On our honeymoon, my husband and I visited Tasmania which of course meant we needed to see some Tasmanian devils.

We visited a sanctuary and went on a tour in the rain. The screams were shocking and what was most unsettling was that they came from under the floors in the visitor centre. In order to give the devils a place to hide, their enclosure was extended to underneath the building.

We even got to watch their feeding time. Huge pieces of meat, so large you could recognise what it was from, pinned to the ground with stakes. This was to stop the devils dragging off the food and playing keep away with it.

During the feeding, over the sounds of eating, the keeper told us a lot of interesting facts, but only one that my husband had a follow up question to.

Apparently if you examine the whiskers of a Tasmanian devil, you can see the DNA of whatever it has eaten, within recent history. The largest animal found in that data was, as a child guessed correctly, a whale. Of course, my husband had his own question.

“Have they ever found human DNA?”

The answer was yes, followed by a very swift change of topic.