The current Smithsonian has a marvelous feature article about the Tasmanian devil, its habits, how it got its name, etc. Here's the abstract, but it's worth buying this issue (Feb., 2002) if only for this and for the Boss Tweed story someone else mentioned. I was going to pull up the old "from the land of" thread where the Tas devil was discussed a bit, but it's too long (enjoy stales!):

http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues02/feb02/devil.html