One of the three new images. Image Credit: YouTube / Thylacine Awareness Group of Australia
Trail camera images of an alleged 'thylacine family' have been revealed, but not everyone is convinced.
Back in February, Neil Waters - President of the Thylacine Awareness Group of Australia (TAGOA) - announced that he had captured three photographs of a thylacine family in north-east Tasmania.
At the time, he promised to release them to the public on March 1st.
Now it is March 1st and, true to his word, Waters has released the images by way of a new YouTube video which you can view below.
In the video, Waters shows three still frames from a trail camera which, he believes, represent evidence of the continued survival in the wild of the Tasmanian tiger.
One image shows a young joey, he argues, while the others show the mother and father.
Wildlife experts however remain skeptical that the animals in these images are thylacines.
"[Thylacine expert] Nick Mooney has concluded, that based on the physical characteristics shown in the photos provided by Mr Waters, the animals are very unlikely to be thylacines, and are most likely Tasmanian pademelons," the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery has stated.
Mooney is certainly not alone in casting doubt on the photographs.
"Given that the thylacine has not been seen for 85 years, the likelihood it is something else is by far the most logical conclusion," said marsupial evolutionary biologist Andrew Pask.
"It could easily be a cat, dog or wallaby based on the images."
Sadly then, while the images are certainly interesting, it seems that most experts disagree with Waters' assessment that they represent evidence of live thylacines.
Even if these really are thylacines, photographs alone will never be enough to satisfy science.
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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