This is Kait Winkler Dawson inviting you to listen to brand new episodes of my true crime talk show Wicked Words.

On each new episode I interview journalists, podcasters, and filmmakers

about the fascinating behind the scenes stories

from their investigations into the world of true crime, many of which. the week for new episodes of Wicked Words as we dive deep into the stories behind the

stories. New episodes of Wicked Words are available now wherever you get your

podcasts. My name is Rodrigo Amadeh and I work at the University of Tasmania as a wildlife researcher.

The first time that I saw a Tasmanian devil with facial tumor disease was actually 20 years ago in 2004 in a place called

Bronte Park in the Central Highlands of Tasmania.

It had massive tumors, and I was surprised to see how these animals could be along with their tough lives,

with such large and disfiguring facial tumors.

It was quite confronting because they are disfiguring tumors

and you can see how horrible this disease is.

And I had been working on my study site for about five years.

This was in 2009, when until I saw the first tumor regression and I still remember that that animal it was a devil called

Ratis ratus I microchipped her as a juvenile and she had a very rodent like expression and I decided to call her ratus for that reason.

And then two years later in May 2009 she contracted dfity.

And that happens a lot, you know, you see these animals in the pouch,

and then you see them just dispersing, and then suddenly,

and sadly, you see them with tumors.

So I took biopsies of her tumor and let it go as we do with

disease animals and then three months later in August 2009 we caught an animal in one of our surveys and as we do we transfer animals from the

traps into his own sacks so we can handle them and collect our samples and

...