The Tasmanian devil, the spaniel-size marsupial found on the Australian island of Tasmania, fears extinction as 60 per cent of them have been wiped out. Experts blame it on to a bizarre and mysterious facial cancer that is plaguing them.

Reports of Australian scientists that appeared on Friday in the journal Science, explained to some extent how cancer cells can sometimes liberate themselves from the hosts. This report also attracts possibilities of making vaccines to help Tasmanian devils.

Katherine Belov, a geneticist at the University of Sydney who was not involved in the study said, “It’s a great paper. Previously, we were stumbling in the dark.”

The disease is believed to be transmitted after biting one another’s faces that happens during fights. It first came to light after devils with large facial tumours were photographed in north-eastern Tasmania in the mid-1990.

DNA of 26 sick and healthy Tasmanian devils was compared with DNA from the tumors in 2007. They concluded that cancer cells from different animals shared individual inherited indication not found in the animals themselves.

Experts said the disease could wipe out the wild population within decades.