In what could be a last-ditch bid to prevent the extinction of tasmanian devils, scientists are collecting and freezing eggs and sperm.

A contagious facial cancer is spreading across Tasmania, and so far scientists have not been able to contain it.

Soon there will be an artificial insemination trial among captive devils on the mainland in an attempt to ensure they do not go the way of the tasmanian tiger

The research is being led by Dr Tamara Keeley, a reproductive biologist at the Taronga Western Plains Zoo at Dubbo in the central west of New South Wales

"These are techniques that can be tricky to develop because every species has their uniqueness in terms of what the sperm looks like, how it functions, even the size and number that are available in each species," she said.

Dr Keeley specialises in collecting and freezing the sperm of black rhinos.

Now she is using her skills to help tasmanian devils, and after four years of trying Dr Keeley has developed a way to freeze their sperm.

"We've had to go through so many different trials to figure out what works best for this particular species," she said.

"And we've managed, for both sperm and eggs, to freeze them down successfully and end up with viable cells after the freezing process."

Collection method

Dr Keeley says sperm and eggs are collected from euthanased devils.

"A lot of what we've done thus far has been rescuing the samples from animals that have been euthanased from the disease," she said.

"Because their health is compromised and they're going to die of the disease anyway, in some cases these animals are humanely euthanased.

"We then extract the ovaries and testicles from the animals and extract the eggs and sperm from those to freeze down."

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Listen Duration: 3 minutes 30 seconds 3 m 30 s Tasmanian Devil sperm frozen ( Felicity Ogilvie ) Download 1.6 MB

She says it can also be taken from live devils in some cases.

"What we use is a technique called electro-ejaculation," she said.

"We use an electrode probe that's attached to an electro-ejaculator unit which allows us to very delicately control how much electricity we add to the prostate, which is a very, very small amount; it doesn't actually require a lot, and that allows the stimulation that causes electro-ejaculation.

"We do this all under anaesthesia and it doesn't actually harm the animal."

Critical strategy

Ecologist Dr Menna Jones from the University of Tasmania says the frozen sperm and eggs could become a critical tool for saving the devils.

"We hope we will never need this material," she said.

"But if the species were to get to very, very low numbers with serious loss of genetic diversity, banking sperm and eggs from wild or even important lineage of captive devils would become a critical strategy."

Dr Keeley wants to find out if the frozen sperm can be used in artificial insemination.

"We'll probably identify a few females from the captive population," she said.

"They'll be females of prime breeding age that have already successfully reproduced, so we've already captured their genes and we know that they're really good breeding females.

"We use our knowledge of her reproductive cycle to time when we put the sperm in her and hope for the best."

The artificial insemination trials are expected to start in the next 18 months.