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Thylacine witness statements and responses


oldrover

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20 hours ago, oldrover said:

Nothing tin foil hat about what you've said. An open minded stance is what everyone should have, you're not in the minority and you may be surprised at who privately shares that view. 

I'm sure you do live in an area where they were captured, and excuse me if I'm telling you what you already know but be careful of bounty records, at least Guiler's. They don't give capture locations but addresses of the claimants, if you lived in Nugent for example, and captured one whilst you were working in, say Tyenna, it'd be listed at Nugent.

Have you read Nic Haygarth's 2017 paper The Myth of the dedicated thylacine hunter, if not I'd really recomend it. 

Hi Oldrover,

No, I don't think I've read the paper you referred to, however I'll look it up and have a read.

Thanks for the heads up.

Cheers.

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21 hours ago, oldrover said:

Unfortunately while I think it was Joseph Pearson ( Director of TMAG) who confirmed them at the time, Fleay's hairs couldn't be matched to the thylacine in more recent tests, I have no idea what they did differently. 

I didn't know of those tests. You sure are a wealth of knowledge on the subject.

Did he not have footprints to go with them? 

21 hours ago, oldrover said:

The south-west is an unlikely spot, despute intensive game trapping the last live capture took place in 1923 and the last kill 1926, there's no concrete record of it ever being a productive area  except for a cluster of three captures in 1923. The north-west quarter and central west-coast were the areas which produced most of the kills captures of the 20s and all from the 30s, and was the area where the attention was focussed. You wouldn't think that though because of the mythos that's been buit up around the south-west by slack research. 

I was under the impression that The Frenchman's Gap was fairly well protected naturally? 

But thanks for the update! 

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1 hour ago, Tassie Dude said:

G'day Psyche,

No no, I live in the NW in the vicinity of the Gog Range.

Yeah I read about the Fleay expedition a few years ago. In my personal opinion, I think that given the equipment available at the time, the location / environment they were operating in, that the expedition was doomed for failure, JMO.

There was probably no benefit at the time in catching a specimen anyway; the DNA pool at that stage would have been very limited and would have reduced the capacity further for potential breeding (if that was possible at the time).

I still hear the occasional story of people's personal accounts of sightings. Unfortunately, like the Thylacine itself, these stories are shrouded in secrecy and mystique and in my belief don't warrant much of my time. However, there are a few that prick my ears up a bit. Apparently there is a person in my area that has some "unseen" photos from back in the day. According to what I've been told, these photos consist of a couple of Thylacines tied up on display outside the Mole Creek Local Store. Obviously, these "unseen" pictures would be nearly as good as seeing a Thylacine 2022. 

My intent, if possible would be to provide copies of these to @oldrover as he's probably best postured to give them their justice.

Cheers

Gidday mate.

As I mentioned to rover I had read the gap was a good place. But I'm reading, not there. My little sister used to live there, she saw some devils but said they weren't that common to sight. 

I read the first story every could years. Your post prompted me to revisit the site. There is a wildlife park near me started by David Fleay, so I knew of him before the expeditions, I just love reading those old expedition journals.

Good call, old rover seems to be the authority here on thylacines. Never met anyone who seems to know more about them. Glad you are both members. You're right, those photos would be quite a find. I hope we all get to see them at some point.

I get the bit about breeding populations. I always thought that going by Fleays journal that they probably survived into the early sixties but that probably ended them altogether. 

I often wonder about Mike Archers project. I thought it got a restart a few years ago but seems to have gone quiet again. I would love be to see that actually work. 

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10 hours ago, Tassie Dude said:

Hi Oldrover,

No, I don't think I've read the paper you referred to, however I'll look it up and have a read.

Thanks for the heads up.

Cheers.

I've pm'ed you. 

Let me know if you can't get hold of a copy. 

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9 hours ago, psyche101 said:

I didn't know of those tests. You sure are a wealth of knowledge on the subject.

Did he not have footprints to go with them? 

I was under the impression that The Frenchman's Gap was fairly well protected naturally? 

But thanks for the update! 

Thanks, but I only know my own little bit of it. I'm not sure if there were any footprints, I don't remember any. Have you read his article on the expedition? 

I'd call Frenchman's Cap more mid-west than south-west, but I'm not there. 

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9 hours ago, psyche101 said:

 

I often wonder about Mike Archers project. I thought it got a restart a few years ago but seems to have gone quiet again. I would love be to see that actually work. 

It's Andrew Pask who seems to be the front runner now. The recent talk is of 'de-exctinction' as in creating a hybrid animal with as many characteristics of the thylacine as possible. To be honest I don't really see it myself. 

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Has there been any consensus as to the thylacine's lifespan? I have heard they lived up to six years old, though I am unsure how accurate that is.

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13 hours ago, oldrover said:

It's Andrew Pask who seems to be the front runner now. The recent talk is of 'de-exctinction' as in creating a hybrid animal with as many characteristics of the thylacine as possible. To be honest I don't really see it myself. 

:tu:I see that they got a five million dollar boost.

I'd like to remain in hope they will eventually get somewhere. Projects been going for some time now. You're probably right, but it really would be something. 

You would think they would just give Sam Neil a call!!

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7 hours ago, alchemist227 said:

Has there been any consensus as to the thylacine's lifespan? I have heard they lived up to six years old, though I am unsure how accurate that is.

Obviously we've got no direct evidence about their potential lifespan in the wild unfortunately, but the estimates I've heard are probably nit too different to six, based on the lifespans of other marsupial carnivores. In captivity, we know for certain that one was born around June 1923,  his mother was captured shortly afterwards with him in her pouch, and they were sold to the zoo in 1924, and he lived till late October 1929, his sister though, was sold to London and she lived till August 1931. The last captive was in captivity from July 1930 to September 1936, and he was ivery young, but independent when caught. It's hard to say what effect captivity had on them, whether the regular food supply, veterinary care, and safety from harm (mostly) helped, or if the stark isolation made it worse. Most likely a balance vetween the two. There are some pretty wild estimates out there though, 12 years +, but they aren't reliable. 

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3 hours ago, psyche101 said:

:tu:I see that they got a five million dollar boost.

I'd like to remain in hope they will eventually get somewhere. Projects been going for some time now. You're probably right, but it really would be something. 

You would think they would just give Sam Neil a call!!

I can't see where they're going with it myself. 

If they do, it'll be a scrabble to be the first one to say Sam Neil's line about having to 'evolve' when asked what he'll now they're back. 

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Would you also agree with the common belief that the introduction of dingoes was responsible for the extinction of thylacines (as well as devils) on mainland Australia? Or was that due to climate or human activity?

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5 hours ago, alchemist227 said:

Would you also agree with the common belief that the introduction of dingoes was responsible for the extinction of thylacines (as well as devils) on mainland Australia? Or was that due to climate or human activity?

I'd be totally outside of my area with that. I really have no idea sorry. 

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  • 2 weeks later...
 

Thanks, you've been a very good resource for me as I am trying to learn more about the thylacine.

Is it true that the last captive one died in 1936 due to "exposure" from the harsh weather and being locked out of its cage? I know this is the generally accepted account, but I've seen a picture from 1936, and that last captive thylacine looked very skinny in that photo, especially compared to other photos I've seen of thylacines. 

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8 hours ago, alchemist227 said:

Thanks, you've been a very good resource for me as I am trying to learn more about the thylacine.

Is it true that the last captive one died in 1936 due to "exposure" from the harsh weather and being locked out of its cage? I know this is the generally accepted account, but I've seen a picture from 1936, and that last captive thylacine looked very skinny in that photo, especially compared to other photos I've seen of thylacines. 

Thanks.

As for the last captive, and the whole 'locked out/ neglect' scenario, it's a fabrication. There's no evidence for this and none has ever been provided to support it. He was the most valuable animal in the zoo and there's no way that he'd have been overlooked. As you say the Sheppard photo from May 1936 shows that his had condition had deteriorated 4-5 months before his death. Since we managed to definitively date that image, another from January 1936 has also come to light and signs of deterioration are also visible in that one too. The truth is he was old by then for a thylacine. We do have two accounts of his death,  one was that 'it fretted itself to death', another that he'd stopped eating, plus the report in the Reserves minutes specifically says that he died during the evening of the 7th, not overnight between the 7th and 8th. 

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Thanks.

Would you happen to know if this photo below, of a thylacine skin nailed to a tree, is a genuine color photo? I've seen a very similar photo in black-and-white, but the colors in this one look pretty genuine, at least compared to old photos I usually see that are "colorized".

https://www.alamy.com/thylacine-thylacinus-cynocephalus-historical-photo-of-skin-drying-image60824603.html

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1 hour ago, alchemist227 said:

Thanks.

Would you happen to know if this photo below, of a thylacine skin nailed to a tree, is a genuine color photo? I've seen a very similar photo in black-and-white, but the colors in this one look pretty genuine, at least compared to old photos I usually see that are "colorized".

https://www.alamy.com/thylacine-thylacinus-cynocephalus-historical-photo-of-skin-drying-image60824603.html

Yes it is. Although the photo was taken in the 1980s for one of Guiler's books. Yes, the Tasmanian Museum really nailed a thylacine skin to a tree in the 1980s for a photo. I've handled that skin and took photos of it (they're too big to attach apparently) one is a similar colour to the Guiler photo, the others are much darker. I recall at the time that I thought it's colour was quite well presrved but still not true to life. If you want a good colour for a live thylacine look for the light protected skins in the Smithsonian, or the work of an artist called Damir G. Martin. Life colour is an on going debate though. 

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11 hours ago, oldrover said:

Thanks.

As for the last captive, and the whole 'locked out/ neglect' scenario, it's a fabrication. There's no evidence for this and none has ever been provided to support it. He was the most valuable animal in the zoo and there's no way that he'd have been overlooked. As you say the Sheppard photo from May 1936 shows that his had condition had deteriorated 4-5 months before his death. Since we managed to definitively date that image, another from January 1936 has also come to light and signs of deterioration are also visible in that one too. The truth is he was old by then for a thylacine. We do have two accounts of his death,  one was that 'it fretted itself to death', another that he'd stopped eating, plus the report in the Reserves minutes specifically says that he died during the evening of the 7th, not overnight between the 7th and 8th. 

Additionally, one thing that does seem accurate about that story is that the winter of 1936 seems to have been a very cold one in Tasmania; the coldest day was August 31, 1936, at 0 degrees Celsisus/32 Fahrenheit (according to this website https://www.currentresults.com/Yearly-Weather/Australia/TAS/Hobart/extreme-annual-hobart-low-temperature.php), only a week before the last captive thylacine's death.

EDIT: Re-checking the list of temperatures, I guess the winter of 1936. was not too unusually cold for Hobart. Thought it may have been worsened the animal's condition if it was already sick, as you stated above.

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2 minutes ago, alchemist227 said:

Additionally, one thing that does seem accurate about that story is that the winter of 1936 seems to have been a very cold one in Tasmania; the coldest day was August 31, 1936, at 0 degrees Celsisus/32 Fahrenheit (according to this website https://www.currentresults.com/Yearly-Weather/Australia/TAS/Hobart/extreme-annual-hobart-low-temperature.php), only a week before the last captive thylacine's death.

Winter cold may have been a factor. I've been on the site of the enclosure on 7th September during the day, and it was really, really, cold. I don't really feel the cold much in Britain, but there it was chilly. That said, being locked out is unlikely to have been the issue and there's no evidence of it. 

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On 3/29/2022 at 10:05 AM, oldrover said:

I've pm'ed you. 

Let me know if you can't get hold of a copy. 

Where would I find a copy of this paper? I'm really interested in reading it and what is has to say.

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On 4/4/2022 at 1:20 AM, alchemist227 said:

Would you also agree with the common belief that the introduction of dingoes was responsible for the extinction of thylacines (as well as devils) on mainland Australia? Or was that due to climate or human activity?

I think the dingo would have killed them as a rival and food source. Dingoes and feral dogs keep fox populations way down in areas and the fox is a master of resilience compared to native wildlife.

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  • 1 year later...

Resolving when (and where) the Thylacine went extinct

A direct reading of the high-quality records (confirmed kills and captures, in combination with sightings by past Thylacine hunters and trappers, wildlife professionals and experienced bushmen) implies a most-likely extinction date within four decades following the last capture (i.e., 1940s to 1970s).

However, uncertainty modelling of the entire sighting record, where each observation is assigned a probability and the whole dataset is then subject to a sensitivity analysis, suggests that extinction might have been as recent as the late 1980s to early 2000s, with a small chance of persistence in the remote south-western wilderness areas.

Beyond the intrinsically fascinating problem of reconstructing the final fate of the Thylacine, the new spatio-temporal mapping of extirpation developed herein would also be useful for conservation prioritization and search efforts for other rare taxa of uncertain status.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969723014948?via%3Dihub

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1 hour ago, Eldorado said:

Resolving when (and where) the Thylacine went extinct

A direct reading of the high-quality records (confirmed kills and captures, in combination with sightings by past Thylacine hunters and trappers, wildlife professionals and experienced bushmen) implies a most-likely extinction date within four decades following the last capture (i.e., 1940s to 1970s).

However, uncertainty modelling of the entire sighting record, where each observation is assigned a probability and the whole dataset is then subject to a sensitivity analysis, suggests that extinction might have been as recent as the late 1980s to early 2000s, with a small chance of persistence in the remote south-western wilderness areas.

Beyond the intrinsically fascinating problem of reconstructing the final fate of the Thylacine, the new spatio-temporal mapping of extirpation developed herein would also be useful for conservation prioritization and search efforts for other rare taxa of uncertain status.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969723014948?via%3Dihub

They're dead, Jim.

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