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Thylacine witness statements and responses


oldrover

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Here's a link to an article from the 'Launceston Examiner'

http://www.examiner.com.au/story/4367089/thylacine-witness-statements-released/?cs=5312

In it there's a little box where you can view some reports and the responses which have been released as part of a freedom of information request. 

What's interesting is that until very recently at least, sightings were still being actively investigated. Nick Mooney's thoughts on the 2005 Emmerichs affair are also in it. 

You aren't going to read anything in it that's good news from a believer's perspective. But as I say, it is interesting to see that even in the last few years, serious people were/are still on the case. 

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It would be so good if it survived, but humans do not have a good record: passenger pigeon, dodo, if it moves ,we kill it.

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  • 5 weeks later...

My 5 year old is totally convinced the Tasmanian Tiger is real and still exists. He watched some kind of show where they talked about bringing one back using DNA, or some such. And now he's totally convinced they are "on the comeback".

Ah, youth....

I asked him if he meant Tasmanian Devils and he was sure he meant T. Tigers. He says they were made extinct because the sheep farmers feared them, but actually they only ate small creatures. Is that true? I've not dug into the feeding habits of Taz Tigers.

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1 hour ago, DieChecker said:

My 5 year old is totally convinced the Tasmanian Tiger is real and still exists. He watched some kind of show where they talked about bringing one back using DNA, or some such. And now he's totally convinced they are "on the comeback".

Ah, youth....

I asked him if he meant Tasmanian Devils and he was sure he meant T. Tigers. He says they were made extinct because the sheep farmers feared them, but actually they only ate small creatures. Is that true? I've not dug into the feeding habits of Taz Tigers.

That's one clever 5 year old by the sounds of it, you must be very proud of him. 

There was a cloning project led by Professor Mike Archer from the University of New South Wales. It' not actively pursuing it at the moment though as far as I know. Genetics are some dark art beyond the likes of me, but the DNA they'd recovered from their preserved joey was very fragmented. Since then though three or four other similarly preserved joeys (i.e in alcohol which preserves DNA rather than formaldehyde) have turned up in a Prague museum, so there's more material now. Whether any of these are being examined by Archer and co though I don't know. 

The project hit a wall because technology just isn't there yet. Reassembling the fragmented DNA to obtain a workable genome is enough of a tall order, but there are other huge hurdles to get over. For example, we do know the tiger reared up to four young, we know this by counting the nipples. That's about it. We don't know to what extent the thylacine placenta developed, we don't know which hormones were responsible for regulating and maintaining pregnancy, we don't even know what stage the young were born at. Were they the size of a rice grain like a devil (one of their 'closest' relatives), or the size of a peanut like a kangaroo, or maybe it more developed again, like a bandicoot. All in all, a taxonomically isolated marsupial probably isn't the best place to start trying to solve the problems of re-engineering extinct species. 

That said, the thylacine is the star 'extinct' species so more work will be done. 

That's if it's extinct in the first place. And it should be remembered that while all the evidence points to that being the case, it is not necessarily the opinion of all the leading lights in this field. 

He does mean the tiger and is absolutely correct about the diet, as far as the most recent studies suggest. Although, these studies, though persuasive, do not correspond to the recollections of the bushmen who best knew these animals in the wild. Also, there's an argument to be made that certain assumptions that underpin a number of them are incorrect. 

Personally, I find the idea that tigers didn't kill any sheep revisionist idealism, based more on the need to pillory ourselves for having contributed to the 'extinction' of this species, rather than from historical or physiological evidence. A big tiger could kill a sheep. It is undoubtedly true though, that their sheep killing escapades were hugely exaggerated, and that the thylacine was scapegoated to cover up the poor management of early stock managers of the Van Diemen's Land Company. Again though, it shouldn't be forgotten, but always is these days,  that small holders and shepherds in the historical period had a genuine fear of tiger predation on their flocks. And, took great effort to eliminate it. There's a wealth of knowledge in the old accounts that suggest they were trapping tigers around sheep runs in very significant numbers (in relation to population size and frequency of bounty payments). But then again, there's also a lot of  twaddle in these accounts too. So who knows?

If your little zoologist has any other questions about the thylacine please feel to ask. Although many probably won't have an answer, not even from those far higher up the food chain than I'll ever be. 

 

 

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My son was going on and on the other day. He seems to have a thing for the Marsupials right now. He was telling me that he doesn't know why people call them Tasmanian Devils, because they aren't that bad. They don't kill other animals, they just clean up the bodies of whatever does die. That's why people thought they were evil devils, because they always saw them eating dead animals. That's what we said about the T. Devils. He also talks (constantly) about the Kangaroos. He was telling me about how they got that name. Something about the Europeans mistranslating what a native said to them, I think. Then there's the Echidna, he likes those too. And Penguins... I didn't know Australia/New Zealand/Tasmania had penguins. But he knows. Apparently they are called Blue Penguins.

I do hope that the T. Tiger project bears some fruit one day. My son would like to see video of one in the wild, or even just in a zoo.

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51 minutes ago, DieChecker said:

He seems to have a thing for the Marsupials right now.

Good lad! Marsupials are brilliant. And he's lucky enough to have one species on his doorstep. 

 

51 minutes ago, DieChecker said:

He was telling me that he doesn't know why people call them Tasmanian Devils, because they aren't that bad. They don't kill other animals, they just clean up the bodies of whatever does die.

Although they do kill other animals, they aren't devils. Back in the early days of the harsh (by 19th C standards) penal colony in Tasmania the bloodcurdling cries of this pretty amiable, but rarely seen, creature were exploited, as in 'you try and escape and that thing making those horrible noises, that Tasmanian devil, will rip you to shreds'. So it was at least in part a bit of psychological control, like the sharks around Alcatraz, or was it Devil's Island? 

 

56 minutes ago, DieChecker said:

Something about the Europeans mistranslating what a native said to them, I think.

That's a bit of a myth, apparently one of the early British explorers asked one of the locals what that strange looking animal was, the man is supposed to have replied 'kangaroo'. Which, according to urban myth means, 'I dunno'. 

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Interesting topic. I think South Australia's Adelaide region has a few thylacine left, but they are definately on the very brink of extinction. I hope they can be saved.
 

Doesn't look to be faked and seems to move at times with a bipedal hop on it's hind legs, a trademark ability of a thylacine.  Sadly it is favouring one of its front paws and I would imagine it is hunting for field mice or rabbits.

The woman describes the thick striped markings and on a previous sighting at close range how the eyes are intense blue.  

Sounds like a beautiful animal, I definitely would have one for a pet.

Edited by taniwha
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1 hour ago, taniwha said:

Interesting topic. I think South Australia's Adelaide region has a few thylacine left,

Sorry to be negative, but that's definitely not a thylacine. It's a fox, the reason I say that is covered here

http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum/topic/298894-another-live-thylacine-video-surfaces-online/?page=3

There's a backstory behind the video, which is ever expanding and not very pretty to watch. I won't say anymore. 

1 hour ago, taniwha said:

Doesn't look to be faked and seems to move at times with a bipedal hop on it's hind legs, a trademark ability of a thylacine.

It isn't faked, it is just a video of a fox though sadly. Thylacines didn't have a hoping gait, though that has been said of them it isn't true. Absolutely no anatomical evidence, or even any taxonomic reason to imagine there would be, supports this, and it seems to originate with Heinz Moeller's interpretation of this section of one of the films of the last tiger(s)*

http://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/external?url=http%3A%2F%2Fcontent6.video.news.com.au%2FludmVwNTE6RxvTkr7djjebXE0kX9p83X%2FUt_HKthATH4eww8X4xMDoxOjBtO_wVGe&width=650&api_key=kq7wnrk4eun47vz9c5xuj3mc

I can't swear to Moeller being the source though, because as I don't read German, I've never been able to check he did actually say that. 

* Contrary to what you'll hear, it's not certain that any of the three films of the 'last' tiger,

actually show the last tiger at all. 

The only source we have of a tiger moving for more than a few seconds is the Fleay footage, and two other films of the same animal taken shortly before. All of which show an animal with an injured hind leg.

There are accounts from the historical period, but they aren't consistent. Some say the tiger could outpace a horse (which I don't believe for a second), and other saying it had a slow and awkward gait (which I don't buy either), but one which it keep up for very long periods. 

1 hour ago, taniwha said:

Sounds like a beautiful animal

Not as beautiful as the real thing would have been. 

If there are any tigers left they're either in New Guinea, although there's no reason other a poor understanding of the island's wildlife to say that. Or in Tasmania. 

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Thanks oldrover for the link. You are right the video is conclusively not a thylacine. 

I checked out some footage of the last thylacine and they are very peculiar creatures are they not?

Like you say, they don't seem to be anatomically designed for hopping in any real sense, though it is interesting how the leg joint immediately above the back paws flattens out to be more like a macropod when they stand upright.

I wonder of their intelligence compared to a dogs.

I guess in reality the creature is not a dog, but there is nothing to say they couldn't be trained and be loyal to human kinship.

I like the way their jaws swing open when it yawns or talks. It must have been pretty bored and stressed in captivity. 

I read that there are accounts of thylacine s dying suddenly, supposedly from fright when they were captured.

Do you know if this too is myth?

Do you know what their eye colour in fact was?

It is terrible the history of their demise and it's so easy to be wise after the fact, but I hope against all hope they are out there somewhere. 

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Another sighting here 

The photo might point to a sub species of thylacine but might it be a wallaby or even another injured Fox?

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1 hour ago, taniwha said:

Like you say, they don't seem to be anatomically designed for hopping in any real sense, though it is interesting how the leg joint immediately above the back paws flattens out to be more like a macropod when they stand upright.

Not just that, the plantar pad was very long, extending all the way to the heel. As seen at the bottom of this page here

http://www.naturalworlds.org/thylacine/biology/anatomy/external/external_anatomy_8.htm

It was using that for something, but what isn't clear. I'm not sure if it wasn't using it to rear up and free its forelimbs, which we know were flexible and probably capable of to some degree manipulating prey. Although there's another school of thought which says that the flexibility in the forelimb is, at least in part, a hangover from its neonatal need to clamber up to the mother's nipples. I've got some time for this, because to me, the paws look like they're more evolved toward running. Truthfully though it was probably somewhere between the two. I have no idea. 

1 hour ago, taniwha said:

I wonder of their intelligence compared to a dogs.

That's unlikely, there's a paper out in the last week which I haven't had a chance to read yet which deals with the tiger's brain. I've heard it summarised though and I don't think it specifically addressed that question. But, the marsupial brain isn't put together the same way the Eutherian brain is. The tiger's brain is quite complex though, so I don't know.  Especially as anecdotal evidence which may have shed light on the thylacine's behaviour is as varied as it's unreliable. 

 

1 hour ago, taniwha said:

I guess in reality the creature is not a dog, but there is nothing to say they couldn't be trained and be loyal to human kinship.

 

There are at least some anecdotal accounts of this happening, to what degree though is hard, if not impossible, to determine. But there are accounts of them being tamed. Again though nothing concrete because no one bothered to study them. 

What's certain is that Daid Fleay managed to get into the cage of a recently captured tiger to take his famous film, the only injury he received was a nip. So they probably weren't particularly aggressive in the first place. There's also thi famous photograph.

Image result for thylacine on lead

Exactly what it shows is open to interpretation. 

1 hour ago, taniwha said:

I like the way their jaws swing open when it yawns or talks. It must have been pretty bored and stressed in captivity. 

Yes, the yawn is a threat. You can see it in the Fleay film. It's also seen in their close relatives the quoll and the devil. It's commonly said that they could open their jaws to 120 degrees, but this one of the many myths that are attached to the animal. In fact about 80 degrees is the maximum, still really, really wide. Their bite was also unusually powerful. 

1 hour ago, taniwha said:

I read that there are accounts of thylacine s dying suddenly, supposedly from fright when they were captured.

Do you know if this too is myth?

It isn't a myth, but it relates to specific circumstances. 

In 1888 the first year of the Government bounty scheme (as opposed to the many other bounty schemes such as the Van Diem's Land company's scheme, the Glamorgan Stock Association scheme, and the rather bluntly named , 'Buckland and Spring Bay Tiger and Eagle Exterminating Association's' scheme, and other smaller or private set ups) there was an advisory pamphlet distributed warning trappers of the dangers posed by snared thylacines. There are plenty of accounts at that time of how tricky they were to handle in a snare. Later, toward the end of the century, this seems to change. 

The timing of this change, from the late 19th C onward, coincides with what's been interpreted as the early presentation of the disease which probably caused the almost total collapse of the tiger population by the year 1909.

Studies and opinion vary, but I believe that this disease, on top of over hunting, dealt the species the blow from which it never recovered. It appears to have almost destroyed the wild population by the early 20th C, and also spread throughout the captive population. It was disease, not mere exposure, that probably killed the last zoo tiger in 1936. There's a lot more to be said about this and the disease in general. 

1 hour ago, taniwha said:

Do you know what their eye colour in fact was?

I don't know exactly, just that it was dark with an elliptical pupils and a nictitating membrane, which was apparently very active. 

 

1 hour ago, taniwha said:

It is terrible the history of their demise and it's so easy to be wise after the fact, but I hope against all hope they are out there somewhere. 

It is, and the cold hard fact is that without any firm evidence it's difficult to support the idea that they are. 

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11 minutes ago, taniwha said:

Another sighting here 

The photo might point to a sub species of thylacine but might it be a wallaby or even another injured Fox?

No, the whole mainland sub species thing is a dead end. The two populations have only been isolated for about 10kya, and there's loads of evince from the mainland as well as New Guinea, all of which except for one NG late Pliocene specimen, are ascribed to T. cynocephalus.  We even have mummified remains fro the Nullabor Plain which show the markings were the same.

Waters, the man making the mainland subspecies claims, used to say he was supported by a certain well known Australian museum, I asked them and they made it clear that wasn't the case.

As I say, there's a backstory to this spate of claimed mainland sightings, and it is't pretty. 

 

 

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1 hour ago, oldrover said:

No, the whole mainland sub species thing is a dead end. The two populations have only been isolated for about 10kya, and there's loads of evince from the mainland as well as New Guinea, all of which except for one NG late Pliocene specimen, are ascribed to T. cynocephalus.  We even have mummified remains fro the Nullabor Plain which show the markings were the same.

Waters, the man making the mainland subspecies claims, used to say he was supported by a certain well known Australian museum, I asked them and they made it clear that wasn't the case.

As I say, there's a backstory to this spate of claimed mainland sightings, and it is't pretty. 

 

 

Yes you are right, unfortunately i think Waters is confusing the problem than solving it.

I'd love to hear some thylacine stories from any aboriginal elders and their folklore.

Thanks again oldrover for sharing your research. 

Much more to thylacine anatomy than meets the eye.

The lack of toe webbing is odd, almost finger like, I wonder how it coped swimming or if it liked climbing trees.

Now it might have been possible it stalked and pounced upon it's prey just like it's namesake rather than run it down like a wolf.  I'm guessing they were well suited for powerful bursts of speed for only short distances as there is a striking similarity to their low centre of gravity and stubby hind quarters matching those of tigers and pumas don't you think?

No doubt they were cunning and tactful creatures that deserved a much kinder fate.

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2 minutes ago, taniwha said:

Thanks again oldrover for sharing your research. 

As above. Fascinating stuff and extremely interesting. Thanks oldrover.

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16 hours ago, taniwha said:

unfortunately i think Waters is confusing the problem than solving it.

I'd love to hear some thylacine stories from any aboriginal elders and their folklore.

He isn't helping. It's not that he maters, he doesn't, anything he says will soon be relegated to the margins of the worst kind of research. Just like may before him. See the Emmerichs photos.

Where he does do real harm though is when he reduces the thylacine in the minds of the public to something a bit weak and rickety so he can shoehorn that identity onto a mangy, wounded fox. 

I mean, take a look at the sickly animals in Waters' videos and compare it to the reality of how lithe and fluid a real tiger was

http://www.naturalworlds.org/thylacine/captivity/films/flv/film_4.htm

This was an animal (not that particular animal in the film) which in the London Zoo was capable of catching the birds which entered its enclosure.

As to Aboriginal tradition, it's a bit thin on the ground. Sadly, it wasn't just the wildlife that was destroyed in Tasmania, the indigenous Tasmanians were persecuted too, then finally the survivors were shipped off to Flinders Island in the Bass Strait. Where they died. So, we've lost their knowledge of the wild thylacine all except for a few fragments, such a few of their names for it, and little more. I've read that in some areas it was taboo, whereas in others it was hunted for food. 

There is reference in Paddle's 2000 book 'The Last Tasmanian Tiger etc' regarding the traditions of the indigenous people of the Flinders Range (no connection). Back then Paddle was proposing evidence for a relict tiger population in South Australia in the 19th century. For which the evidence is lousy in my opinion, and there's more to say about why.

Anyway, he cites an interview with an Aboriginal man named Mount Serle Bob, who at the age of 100 remembered seeing the animal called the 'marrukurli' (thylacine ?) as a child in the 1830's.

Other than that the time scale for the tiger's extinction on the mainland is probably just too far back. Although in New Guinea the locals speak of an animal called the dobsegna, an animal who's description matches the thylacine.

Rarely seen in daylight, the dobsegna generally emerges from its den in rocks or caves at dawn or dusk, to hunt for small prey animals. Its head and shoulders are dog-like, but its mouth is huge and strong, and its tail is very long and thin. Villagers claim that from its ribs to its hips it has no intestines (but this merely suggests that it is very thin in this particular body region), and that in this region it is striped.

From Shuker here http://karlshuker.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/the-new-guinea-thylacine-crying-wolf-in.html

That description is adapted from the one given to the late Ned Terry, a thylacine researcher of very high standards, who visited New Guinea in the 80's after having been contacted by, I think, a missionary called Morgan. 

Of course none of that is substantiated, and the last known tiger remains from NG are from 5kya, so almost twice as old as Australia's mainland. But Terry was a genuine and dedicated man. And I recall him discussing this in a TV interview back then. So, the locals are saying that. 

16 hours ago, taniwha said:

The lack of toe webbing is odd, almost finger like, I wonder how it coped swimming or if it liked climbing trees.

Yes, the webbing on a canid is designed to keep the toes together while running, tigers lack that, but then specialisation in forelimb and manus (fore paw) anatomy is constrained in marsupials, as you know, because the neonates need to use their little arms to climb up to the nipple. 

Funny you should mention swimming, at first at least some of the early European scientists who discussed the thylacine did think it was semi aquatic. One description (can't recall where) even claimed it had a long flattened beaver like tail. But of course, hard drugs were perfectly legal back then. 

Tree climbing, again there's more to say about that. But there were reports of the lighter female tigers being very agile, one report describes one jumped up into and between the rafters of its enclosure. 

16 hours ago, taniwha said:

Now it might have been possible it stalked and pounced upon it's prey just like it's namesake rather than run it down like a wolf.  I'm guessing they were well suited for powerful bursts of speed for only short distances as there is a striking similarity to their low centre of gravity and stubby hind quarters matching those of tigers and pumas don't you think?

You've hit the nail on the head there, this is the big debate at the moment. Moeller found that Eutherian predator which most closely matched the overall proportions of the thylacine was the clouded leopard. But I don't think it's clear exactly what it was doing. 

I tend to swing between the two ideas quite a lot, this month I'm leaning more toward a runner, but one which could grapple and ambush. 

I think that anatomical study is great, and will illustrate to us what the thylacine could do, and where the various bits and pieces of it's anatomy group with other animals comparatively. Which again will suggest much about its lifestyle. But also, I think we have to take care of the contemporary accounts by the only people who ever really saw the animal in the wild, the bushmen. Because, once, if, we can sort out the nonsense from the fact in those accounts it'll tell us what the animal actually was doing. At least some of the time, but as I think it Darren Naish pointed out recently' animals are weird', and they do do stupid unexpected things. 

Edited by oldrover
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I just watched the latest episode of Josh Gates' Expedition Unknown and he was pursuing the Thylacine. I like Josh so i like most of his episodes but this one was really fun.  Of course the animal wasnt found but they had some recently taken pics and vids I hadnt seen and they did discover some tracks that on the surface could line up with a thylacine print. 

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39 minutes ago, Farmer77 said:

I just watched the latest episode of Josh Gates' Expedition Unknown and he was pursuing the Thylacine. I like Josh so i like most of his episodes but this one was really fun.  Of course the animal wasnt found but they had some recently taken pics and vids I hadnt seen and they did discover some tracks that on the surface could line up with a thylacine print. 

Funnily enough I'd just come across the link to that episode on another forum. I'm going to watch it now. 

I too like Josh Gates. I like the way that he obviously doesn't take himself too seriously. 

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Just watched the episode. One big revelation in it for me was that they now have a complete genome for thr tiger. 

Other than that, and while Josh Gates is always entertaining, I found the orogramme to be pretty limp.  The TRU, that's the three blokes he finds the cave with are OK as far as I'm concerned, I found them very helpful and sensible in the past.

As for the rest of the people and all of the photos, these are a no. No tigers in any of those photos, most of which are doing the rounds at the minute. There's more to say, but that'd be like picking a scab so I'll leave it unsaid. 

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7 hours ago, Farmer77 said:
On 23/01/2017 at 6:08 AM, oldrover said:

He isn't helping. It's not that he maters, he doesn't, anything he says will soon be relegated to the margins of the worst kind of research. Just like may before him. See the Emmerichs photos.

Where he does do real harm though is when he reduces the thylacine in the minds of the public to something a bit weak and rickety so he can shoehorn that identity onto a mangy, wounded fox. 

I mean, take a look at the sickly animals in Waters' videos and compare it to the reality of how lithe and fluid a real tiger was

http://www.naturalworlds.org/thylacine/captivity/films/flv/film_4.htm

This was an animal (not that particular animal in the film) which in the London Zoo was capable of catching the birds which entered its enclosure.

As to Aboriginal tradition, it's a bit thin on the ground. Sadly, it wasn't just the wildlife that was destroyed in Tasmania, the indigenous Tasmanians were persecuted too, then finally the survivors were shipped off to Flinders Island in the Bass Strait. Where they died. So, we've lost their knowledge of the wild thylacine all except for a few fragments, such a few of their names for it, and little more. I've read that in some areas it was taboo, whereas in others it was hunted for food. 

There is reference in Paddle's 2000 book 'The Last Tasmanian Tiger etc' regarding the traditions of the indigenous people of the Flinders Range (no connection). Back then Paddle was proposing evidence for a relict tiger population in South Australia in the 19th century. For which the evidence is lousy in my opinion, and there's more to say about why.

Anyway, he cites an interview with an Aboriginal man named Mount Serle Bob, who at the age of 100 remembered seeing the animal called the 'marrukurli' (thylacine ?) as a child in the 1830's.

Other than that the time scale for the tiger's extinction on the mainland is probably just too far back. Although in New Guinea the locals speak of an animal called the dobsegna, an animal who's description matches the thylacine.

Rarely seen in daylight, the dobsegna generally emerges from its den in rocks or caves at dawn or dusk, to hunt for small prey animals. Its head and shoulders are dog-like, but its mouth is huge and strong, and its tail is very long and thin. Villagers claim that from its ribs to its hips it has no intestines (but this merely suggests that it is very thin in this particular body region), and that in this region it is striped.

From Shuker here http://karlshuker.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/the-new-guinea-thylacine-crying-wolf-in.html

That description is adapted from the one given to the late Ned Terry, a thylacine researcher of very high standards, who visited New Guinea in the 80's after having been contacted by, I think, a missionary called Morgan. 

Of course none of that is substantiated, and the last known tiger remains from NG are from 5kya, so almost twice as old as Australia's mainland. But Terry was a genuine and dedicated man. And I recall him discussing this in a TV interview back then. So, the locals are saying that. 

Yes, the webbing on a canid is designed to keep the toes together while running, tigers lack that, but then specialisation in forelimb and manus (fore paw) anatomy is constrained in marsupials, as you know, because the neonates need to use their little arms to climb up to the nipple. 

Funny you should mention swimming, at first at least some of the early European scientists who discussed the thylacine did think it was semi aquatic. One description (can't recall where) even claimed it had a long flattened beaver like tail. But of course, hard drugs were perfectly legal back then. 

Tree climbing, again there's more to say about that. But there were reports of the lighter female tigers being very agile, one report describes one jumped up into and between the rafters of its enclosure. 

You've hit the nail on the head there, this is the big debate at the moment. Moeller found that Eutherian predator which most closely matched the overall proportions of the thylacine was the clouded leopard. But I don't think it's clear exactly what it was doing. 

I tend to swing between the two ideas quite a lot, this month I'm leaning more toward a runner, but one which could grapple and ambush. 

I think that anatomical study is great, and will illustrate to us what the thylacine could do, and where the various bits and pieces of it's anatomy group with other animals comparatively. Which again will suggest much about its lifestyle. But also, I think we have to take care of the contemporary accounts by the only people who ever really saw the animal in the wild, the bushmen. Because, once, if, we can sort out the nonsense from the fact in those accounts it'll tell us what the animal actually was doing. At least some of the time, but as I think it Darren Naish pointed out recently' animals are weird', and they do do stupid unexpected things. 

Hi oldrover great post and links. 

The injustice of man and beast is a miserable pity.

Moving forward,

Finding a living thylacine is key to the riddle.  How many people are dedicated lookers?  

And is there more historical footage to be found I wonder?

Maybe a sound recording was preserved?

Maybe we could hear one hiss.

My dog swings open his jaw like a thylacine.
He greets me with a huge yawning gape. Somedays he has a lot to say. Somedays he should of been an opera singer.

It is totally instinctive of me to make dog comparisons but if they could jump around rafters with the nimbleness of a cat how cool is that?  Really cool.

At some angles they look otter like, maybe  they could dive for fish?  Believe it or not my sister had a beautiful black lab cross and he would dive into river pools and swim underwater. He would retrieve stones. It was fun to see, it would make us laugh, we would call him an otter.

yeah, those were the days...

I notice you talk about cloning earlier and have just mentioned genomes.

Do you think cloning a thylacine is  necessary?

Will the world be a richer place for it?

I remain unconvinced.

Hope you don't mind me asking. Thanks.

Edited by taniwha
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27 minutes ago, taniwha said:

Hope you don't mind me asking. Thanks.

Of course not, I love talking about thylacines. 

 

27 minutes ago, taniwha said:

Finding a living thylacine is key to the riddle.  How many people are dedicated lookers?  

Hard to say, thee are people that I think are sound who are out looking. I've been asked not to mention one for the minute, but there's the TRU, I don't know a lot about them but they seem OK. I had occasion to contact them a while back, and found the chap I spoke to be be a decent bloke and willing to take the time to pass on what he understood about the situation in question. And the main man who spent years tracking the thylacine in the field Nick Mooney was looking into reports (see the original link) with great skill and scrutiny until very recently, perhaps he still does although he's retired now. 

 

34 minutes ago, taniwha said:

And is there more historical footage to be found I wonder?

There may well be, I recently came across a contemporary reference to a two minute film from I think Melbourne Zoo. But there's no known trace of it today. The longest known film is about a minute. I think it's safe to assume that there were more films taken. 

Photos on the other hand do crop up. My great fantasy is that a colour film or photo will surface one day. They must have been taken, think of all the wealthy camera buffs with the latest bits that there must have been in places like London, Melbourne, New York and Berlin in the historical period. A colour photo would be really handy as it'd help with the colour misconception that's built up about the tiger, they were grey dun not beige. 

40 minutes ago, taniwha said:

Maybe a sound recording was preserved?

Afraid not.  No known recording of any tiger vocalisation. 

 

41 minutes ago, taniwha said:

Maybe we could hear one hiss.

I wish. 

42 minutes ago, taniwha said:

It is totally instinctive of me to make dog comparisons but if they could jump around rafters with the nimbleness of a cat how cool is that?  Really cool.

At some angles they look otter like, maybe  they could dive for fish?  Believe it or not my sister had a beautiful black lab cross and he would dive into river pools and swim underwater. He would retrieve stones. It was fun to see, it would make us laugh, we would call him an otter.

I saw a video the other day of a pair of black labs hunting crayfish, I think that was Australia. They are undeniably dog like in some ways, but in another they reming me more of a quoll or something else. David Fleay, the man who made the film with the famous yawn in it, said that it reminded him of a giant marsupial mouse, that's marsupial mouse as in an antechinus, as opposed to a giant marsupial version of a mouse.  As I say, they were once thought to be semi aquatic, but I think that may have had something to do with the male's pouch, which is a feature shared by the water possum or yapok of South America. 

https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTTvblisGbAovyJyfzvsguNsa96_TFzMGG3smrvSqP894CkCUuA

Maybe they put two and two together and got five. They certainly knew about the yapok at that time. Incidentally look at the coulour of the yapok in that link and this preserved specimen from the NHM London, it's actually just to the right of 'Lumpy' their thylacine mount, and is the same colour.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8c/Chironectes_minimus_-_Swedish_Museum_of_Natural_History_-_Stockholm,_Sweden_-_DSC00658.JPG/220px-Chironectes_minimus_-_Swedish_Museum_of_Natural_History_-_Stockholm,_Sweden_-_DSC00658.JPG

It's the result of fading, that's why tigers look the bleached washed out colour they do in taxidermies and bad illustrations, and so vivid in the films and photos although their black and white. 

54 minutes ago, taniwha said:

I notice you talk about cloning earlier and have just mentioned genomes.

Do you think cloning a thylacine is  necessary?

Will the world be a richer place for it?

I remain unconvinced.

It depends on what we get out of the cloning process, and that we won't know until we have an adult cloned tiger. It might be a viable, in terms of being able to be habituated to the wild, or it may be a dependent puppy. Either way, I don't think we should be focusing on the thylacine at the moment, not with the devil, the quoll and god knows how many other species in the state they are. 

Of course, that's if they are extinct in the wild, if they aren't and we find a few I'd say we need to do everything we possibly can to save them. 

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The Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment has released a list of thylacine witness statements, made by residents and visitors to the island,

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On 22/01/2017 at 2:12 AM, DieChecker said:

My son was going on and on the other day. He seems to have a thing for the Marsupials right now. He was telling me that he doesn't know why people call them Tasmanian Devils, because they aren't that bad. They don't kill other animals, they just clean up the bodies of whatever does die. That's why people thought they were evil devils, because they always saw them eating dead animals. That's what we said about the T. Devils. He also talks (constantly) about the Kangaroos. He was telling me about how they got that name. Something about the Europeans mistranslating what a native said to them, I think. Then there's the Echidna, he likes those too. And Penguins... I didn't know Australia/New Zealand/Tasmania had penguins. But he knows. Apparently they are called Blue Penguins.

I do hope that the T. Tiger project bears some fruit one day. My son would like to see video of one in the wild, or even just in a zoo.

That sounds like an amazing little boy.  This is for him. Are you sure he's 5? 

 

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Funnily enough the woman who took this 1973 film, Liz Doyle, appeared on Waters' Cartoon network Facebook page the other day talking about it. 

Definite canid. 

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  • 4 weeks later...

Tacked this on to the first thylacine thread.

For those with a genuine interest in the thylacine, the fifth version of The Thylacine Museum, the best on-line knowledge resource of the lot,  came out yesterday. 

Personally, I don't agree with everything it says, there are omissions, some of which are a bit surprising. But at the same time it's an indispensable resource.  

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  • 5 years later...
On 1/21/2017 at 3:23 PM, oldrover said:

Not just that, the plantar pad was very long, extending all the way to the heel. As seen at the bottom of this page here

http://www.naturalworlds.org/thylacine/biology/anatomy/external/external_anatomy_8.htm

It was using that for something, but what isn't clear. I'm not sure if it wasn't using it to rear up and free its forelimbs, which we know were flexible and probably capable of to some degree manipulating prey. Although there's another school of thought which says that the flexibility in the forelimb is, at least in part, a hangover from its neonatal need to clamber up to the mother's nipples. I've got some time for this, because to me, the paws look like they're more evolved toward running. Truthfully though it was probably somewhere between the two. I have no idea. 

That's unlikely, there's a paper out in the last week which I haven't had a chance to read yet which deals with the tiger's brain. I've heard it summarised though and I don't think it specifically addressed that question. But, the marsupial brain isn't put together the same way the Eutherian brain is. The tiger's brain is quite complex though, so I don't know.  Especially as anecdotal evidence which may have shed light on the thylacine's behaviour is as varied as it's unreliable. 

 

 

There are at least some anecdotal accounts of this happening, to what degree though is hard, if not impossible, to determine. But there are accounts of them being tamed. Again though nothing concrete because no one bothered to study them. 

What's certain is that Daid Fleay managed to get into the cage of a recently captured tiger to take his famous film, the only injury he received was a nip. So they probably weren't particularly aggressive in the first place. There's also thi famous photograph.

Image result for thylacine on lead

Exactly what it shows is open to interpretation. 

Yes, the yawn is a threat. You can see it in the Fleay film. It's also seen in their close relatives the quoll and the devil. It's commonly said that they could open their jaws to 120 degrees, but this one of the many myths that are attached to the animal. In fact about 80 degrees is the maximum, still really, really wide. Their bite was also unusually powerful. 

It isn't a myth, but it relates to specific circumstances. 

In 1888 the first year of the Government bounty scheme (as opposed to the many other bounty schemes such as the Van Diem's Land company's scheme, the Glamorgan Stock Association scheme, and the rather bluntly named , 'Buckland and Spring Bay Tiger and Eagle Exterminating Association's' scheme, and other smaller or private set ups) there was an advisory pamphlet distributed warning trappers of the dangers posed by snared thylacines. There are plenty of accounts at that time of how tricky they were to handle in a snare. Later, toward the end of the century, this seems to change. 

The timing of this change, from the late 19th C onward, coincides with what's been interpreted as the early presentation of the disease which probably caused the almost total collapse of the tiger population by the year 1909.

Studies and opinion vary, but I believe that this disease, on top of over hunting, dealt the species the blow from which it never recovered. It appears to have almost destroyed the wild population by the early 20th C, and also spread throughout the captive population. It was disease, not mere exposure, that probably killed the last zoo tiger in 1936. There's a lot more to be said about this and the disease in general. 

I don't know exactly, just that it was dark with an elliptical pupils and a nictitating membrane, which was apparently very active. 

 

It is, and the cold hard fact is that without any firm evidence it's difficult to support the idea that they are. 

I really appreciate your commentary on the history of the thylacine, oldrover. One thing I have always wondered is why Tasmanian Devils were able to survive when thylacines could not, considering that both suffered from disease and were targeted by local farmers/ranchers.

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