One of my major bucket list items for my travels in Tasmania was to become best friends with a Tasmanian Devil. While I did know that was unrealistic, I felt I should at least meet one.
This is what brought me to the Tasmanian Devil Unzoo!
The Unzoo was created in 2005 when two zoo design consultants decided to do try something different. The Unzoo is kind of more like a game farm and botanical preserve mashed together. There are very large outdoor paddocks for some of the animals, and the rest of the wildlife there is just there because it feels like it. As a visitor, you walk onto the grounds, follow dirt trails through dense natural plants and past interpretive signs, and stop occasionally to visit one of the paddocks. Every half hour, a guide talks at one of the areas, and sometimes you can even go in and interact with the (safer) animals.
While the Unzoo’s specialty is Tasmanian Devil preservation, it also has areas that focus on kangaroos and wild birds, alongside a slew of information about local plants.
While I have various concerns about further blurring the line between wild animals and the public, the Unzoo is a fairly small facility and the animals more-or-less decide if they want to interact or not. And, of course, they’re not going to let anyone go in to try to cuddle a Tasmanian Devil.
As soon as I arrived, I was delighted to find a Tasmanian Devil feeding already in progress. I didn’t think it was possible to become more in love with these strange carnivorous marsupials, but here we are.
There are four areas in the Unzoo for the Tasmanian Devils, and each residence is full of play areas, burrows, and hiding spots. Feeding is done by dangling a hunk of bone-in meat from a bungee cord, where the critter can leap up and “chase” its prey before tearing it down and capturing it. (This is a hoot to watch, because Tasmanian Devils are generally nocturnal. During they day, they rely on scent and not sight, so they are clumsy and yet delighted as they chase the dangling food.) Animal enrichment is a priority with them, so they are also given toys and a variety of feeding modes, and they are rotated to different enclosures every couple weeks.
Watching them eat is quite an experience. They are given meat with the hair and bone still intact, and they eat the whole thing. As they chaw into the morsel, you can hear the bones crunching apart. They also occasionally make little grunts and cries as they feed, which, like their famous screams, sound incongruous with their small size and adorable looks.
The whole feeding was taking place just a couple feet away from where I stood, on the other side of a short barrier. Absolutely worth the price of admission, right there.
From their, our guide led anyone interested down to the seacoast, where we watched the shorebirds from a long distance. In a tree across a strip of water was a white-bellied sea eagle nest, where one parent was alternately perching and swooping down to fetch food. The bird was too far off for photos, but I assure you, these black-and-white sea eagles are very large birds and quite striking to look at.
From there, the guide walked us into a huge paddock filled with kangaroos. And she had food for them.
Wait, we’re in with the kangaroos? And we get to feed them?
The guide instructed us to just offer the kibble, and any interested kangaroo would come up to eat. We shouldn’t try to feed an uninterested kangaroo, and the young joeys were probably still nursing and won’t be interested. Yes, we can pet them, but only by scratching their chest, which they like because they can’t reach that part to scratch themselves. We should absolutely not try to pet their head or face, because in kangaroo language that means run away, and you don’t want a kangaroo stampede.
As I looked around, I saw that many of the lounging kangaroos were indeed mothers. I caught one nursing her larger joey, and another had her joey’s feet sticking out of her pouch.
Meanwhile, during all this, two Cape Barren geese were just following the guide around, hoping to mooch some kangaroo kibble.
After that feeding, I took a few minutes to wander around the grounds away from the guide. I got a better look at some of the plants, and randomly, with some delight, I happened across a half-dozen little pademelons. They weren’t enclosed or anything, they were just wandering around.
Pademelons are kind of like a cross between a kangaroo and a rat (I mean that in the nicest way). They’re around the size of a raccoon, and they bounce along like a kangaroo or wallaby. Charming!
I also caught sight of tiny iridescent blue birds, who hopped and flitted so fast that they were almost impossible to catch on camera. New camera rapid-fire setting to the rescue!
Eventually, I wrapped back to the guide, who was now talking to guests in a small outdoor amphitheater. If you asked, she would give you a small hand full of birdseed. If we were lucky, birds would fly in from the trees for a snack. And a whole squad of Green Rosellas did!
Green Rosellas are gentle little parrots, quite happy to daintily take a snack from our hands. One woman behind me had one on each hand and one on her head for a while.
Of course, our two moochers were happy to take anything the rosellas didn’t want.
From there, I continued to wander around the grounds. I caught another Tasmanian Devil feeding, I made a circuit around a trail into the woods, and I looked for fish in the stream. At one point, the guide fed chunks of meat to a short-finned eel in a pond; the eel even wriggled up a few inches onto land to grab a morsel.
I thoroughly enjoyed my afternoon there, wandering around until almost closing time. Thankfully, it was still daylight and I could drive back to Hobart while the sun was still up. A very successful afternoon!
