend on native animals for survival. Another serious problem with cats is that they can pass on toxoplasmosis, a disease that kills marsupials as well as unborn human babies. Quolls are a much better bet.
Do you really believe people will trade in their cats for quolls?
The reality, of course, is that most Australians will never give up cats and dogs because they have become a habit. The question is whether we can reduce the numbers. The traditional pet industry is a $2 billion a year business and there is huge pressure on us to keep cats and dogs. It seems ironic to me that we are encouraged to breed cats but can be arrested if we care for an Australian native animal.
Does that mean the law must change before people can keep native pets?
Every state has different laws. In some you can keep a few common species such as brush-tailed possums, but you must have a licence. No state allows people to keep rare or endangered mammals such as quolls or bilbies, except for research purposes. So it鈥檚 illegal to keep the very animals that are going to give cats and dogs some serious competition.
Ironically, in the US you can legally buy a variety of Australian marsupials such as sugar gliders from breeders across the country. They call them pocket pets and there are whole societies devoted to their care and maintenance. It鈥檚 ironic that this huge and demonstrably viable industry has developed in the US while we refuse to consider the issue.
You have a plan that would allow people to keep native pets and protect the species in the wild. How would that work?
What we鈥檙e suggesting here at the museum is that native animals be bred in captivity by registered breeders trained and licensed by National Parks. They would set up managed colonies in areas where there used to be populations of these animals, creating sort of safe houses for the species. The breeders could make money by selling young ones to the public in the same way that kittens and pups are sold. Profits would be split perhaps three ways between the breeder, National Parks services, and conservation programmes for the same species in the wild.
Have you come under fire from animal rights groups who oppose the idea of native pets?
There are a few outspoken individuals aggressively lobbying to stop this idea from being tested, often because they are convinced that owners would abuse native pets. And of course it鈥檚 true that some humans mistreat cats and dogs-and children, I suppose. Fortunately, the majority, who value their pets and children, don鈥檛. Most people, once they think about the whole argument, realise that it鈥檚 another potentially effective way to conserve the animals and so they support the proposal.
You are championing a project to clone the extinct thylacine from DNA preserved in museum specimens. If you succeed, would it be a candidate for a pet?
Absolutely. There is no doubt in my mind that if people had made pets of thylacines in the 1800s instead of vilifying them as 鈥淭asmanian tigers鈥�, we wouldn鈥檛 be trying to clone them now because they would still be with us as domestic animals. And I think that they would make brilliant companions. They had the hallmarks of an animal that would have been basically dog-like in behaviour and response, but probably more gentle.
Will you put your name on the waiting list for a pet thylacine?
I would give my left arm for the chance. Of course, the goal of this project is not just to bring thylacines back to life but to see how far down the path of resurrecting extinct DNA we can get. We will be doing good, solid, ground-breaking science along the way. But supposing we do get back breeding thylacines. We would have an obligation to try every option to protect them. We would need to identify wild places where they could be safely released, perhaps large islands with no dogs. But alongside the more traditional sorts of conservation we should try domestication. If we brought it back from extinction we would have to try every possible way to ensure we didn鈥檛 shove it over again.