Are we about to see evidence of live thylacines ? Image Credit: Nannup Police
A Tasmanian tiger enthusiast has announced that he will be releasing three tantalizing new images on March 1st.
One of the best known recent examples of a species wiped out by human hunting practices, the thylacine was a distinctive carnivorous marsupial native to Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea.
Sporadic reports of alleged thylacines in the wild however have continued even to the present day.
Now Neil Waters, President of the Thylacine Awareness Group of Australia (TAGOA), has announced that he has captured three photographs of a thylacine family in north-east Tasmania.
The images, which have since been passed on to wildlife expert Nick Mooney for independent verification, were reportedly taken using a camera trap.
"I know what they are and so do a few independent expert witnesses, expert canine judges, feline judges and a vet," said Waters.
"I can tell you there's three images. We believe... that the first image is the mum, we know the second image is the baby because it's so tiny and the third image is the dad."
Waters intends to release the images to the public on March 1st.
But could he have really captured compelling photographic evidence of three live thylacines many decades after the last confirmed sighting of one in the wild ?
As things stand, we'll just have to wait and see what he reveals in around a week's time.
Update: The images have been released and can be viewed - here.
That video is a prime example of the sort of person who wants so badly for something to be real that they're willing to bend any ambiguity to fit their narrative. You see it everywhere - politics, religion, racism - but at least in this case it's not really hurting anyone. I'm very inclined to agree with the idea that the second photo shows a juvenile pademelon. If not, though, the only other native wildlife it could be would be a thylacine, and I would love to see definitive proof that they still exist and have a sustainable breeding population. I can't think of any likely scenario where a do... [More]
Honestly, I was trying too hard to remember keywords and forgot the obvious, simple option. Given the sort of forum this is, I think there's a kind of beautiful irony there...
In my experience thylacines (dead ones of course) feel like Siamese cats. Very soft and really lovely. I also have to say that I don't find the majority of your post convincing sorry.
No apology necessary, since I wasn't trying to convince anyone. I was just adding some points that no one else had addressed yet. How people choose to apply that information, if at all, is up to them. I've never been to New Zealand or Australia, so I don't think I have any real authority to say what does or doesn't live there. That's very interesting about thylacine coats though. From the way their bodies are shaped, I kind of subconsciously attach a "rough dog coat" texture to them, but they're not canines or felines so I'm not surprised that I'd be wrong there.
Definitely feline in texture. In fact surprisingly so. But then, the only ones I've ever touched have been dead for knocking on 100 years so who knows? It's definitely not what you'd expect though but that's probably context, before actually touching one my expectation was based on an account I read that they had a woolly texture. And they didn't, equally the ones I handled were definitely of a shorter finer hair than what's seen in some of the photos. Probably.
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