Thylacine
Encyclopedia
The thylacine was the largest known carnivorous
marsupial
of modern times
. It is commonly known as the Tasmanian tiger (because of its striped back) or the Tasmanian wolf. Native to continental Australia
, Tasmania
and New Guinea
, it is thought to have become extinct in the 20th century. It was the last extant member of its family, Thylacinidae
, although several related species have been found in the fossil record dating back to the early Miocene.
The thylacine had become extremely rare or extinct on the Australian mainland
before European settlement of the continent, but it survived on the island of Tasmania
along with several other endemic
species, including the Tasmanian devil
. Intensive hunting encouraged by bounties
is generally blamed for its extinction, but other contributory factors may have been disease, the introduction of dogs, and human encroachment into its habitat. Despite its official classification as extinct, sightings are still reported, though none proven.
Like the tigers and wolves of the Northern Hemisphere, from which it obtained two of its common names, the thylacine was an apex predator
. As a marsupial, it was not closely related to these placental mammals, but because of convergent evolution
it displayed the same general form and adaptations. Its closest living relative is thought to be either the Tasmanian devil
or numbat
. The thylacine was one of only two marsupials to have a pouch
in both sexes (the other being the water opossum
). The male thylacine had a pouch that acted as a protective sheath, covering the male's external reproductive organs while he ran through thick brush. It has been described as a formidable predator because of its ability to survive and hunt prey in extremely sparsely populated areas.
The modern thylacine first appeared about 4 million years ago. Species of the family Thylacinidae date back to the beginning of the Miocene
; since the early 1990s, at least seven fossil species have been uncovered at Riversleigh
, part of Lawn Hill National Park in northwest Queensland
. Dickson's Thylacine
(Nimbacinus dicksoni) is the oldest of the seven discovered fossil species, dating back to 23 million years ago. This thylacinid was much smaller than its more recent relatives. The largest species, the powerful thylacine (Thylacinus potens
) which grew to the size of a wolf, was the only species to survive into the late Miocene. In late Pleistocene
and early Holocene
times, the modern thylacine was widespread (although never numerous) throughout Australia and New Guinea.
An example of convergent evolution
, the thylacine showed many similarities to the members of the dog family, Canidae
, of the Northern Hemisphere: sharp teeth, powerful jaws, raised heels
and the same general body form. Since the thylacine filled the same ecological niche
in Australia as the dog family did elsewhere it developed many of the same features. Despite this, it is unrelated to any of the Northern Hemisphere predators.
peoples of Australia made first contact with the thylacine. Numerous examples of thylacine engravings and rock art have been found dating back to at least 1000 BC. Petroglyph
images of the thylacine can be found at the Dampier Rock Art Precinct on the Burrup Peninsula in Western Australia. By the time the first explorers arrived, the animal was already extinct in mainland Australia and rare in Tasmania. Europeans may have encountered it as far back as 1642 when Abel Tasman
first arrived in Tasmania. His shore party reported seeing the footprints of "wild beasts having claws like a Tyger". Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne
, arriving with the Mascarin in 1772, reported seeing a "tiger cat". Positive identification of the thylacine as the animal encountered cannot be made from this report since the Tiger Quoll
(Dasyurus maculatus) is similarly described. The first definitive encounter was by French explorers on 13 May 1792, as noted by the naturalist Jacques Labillardière
, in his journal from the expedition led by D'Entrecasteaux. However, it was not until 1805 that William Paterson, the Lieutenant Governor of Tasmania, sent a detailed description for publication in the Sydney Gazette
.
The first detailed scientific description was made by Tasmania's Deputy Surveyor-General, George Harris
in 1808, five years after first settlement of the island. Harris originally placed the thylacine in the genus Didelphis
, which had been created by Linnaeus for the American opossums, describing it as Didelphis cynocephala, the "dog-headed opossum". Recognition that the Australian marsupials were fundamentally different from the known mammal genera led to the establishment of the modern classification scheme, and in 1796 Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire
created the genus Dasyurus where he placed the thylacine in 1810. To resolve the mixture of Greek and Latin nomenclature the species name was altered to cynocephalus. In 1824, it was separated out into its own genus, Thylacinus, by Temminck
. The common name derives directly from the genus name, originally from the Greek θύλακος (thýlakos), meaning "pouch" or "sack".
Several studies support the thylacine as being a basal
member of the Dasyuromorphia
and that the Tasmanian devil
is its closest living relative. However, research published in Genome Research
in January 2009 suggests that the numbat
may be more basal than the devil and more closely related to the thylacine.
The thylacine resembled a large, short-haired dog with a stiff tail which smoothly extended from the body in a way similar to that of a kangaroo
. Many European settlers drew direct comparisons with the hyena
, because of its unusual stance and general demeanour. Its yellow-brown coat featured 13 to 21 distinctive dark stripes across its back, rump and the base of its tail, which earned the animal the nickname, "Tiger". The stripes were more marked in younger specimens, fading as the animal got older. One of the stripes extended down the outside of the rear thigh. Its body hair was dense and soft, up to 15 mm (0.590551181102362 in) in length; in juveniles the tip of the tail had a crest. Its rounded, erect ears were about 8 cm (3.1 in) long and covered with short fur. Colouration varied from light fawn to a dark brown; the belly was cream-coloured.
The mature thylacine ranged from 100 to 130 cm (39.4 to 51.2 in) long, plus a tail of around 50 to 65 cm (19.7 to 25.6 in). The largest measured specimen was 290 cm (9.5 ft) from nose to tail. Adults stood about 60 cm (23.6 in) at the shoulder and weighed 20 to 30 kg (44.1 to 66.1 lb). There was slight sexual dimorphism
with the males being larger than females on average.
The female thylacine had a pouch with four teats, but unlike many other marsupials, the pouch opened to the rear of its body. Males had a scrotal pouch, unique amongst the Australian marsupials, into which they could withdraw their scrotal sac
.
The thylacine was able to open its jaws to an unusual extent: up to 120 degrees. This capability can be seen in part in David Fleay
's short black-and-white film sequence of a captive thylacine from 1933. The jaws were muscular but weak and had 46 teeth.
Thylacine footprints could be distinguished from other native or introduced animals; unlike foxes, cats, dogs, wombat
s or Tasmanian devil
s, thylacines had a very large rear pad and four obvious front pads, arranged in almost a straight line. The hindfeet were similar to the forefeet but had four digits rather than five. Their claws were non-retractable.
The early scientific studies suggested it possessed an acute sense of smell which enabled it to track prey, but analysis of its brain structure revealed that its olfactory bulb
s were not well developed. It is likely to have relied on sight and sound when hunting instead. Some observers described it having a strong and distinctive smell, others described a faint, clean, animal odour, and some no odour at all. It is possible that the thylacine, like its relative, the Tasmanian devil, gave off an odour when agitated.
The thylacine was noted as having a stiff and somewhat awkward gait
, making it unable to run at high speed. It could also perform a bipedal hop, in a fashion similar to a kangaroo—demonstrated at various times by captive specimens. Guiler speculates that this was used as an accelerated form of motion when the animal became alarmed. The animal was also able to balance on its hind legs and stand upright for brief periods.
Observers of the animal in the wild and in captivity noted that it would growl and hiss when agitated, often accompanied
by a threat-yawn. During hunting it would emit a series of rapidly repeated guttural cough-like barks (described as "yip-yap", "cay-yip" or "hop-hop-hop"), probably for communication between the family pack members. It also had a long whining cry, probably for identification at distance, and a low snuffling noise used for communication between family members.
Little is known about the behaviour or habitat of the thylacine. A few observations were made of the animal in captivity, but only limited, anecdotal evidence exists of the animal's behaviour in the wild. Most observations were made during the day whereas the thylacine was naturally nocturnal. Those observations, made in the twentieth century, may have been atypical as they were of a species already under the stresses that would soon lead to its extinction. Some behavioural characteristics have been extrapolated from the behaviour of its close relative, the Tasmanian devil.
The thylacine probably preferred the dry eucalyptus
forests, wetlands, and grasslands in continental Australia
. Indigenous Australian rock paintings indicate that the thylacine lived throughout mainland Australia and New Guinea
. Proof of the animal's existence in mainland Australia came from a desiccated carcass that was discovered in a cave in the Nullarbor Plain
in Western Australia in 1990; carbon dating revealed it to be around 3,300 years old.
In Tasmania it preferred the woodlands of the midlands and coastal heath
, which eventually became the primary focus of British settlers seeking grazing land for their livestock. The striped pattern may have provided camouflage in woodland conditions, but it may have also served for identification purposes. The animal had a typical home range of between 40 and 80 km² (15.4 and 30.9 sqmi). It appears to have kept to its home range without being territorial; groups too large to be a family unit were sometimes observed together.
The thylacine was a nocturnal
and crepuscular
hunter, spending the daylight hours in small caves or hollow tree trunks in a nest of twigs, bark or fern fronds. It tended to retreat to the hills and forest for shelter during the day and hunted in the open heath at night. Early observers noted that the animal was typically shy and secretive, with awareness of the presence of humans and generally avoiding contact, though it occasionally showed inquisitive traits. At the time, much stigma existed in regard to its "fierce" nature, however this is likely to be due to its perceived threat to agriculture.
There is evidence for at least some year-round breeding (cull records show joeys discovered in the pouch at all times of the year), although the peak breeding season was in winter and spring. They would produce up to four cubs per litter (typically two or three), carrying the young in a pouch for up to three months and protecting them until they were at least half adult size. Early pouch young were hairless and blind, but they had their eyes open and were fully furred by the time they left the pouch. After leaving the pouch, and until they were developed enough to assist, the juveniles would remain in the lair while their mother hunted. Thylacines only once bred successfully in captivity, in Melbourne Zoo
in 1899. Their life expectancy in the wild is estimated to have been 5 to 7 years, although captive specimens survived up to 9 years.
The thylacine was exclusively carnivorous. Its stomach was muscular with an ability to distend to allow the animal to eat large amounts of food at one time, probably an adaptation to compensate for long periods when hunting was unsuccessful and food scarce. Analysis of the skeletal frame and observations of it in captivity suggest that it preferred to single out a target animal and pursue that animal until it was exhausted. Some studies conclude that the animal may have hunted in small family groups, with the main group herding prey in the general direction of an individual waiting in ambush. Trappers reported it as an ambush predator
.
Little is known of the thylacine's diet and feeding behaviour. Prey is believed to have included kangaroo
s, wallabies
and wombat
s, birds and small animals such as potoroo
s and possum
s. One prey animal may have been the once common Tasmanian emu
. The emu was a large, flightless bird which shared the habitat of the thylacine and was hunted to extinction around 1850, possibly coinciding with the decline in thylacine numbers. Both dingo
es and foxes have been noted to hunt the emu on the mainland. European settlers believed the thylacine to prey upon farmers' sheep and poultry. Throughout the twentieth century, the thylacine was often characterised as primarily a blood drinker, but little reference is now made to this trait; the story's popularity seems to have originated from a single second-hand account. In captivity, thylacines were fed a wide variety of foods, including dead rabbits and wallabies as well as beef, mutton, horse, and occasionally poultry.
A 2011 study by the University of New South Wales
using advanced computer modelling indicated that the thylacine had surprisingly feeble jaws. Animals usually take prey close to their own body size, but an adult thylacine of around 30 kilograms (66.1 lb) was found to be incapable of handling prey much larger than 5 kilograms (11 lb). Researchers believe thylacines only ate small animals such as bandicoots and possums, putting them into direct competition with the Tasmanian devil
and the Tiger Quoll
. Such specialisation probably made the thylacine susceptible to small disturbances to the ecosystem.
dingoes. However, doubts exist over the impact of the dingo since the two species would not have been in direct competition with one another as the dingo hunts primarily during the day, whereas it is thought that the thylacine hunted mostly at night. In addition, the thylacine had a more powerful build, which would have given it an advantage in one-on-one encounters. Recent morphological examinations of dingo and thylacine skulls show that although the dingo had a weaker bite, its skull could resist greater stresses, allowing it to pull down larger prey than the thylacine could. The thylacine was also much less versatile in diet than the omnivorous dingo. Their environments clearly overlapped: thylacine subfossil
remains have been discovered in proximity to those of dingoes. The adoption of the dingo as a hunting companion by the indigenous peoples would have put the thylacine under increased pressure.
Rock paintings from the Kakadu National Park
clearly show that thylacines were hunted by early humans.
Although the thylacine had been close to extinction on mainland Australia by the time of European settlement, and went extinct there some time in the nineteenth century, it survived into the 1930s on the island state of Tasmania
. At the time of the first settlement, the heaviest distributions were in the northeast, northwest and north-midland regions of the state. They were rarely sighted during this time but slowly began to be credited with numerous attacks on sheep. This led to the establishment of bounty schemes in an attempt to control their numbers. The Van Diemen's Land Company
introduced bounties on the thylacine from as early as 1830, and between 1888 and 1909 the Tasmanian government
paid £1 per head for dead adult thylacines and ten shilling
s for pups. In all they paid out 2,184 bounties, but it is thought that many more thylacines were killed than were claimed for. Its extinction is popularly attributed to these relentless efforts by farmers and bounty hunter
s. However, it is likely that multiple factors led to its decline and eventual extinction, including competition with wild dogs introduced by European settlers, erosion of its habitat, the concurrent extinction of prey species, and a distemper
-like disease that also affected many captive specimens at the time. Whatever the reason, the animal had become extremely rare in the wild by the late 1920s. Despite the fact that the thylacine was believed by many to be responsible for attacks on the sheep. In 1928, the Tasmanian Advisory Committee for Native Fauna had recommended a reserve to protect any remaining thylacines, with potential sites of suitable habitat including the Arthur
-Pieman
ara of western Tasmania.
The last known Thylacine to be killed in the wild was killed in 1930 by Wilf Batty, a farmer from Mawbanna, in the northeast of the state. The animal, believed to have been a male, had been seen around Batty's house for several weeks.
where it lived for three years. Frank Darby, who claimed to have been a keeper at Hobart Zoo, suggested "Benjamin" as having been the animal's pet name in a newspaper article of May 1968. However, no documentation exists to suggest that it ever had a pet name, and Alison Reid (de facto curator at the zoo) and Michael Sharland (publicist for the zoo) denied that Frank Darby had ever worked at the zoo or that the name Benjamin was ever used for the animal. Darby also appears to be the source for the claim that the last thylacine was a male; photographic evidence suggests it was female. This thylacine died on 7 September 1936. It is believed to have died as the result of neglect—locked out of its sheltered sleeping quarters, it was exposed to a rare occurrence of extreme Tasmanian weather: extreme heat during the day and freezing temperatures at night. This thylacine features in the last known motion picture footage of a living specimen: 62 seconds of black-and-white footage showing it pacing backwards and forwards in its enclosure in a clip taken in 1933 by naturalist David Fleay
. National Threatened Species Day has been held annually since 1996 on 7 September in Australia, to commemorate the death of the last officially recorded thylacine.
Although there had been a conservation movement pressing for the thylacine's protection since 1901, driven in part by the increasing difficulty in obtaining specimens for overseas collections, political difficulties prevented any form of protection coming into force until 1936. Official protection of the species by the Tasmanian government was introduced on 10 July 1936, 59 days before the last known specimen died in captivity.
The results of subsequent searches indicated a strong possibility of the survival of the species in Tasmania into the 1960s. Searches by Dr. Eric Guiler and David Fleay in the northwest of Tasmania found footprints and scats that may have belonged to the animal, heard vocalisations matching the description of those of the thylacine, and collected anecdotal evidence from people reported to have sighted the animal. Despite the searches, no conclusive evidence was found to point to its continued existence in the wild. Between 1967 and 1973 zoologist Jeremy Griffith
and dairy farmer James Malley conducted what is regarded as the most intensive search ever carried out, including exhaustive surveys along Tasmania's west coast; installation of automatic camera stations; prompt investigations of claimed sightings; and in 1972 the creation of the Thylacine Expeditionary Research Team with Dr Bob Brown
, which concluded without finding any evidence of the thylacine's existence.
The thylacine held the status of endangered species
until the 1980s. International standards at the time stated that an animal could not be declared extinct until 50 years had passed without a confirmed record. Since no definitive proof of the thylacine's existence in the wild had been obtained for more than 50 years, it met that official criterion and was declared extinct by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in 1982 and by the Tasmanian Government in 1986. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) is more cautious, listing it as "possibly extinct".
Some sightings have generated a large amount of publicity. In 1973, Gary and Liz Doyle shot ten seconds of 8mm film showing an unidentified animal running across a South Australian road. However, attempts to positively identify the creature as a thylacine have been impossible due to the poor quality of the film. In 1982 a researcher with the Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service
, Hans Naarding, observed what he believed to be a thylacine for three minutes during the night at a site near Arthur River in northwestern Tasmania. The sighting led to an extensive year-long government-funded search. In January 1995, a Parks and Wildlife officer reported observing a thylacine in the Pyengana
region of northeastern Tasmania in the early hours of the morning. Later searches revealed no trace of the animal. In 1997, it was reported that locals and missionaries near Mount Carstensz in Western New Guinea had sighted thylacines. The locals had apparently known about them for many years but had not made an official report. In February 2005 Klaus Emmerichs, a German
tourist, claimed to have taken digital photographs of a thylacine he saw near the Lake St Clair National Park
, but the authenticity of the photographs has not been established. The photos were not published until April 2006, fourteen months after the sighting. The photographs, which showed only the back of the animal, were said by those who studied them to be inconclusive as evidence of the thylacine's continued existence.
offered a $100,000 reward for proof of the continued existence of the thylacine.
However, a letter sent in response to an inquiry by a thylacine-searcher, Murray McAllister, in 2000 indicated that the reward had been withdrawn. In March 2005, Australian news magazine The Bulletin
, as part of its 125th anniversary celebrations, offered a $1.25 million reward for the safe capture of a live thylacine. When the offer closed at the end of June 2005 no one had produced any evidence of the animal's existence. An offer of $1.75 million has subsequently been offered by a Tasmanian tour operator, Stewart Malcolm. Trapping is illegal under the terms of the thylacine's protection, so any reward made for its capture is invalid, since a trapping licence would not be issued.
Records of all specimens, many of which are in European collections, are now held in the International Thylacine Specimen Database
.
The Australian Museum
in Sydney began a cloning
project in 1999. The goal was to use genetic material
from specimens taken and preserved in the early 20th century to clone
new individuals and restore the species from extinction. Several microbiologists have dismissed the project as a public relations stunt and its chief proponent, Professor Mike Archer
, received a 2002 nomination for the Australian Skeptics Bent Spoon Award
for "the perpetrator of the most preposterous piece of paranormal or pseudo-scientific piffle."
In late 2002 the researchers had some success as they were able to extract replicable DNA
from the specimens. On 15 February 2005, the museum announced that it was stopping the project after tests showed the DNA retrieved from the specimens had been too badly degraded to be usable. In May 2005, Professor Michael Archer, the University of New South Wales
Dean of Science at the time, former director of the Australian Museum
and evolutionary biologist, announced that the project was being restarted by a group of interested universities and a research institute.
The International Thylacine Specimen Database
was completed in April 2005 and is the culmination of a four-year research project to catalog and digitally photograph, if possible, all known surviving thylacine specimen material held within museum, university and private collections. The master records are held by the Zoological Society of London
.
In 2008 researchers Andrew J. Pask and Marilyn B. Renfree from the University of Melbourne
and Richard R. Behringer from the University of Texas reported that they managed to restore functionality of a gene Col2A1
enhancer obtained from 100 year-old ethanol-fixed thylacine tissues from museum collections. The genetic material was found working in transgenic mice. The research enhanced hopes of eventually restoring the population of thylacines. That same year, another group of researchers successfully sequenced the complete thylacine mitochondrial genome from two museum specimens. Their success suggests that it may be feasible to sequence the complete thylacine nuclear genome from museum specimens. Their results were published in the journal Genome Research
in 2009.
's The Mammals of Australia
(1845–63), often copied since its publication and the most frequently reproduced, and given further exposure by Cascade Brewery
's appropriation for its label in 1987. The government of Tasmania published a monochromatic reproduction of the same image in 1934, the author Louisa Anne Meredith
also copied it for Tasmanian Friends and Foes (1881).
The thylacine has been used extensively as a symbol of Tasmania. The animal is featured on the official Tasmanian coat of arms
. It is used in the official logos of Tourism Tasmania and the Launceston
City Council. It is also used on the University of Tasmania
's ceremonial mace and the badge of the submarine . Since 1998, it has been prominently displayed on Tasmanian vehicle number plates.
The plight of the thylacine was featured in a campaign for The Wilderness Society
entitled We used to hunt thylacines. In video games, Ty the Tasmanian Tiger
is the star of his own trilogy. Characters in the early 1990s cartoon Taz-Mania
included the neurotic Wendell T. Wolf, the last surviving Tasmanian wolf. Tiger Tale
is a children's book based on an Aboriginal myth about how the thylacine got its stripes. The thylacine character Rolf is featured in the extinction musical Rockford's Rock Opera
. The thylacine is the mascot for the Tasmanian cricket team
, and has appeared in postage stamps from Australia, Equatorial Guinea
, and Micronesia
.
Carnivore
A carnivore meaning 'meat eater' is an organism that derives its energy and nutrient requirements from a diet consisting mainly or exclusively of animal tissue, whether through predation or scavenging...
marsupial
Marsupial
Marsupials are an infraclass of mammals, characterized by giving birth to relatively undeveloped young. Close to 70% of the 334 extant species occur in Australia, New Guinea, and nearby islands, with the remaining 100 found in the Americas, primarily in South America, but with thirteen in Central...
of modern times
Holocene
The Holocene is a geological epoch which began at the end of the Pleistocene and continues to the present. The Holocene is part of the Quaternary period. Its name comes from the Greek words and , meaning "entirely recent"...
. It is commonly known as the Tasmanian tiger (because of its striped back) or the Tasmanian wolf. Native to continental Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, Tasmania
Tasmania
Tasmania is an Australian island and state. It is south of the continent, separated by Bass Strait. The state includes the island of Tasmania—the 26th largest island in the world—and the surrounding islands. The state has a population of 507,626 , of whom almost half reside in the greater Hobart...
and New Guinea
New Guinea
New Guinea is the world's second largest island, after Greenland, covering a land area of 786,000 km2. Located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, it lies geographically to the east of the Malay Archipelago, with which it is sometimes included as part of a greater Indo-Australian Archipelago...
, it is thought to have become extinct in the 20th century. It was the last extant member of its family, Thylacinidae
Thylacinidae
The animals in the Thylacinidae family were all carnivorous marsupials from the order Dasyuromorphia. The only recent member was the Thylacine , which became extinct in 1936...
, although several related species have been found in the fossil record dating back to the early Miocene.
The thylacine had become extremely rare or extinct on the Australian mainland
Australia (continent)
Australia is the world's smallest continent, comprising the mainland of Australia and proximate islands including Tasmania, New Guinea, the Aru Islands and Raja Ampat Islands...
before European settlement of the continent, but it survived on the island of Tasmania
Tasmania
Tasmania is an Australian island and state. It is south of the continent, separated by Bass Strait. The state includes the island of Tasmania—the 26th largest island in the world—and the surrounding islands. The state has a population of 507,626 , of whom almost half reside in the greater Hobart...
along with several other endemic
Endemic (ecology)
Endemism is the ecological state of being unique to a defined geographic location, such as an island, nation or other defined zone, or habitat type; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsewhere. For example, all species of lemur are endemic to the...
species, including the Tasmanian devil
Tasmanian Devil
The Tasmanian devil is a carnivorous marsupial of the family Dasyuridae, now found in the wild only on the Australian island state of Tasmania. The size of a small dog, it became the largest carnivorous marsupial in the world following the extinction of the thylacine in 1936...
. Intensive hunting encouraged by bounties
Bounty (reward)
A bounty is a payment or reward often offered by a group as an incentive for the accomplishment of a task by someone usually not associated with the group. Bounties are most commonly issued for the capture or retrieval of a person or object. They are typically in the form of money...
is generally blamed for its extinction, but other contributory factors may have been disease, the introduction of dogs, and human encroachment into its habitat. Despite its official classification as extinct, sightings are still reported, though none proven.
Like the tigers and wolves of the Northern Hemisphere, from which it obtained two of its common names, the thylacine was an apex predator
Apex predator
Apex predators are predators that have no predators of their own, residing at the top of their food chain. Zoologists define predation as the killing and consumption of another organism...
. As a marsupial, it was not closely related to these placental mammals, but because of convergent evolution
Convergent evolution
Convergent evolution describes the acquisition of the same biological trait in unrelated lineages.The wing is a classic example of convergent evolution in action. Although their last common ancestor did not have wings, both birds and bats do, and are capable of powered flight. The wings are...
it displayed the same general form and adaptations. Its closest living relative is thought to be either the Tasmanian devil
Tasmanian Devil
The Tasmanian devil is a carnivorous marsupial of the family Dasyuridae, now found in the wild only on the Australian island state of Tasmania. The size of a small dog, it became the largest carnivorous marsupial in the world following the extinction of the thylacine in 1936...
or numbat
Numbat
The numbat , also known as the banded anteater, or walpurti, is a marsupial found in Western Australia. Its diet consists almost exclusively of termites. Once widespread across southern Australia, the range is now restricted to several small colonies and it is listed as an endangered species...
. The thylacine was one of only two marsupials to have a pouch
Pouch (marsupial)
The pouch is a distinguishing feature of female marsupials ; the name marsupial is derived from the Latin marsupium, meaning "pouch". Marsupials give birth to a live but relatively undeveloped fetus called a joey. When the joey is born it crawls from inside the mother to the pouch...
in both sexes (the other being the water opossum
Water Opossum
The water opossum , also locally known as the yapok, is a marsupial of the family Didelphidae. It is the only member of its genus, Chironectes...
). The male thylacine had a pouch that acted as a protective sheath, covering the male's external reproductive organs while he ran through thick brush. It has been described as a formidable predator because of its ability to survive and hunt prey in extremely sparsely populated areas.
Evolution
Miocene
The Miocene is a geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about . The Miocene was named by Sir Charles Lyell. Its name comes from the Greek words and and means "less recent" because it has 18% fewer modern sea invertebrates than the Pliocene. The Miocene follows the Oligocene...
; since the early 1990s, at least seven fossil species have been uncovered at Riversleigh
Riversleigh
Riversleigh, in North West Queensland, is Australia's most famous fossil site. The 100 km² area has fossil remains of ancient mammals, birds and reptiles of Oligocene and Miocene age...
, part of Lawn Hill National Park in northwest Queensland
Queensland
Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...
. Dickson's Thylacine
Dickson's Thylacine
Nimbacinus dicksoni was an ancient relative of the modern but extinct Thylacine. It lived approximately 23-16 million years ago in the Miocene period. Nimbacinus dicksoni was about 1.6 ft long. Being a predator, it probably ate birds, small mammals, and reptiles...
(Nimbacinus dicksoni) is the oldest of the seven discovered fossil species, dating back to 23 million years ago. This thylacinid was much smaller than its more recent relatives. The largest species, the powerful thylacine (Thylacinus potens
Thylacinus potens
Thylacinus potens was the largest species of the family Thylacinidae, known from a single poorly preserved fossil discovered by Michael O. Woodburne in 1967 in a Late Miocene locality near Alice Springs, Northern Territory. It preceded the modern thylacine by 4–6 million years, and was 5% bigger,...
) which grew to the size of a wolf, was the only species to survive into the late Miocene. In late Pleistocene
Pleistocene
The Pleistocene is the epoch from 2,588,000 to 11,700 years BP that spans the world's recent period of repeated glaciations. The name pleistocene is derived from the Greek and ....
and early Holocene
Holocene
The Holocene is a geological epoch which began at the end of the Pleistocene and continues to the present. The Holocene is part of the Quaternary period. Its name comes from the Greek words and , meaning "entirely recent"...
times, the modern thylacine was widespread (although never numerous) throughout Australia and New Guinea.
An example of convergent evolution
Convergent evolution
Convergent evolution describes the acquisition of the same biological trait in unrelated lineages.The wing is a classic example of convergent evolution in action. Although their last common ancestor did not have wings, both birds and bats do, and are capable of powered flight. The wings are...
, the thylacine showed many similarities to the members of the dog family, Canidae
Canidae
Canidae is the biological family of carnivorous and omnivorous mammals that includes wolves, foxes, jackals, coyotes, and domestic dogs. A member of this family is called a canid . The Canidae family is divided into two tribes: Canini and Vulpini...
, of the Northern Hemisphere: sharp teeth, powerful jaws, raised heels
Digitigrade
A digitigrade is an animal that stands or walks on its digits, or toes. Digitigrades include walking birds , cats, dogs, and many other mammals, but not plantigrades or unguligrades...
and the same general body form. Since the thylacine filled the same ecological niche
Ecological niche
In ecology, a niche is a term describing the relational position of a species or population in its ecosystem to each other; e.g. a dolphin could potentially be in another ecological niche from one that travels in a different pod if the members of these pods utilize significantly different food...
in Australia as the dog family did elsewhere it developed many of the same features. Despite this, it is unrelated to any of the Northern Hemisphere predators.
Discovery and taxonomy
The indigenousIndigenous Australians
Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands. The Aboriginal Indigenous Australians migrated from the Indian continent around 75,000 to 100,000 years ago....
peoples of Australia made first contact with the thylacine. Numerous examples of thylacine engravings and rock art have been found dating back to at least 1000 BC. Petroglyph
Petroglyph
Petroglyphs are pictogram and logogram images created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, and abrading. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions of the technique to refer to such images...
images of the thylacine can be found at the Dampier Rock Art Precinct on the Burrup Peninsula in Western Australia. By the time the first explorers arrived, the animal was already extinct in mainland Australia and rare in Tasmania. Europeans may have encountered it as far back as 1642 when Abel Tasman
Abel Tasman
Abel Janszoon Tasman was a Dutch seafarer, explorer, and merchant, best known for his voyages of 1642 and 1644 in the service of the VOC . His was the first known European expedition to reach the islands of Van Diemen's Land and New Zealand and to sight the Fiji islands...
first arrived in Tasmania. His shore party reported seeing the footprints of "wild beasts having claws like a Tyger". Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne
Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne
Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne , with the surname sometimes spelt Dufresne, was a French explorer who made important discoveries in the south Indian Ocean, in Tasmania and in New Zealand, where he died...
, arriving with the Mascarin in 1772, reported seeing a "tiger cat". Positive identification of the thylacine as the animal encountered cannot be made from this report since the Tiger Quoll
Tiger Quoll
The tiger quoll , also known as the spotted-tail quoll, the spotted quoll, the spotted-tailed dasyure or the tiger cat, is a carnivorous marsupial of the quoll genus Dasyurus native to Australia...
(Dasyurus maculatus) is similarly described. The first definitive encounter was by French explorers on 13 May 1792, as noted by the naturalist Jacques Labillardière
Jacques Labillardière
Jacques-Julien Houtou de Labillardière was a French naturalist noted for his descriptions of the flora of Australia. Labillardière was a member of a voyage in search of the La Pérouse expedition...
, in his journal from the expedition led by D'Entrecasteaux. However, it was not until 1805 that William Paterson, the Lieutenant Governor of Tasmania, sent a detailed description for publication in the Sydney Gazette
Sydney Gazette
The Sydney Gazette was the first newspaper in Australia. Governor King authorised the publication of what was initially called 'The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser in 1803. Subsequently the first edition was published 5 March...
.
The first detailed scientific description was made by Tasmania's Deputy Surveyor-General, George Harris
George Prideaux Robert Harris
George Prideaux Robert Harris was a deputy surveyor and naturalist in Tasmania, Australia from 1803. He described many of the marsupials native to the Island, including the Tasmanian Devil and the Thylacine. He also described some plant species....
in 1808, five years after first settlement of the island. Harris originally placed the thylacine in the genus Didelphis
Didelphis
The six species in the genus Didelphis, commonly known as large American opossums, are members of the Didelphimorphia order....
, which had been created by Linnaeus for the American opossums, describing it as Didelphis cynocephala, the "dog-headed opossum". Recognition that the Australian marsupials were fundamentally different from the known mammal genera led to the establishment of the modern classification scheme, and in 1796 Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire
Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire
Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire was a French naturalist who established the principle of "unity of composition". He was a colleague of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and expanded and defended Lamarck's evolutionary theories...
created the genus Dasyurus where he placed the thylacine in 1810. To resolve the mixture of Greek and Latin nomenclature the species name was altered to cynocephalus. In 1824, it was separated out into its own genus, Thylacinus, by Temminck
Coenraad Jacob Temminck
Coenraad Jacob Temminck was a Dutch aristocrat and zoologist.Temminck was the first director of the National Natural History Museum at Leiden from 1820 until his death. His Manuel d'ornithologie, ou Tableau systematique des oiseaux qui se trouvent en Europe was the standard work on European birds...
. The common name derives directly from the genus name, originally from the Greek θύλακος (thýlakos), meaning "pouch" or "sack".
Several studies support the thylacine as being a basal
Basal (phylogenetics)
In phylogenetics, a basal clade is the earliest clade to branch in a larger clade; it appears at the base of a cladogram.A basal group forms an outgroup to the rest of the clade, such as in the following example:...
member of the Dasyuromorphia
Dasyuromorphia
The order Dasyuromorphia comprises most of the Australian carnivorous marsupials, including quolls, dunnarts, the numbat, the Tasmanian devil, and the recently extinct thylacine...
and that the Tasmanian devil
Tasmanian Devil
The Tasmanian devil is a carnivorous marsupial of the family Dasyuridae, now found in the wild only on the Australian island state of Tasmania. The size of a small dog, it became the largest carnivorous marsupial in the world following the extinction of the thylacine in 1936...
is its closest living relative. However, research published in Genome Research
Genome Research
Genome Research is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. The focus of the journal is on genome-wide studies in any organism, including single gene studies that are placed in a genomic context. This scope includes both experimental and computational...
in January 2009 suggests that the numbat
Numbat
The numbat , also known as the banded anteater, or walpurti, is a marsupial found in Western Australia. Its diet consists almost exclusively of termites. Once widespread across southern Australia, the range is now restricted to several small colonies and it is listed as an endangered species...
may be more basal than the devil and more closely related to the thylacine.
Description
Descriptions of the thylacine vary, as evidence is restricted to preserved joey specimens, fossil records, skins and skeletal remains, black and white photographs and film of the animal in captivity, and accounts from the field.Kangaroo
A kangaroo is a marsupial from the family Macropodidae . In common use the term is used to describe the largest species from this family, especially those of the genus Macropus, Red Kangaroo, Antilopine Kangaroo, Eastern Grey Kangaroo and Western Grey Kangaroo. Kangaroos are endemic to the country...
. Many European settlers drew direct comparisons with the hyena
Hyena
Hyenas or Hyaenas are the animals of the family Hyaenidae of suborder feliforms of the Carnivora. It is the fourth smallest biological family in the Carnivora , and one of the smallest in the mammalia...
, because of its unusual stance and general demeanour. Its yellow-brown coat featured 13 to 21 distinctive dark stripes across its back, rump and the base of its tail, which earned the animal the nickname, "Tiger". The stripes were more marked in younger specimens, fading as the animal got older. One of the stripes extended down the outside of the rear thigh. Its body hair was dense and soft, up to 15 mm (0.590551181102362 in) in length; in juveniles the tip of the tail had a crest. Its rounded, erect ears were about 8 cm (3.1 in) long and covered with short fur. Colouration varied from light fawn to a dark brown; the belly was cream-coloured.
The mature thylacine ranged from 100 to 130 cm (39.4 to 51.2 in) long, plus a tail of around 50 to 65 cm (19.7 to 25.6 in). The largest measured specimen was 290 cm (9.5 ft) from nose to tail. Adults stood about 60 cm (23.6 in) at the shoulder and weighed 20 to 30 kg (44.1 to 66.1 lb). There was slight sexual dimorphism
Sexual dimorphism
Sexual dimorphism is a phenotypic difference between males and females of the same species. Examples of such differences include differences in morphology, ornamentation, and behavior.-Examples:-Ornamentation / coloration:...
with the males being larger than females on average.
The female thylacine had a pouch with four teats, but unlike many other marsupials, the pouch opened to the rear of its body. Males had a scrotal pouch, unique amongst the Australian marsupials, into which they could withdraw their scrotal sac
Scrotum
In some male mammals the scrotum is a dual-chambered protuberance of skin and muscle containing the testicles and divided by a septum. It is an extension of the perineum, and is located between the penis and anus. In humans and some other mammals, the base of the scrotum becomes covered with curly...
.
The thylacine was able to open its jaws to an unusual extent: up to 120 degrees. This capability can be seen in part in David Fleay
David Fleay
David Howells Fleay was an Australian naturalist who pioneered the captive breeding of endangered species, and was the first person to breed the platypus in captivity....
's short black-and-white film sequence of a captive thylacine from 1933. The jaws were muscular but weak and had 46 teeth.
Wombat
Wombats are Australian marsupials; they are short-legged, muscular quadrupeds, approximately in length with a short, stubby tail. They are adaptable in their habitat tolerances, and are found in forested, mountainous, and heathland areas of south-eastern Australia, including Tasmania, as well as...
s or Tasmanian devil
Tasmanian Devil
The Tasmanian devil is a carnivorous marsupial of the family Dasyuridae, now found in the wild only on the Australian island state of Tasmania. The size of a small dog, it became the largest carnivorous marsupial in the world following the extinction of the thylacine in 1936...
s, thylacines had a very large rear pad and four obvious front pads, arranged in almost a straight line. The hindfeet were similar to the forefeet but had four digits rather than five. Their claws were non-retractable.
The early scientific studies suggested it possessed an acute sense of smell which enabled it to track prey, but analysis of its brain structure revealed that its olfactory bulb
Olfactory bulb
The olfactory bulb is a structure of the vertebrate forebrain involved in olfaction, the perception of odors.-Anatomy:In most vertebrates, the olfactory bulb is the most rostral part of the brain. In humans, however, the olfactory bulb is on the inferior side of the brain...
s were not well developed. It is likely to have relied on sight and sound when hunting instead. Some observers described it having a strong and distinctive smell, others described a faint, clean, animal odour, and some no odour at all. It is possible that the thylacine, like its relative, the Tasmanian devil, gave off an odour when agitated.
The thylacine was noted as having a stiff and somewhat awkward gait
Gait
Gait is the pattern of movement of the limbs of animals, including humans, during locomotion over a solid substrate. Most animals use a variety of gaits, selecting gait based on speed, terrain, the need to maneuver, and energetic efficiency...
, making it unable to run at high speed. It could also perform a bipedal hop, in a fashion similar to a kangaroo—demonstrated at various times by captive specimens. Guiler speculates that this was used as an accelerated form of motion when the animal became alarmed. The animal was also able to balance on its hind legs and stand upright for brief periods.
Observers of the animal in the wild and in captivity noted that it would growl and hiss when agitated, often accompanied
by a threat-yawn. During hunting it would emit a series of rapidly repeated guttural cough-like barks (described as "yip-yap", "cay-yip" or "hop-hop-hop"), probably for communication between the family pack members. It also had a long whining cry, probably for identification at distance, and a low snuffling noise used for communication between family members.
Ecology and behaviour
Eucalyptus
Eucalyptus is a diverse genus of flowering trees in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae. Members of the genus dominate the tree flora of Australia...
forests, wetlands, and grasslands in continental Australia
Australia (continent)
Australia is the world's smallest continent, comprising the mainland of Australia and proximate islands including Tasmania, New Guinea, the Aru Islands and Raja Ampat Islands...
. Indigenous Australian rock paintings indicate that the thylacine lived throughout mainland Australia and New Guinea
New Guinea
New Guinea is the world's second largest island, after Greenland, covering a land area of 786,000 km2. Located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, it lies geographically to the east of the Malay Archipelago, with which it is sometimes included as part of a greater Indo-Australian Archipelago...
. Proof of the animal's existence in mainland Australia came from a desiccated carcass that was discovered in a cave in the Nullarbor Plain
Nullarbor Plain
The Nullarbor Plain is part of the area of flat, almost treeless, arid or semi-arid country of southern Australia, located on the Great Australian Bight coast with the Great Victoria Desert to its north. It is the world's largest single piece of limestone, and occupies an area of about...
in Western Australia in 1990; carbon dating revealed it to be around 3,300 years old.
In Tasmania it preferred the woodlands of the midlands and coastal heath
Heath (habitat)
A heath or heathland is a dwarf-shrub habitat found on mainly low quality acidic soils, characterised by open, low growing woody vegetation, often dominated by plants of the Ericaceae. There are some clear differences between heath and moorland...
, which eventually became the primary focus of British settlers seeking grazing land for their livestock. The striped pattern may have provided camouflage in woodland conditions, but it may have also served for identification purposes. The animal had a typical home range of between 40 and 80 km² (15.4 and 30.9 sqmi). It appears to have kept to its home range without being territorial; groups too large to be a family unit were sometimes observed together.
The thylacine was a nocturnal
Nocturnal animal
Nocturnality is an animal behavior characterized by activity during the night and sleeping during the day. The common adjective is "nocturnal"....
and crepuscular
Crepuscular
Crepuscular animals are those that are active primarily during twilight, that is during dawn and dusk. The word is derived from the Latin word crepusculum, meaning "twilight." Crepuscular is, thus, in contrast with diurnal and nocturnal behavior. Crepuscular animals may also be active on a bright...
hunter, spending the daylight hours in small caves or hollow tree trunks in a nest of twigs, bark or fern fronds. It tended to retreat to the hills and forest for shelter during the day and hunted in the open heath at night. Early observers noted that the animal was typically shy and secretive, with awareness of the presence of humans and generally avoiding contact, though it occasionally showed inquisitive traits. At the time, much stigma existed in regard to its "fierce" nature, however this is likely to be due to its perceived threat to agriculture.
There is evidence for at least some year-round breeding (cull records show joeys discovered in the pouch at all times of the year), although the peak breeding season was in winter and spring. They would produce up to four cubs per litter (typically two or three), carrying the young in a pouch for up to three months and protecting them until they were at least half adult size. Early pouch young were hairless and blind, but they had their eyes open and were fully furred by the time they left the pouch. After leaving the pouch, and until they were developed enough to assist, the juveniles would remain in the lair while their mother hunted. Thylacines only once bred successfully in captivity, in Melbourne Zoo
Melbourne Zoo
The Royal Melbourne Zoological Gardens, commonly known as the Melbourne Zoo, contains more than 320 animal species from Australia and around the world. The zoo is north of the centre of Melbourne. It is accessible via Royal Park station on the Upfield railway line, and is also accessible via tram...
in 1899. Their life expectancy in the wild is estimated to have been 5 to 7 years, although captive specimens survived up to 9 years.
Diet
Ambush predator
Ambush predators or sit-and-wait predators are carnivorous animals that capture prey by stealth or cunning, not by speed or necessarily by strength. These organisms usually hide motionless and wait for prey to come within striking distance. They are often camouflaged, and may be solitary...
.
Little is known of the thylacine's diet and feeding behaviour. Prey is believed to have included kangaroo
Kangaroo
A kangaroo is a marsupial from the family Macropodidae . In common use the term is used to describe the largest species from this family, especially those of the genus Macropus, Red Kangaroo, Antilopine Kangaroo, Eastern Grey Kangaroo and Western Grey Kangaroo. Kangaroos are endemic to the country...
s, wallabies
Wallaby
A wallaby is any of about thirty species of macropod . It is an informal designation generally used for any macropod that is smaller than a kangaroo or wallaroo that has not been given some other name.-Overview:...
and wombat
Wombat
Wombats are Australian marsupials; they are short-legged, muscular quadrupeds, approximately in length with a short, stubby tail. They are adaptable in their habitat tolerances, and are found in forested, mountainous, and heathland areas of south-eastern Australia, including Tasmania, as well as...
s, birds and small animals such as potoroo
Potoroo
The Potoroo is a kangaroo/rat like animal about the size of a rabbit. All three extant species are threatened, especially The long-footed Potoroo and Gilbert's potoroo...
s and possum
Possum
A possum is any of about 70 small to medium-sized arboreal marsupial species native to Australia, New Guinea, and Sulawesi .Possums are quadrupedal diprotodont marsupials with long tails...
s. One prey animal may have been the once common Tasmanian emu
Tasmanian Emu
The Tasmanian Emu is an extinct subspecies of the Emu. It was found on Tasmania where it had become isolated during the Late Pleistocene...
. The emu was a large, flightless bird which shared the habitat of the thylacine and was hunted to extinction around 1850, possibly coinciding with the decline in thylacine numbers. Both dingo
Dingo
The Australian Dingo or Warrigal is a free-roaming wild dog unique to the continent of Australia, mainly found in the outback. Its original ancestors are thought to have arrived with humans from southeast Asia thousands of years ago, when dogs were still relatively undomesticated and closer to...
es and foxes have been noted to hunt the emu on the mainland. European settlers believed the thylacine to prey upon farmers' sheep and poultry. Throughout the twentieth century, the thylacine was often characterised as primarily a blood drinker, but little reference is now made to this trait; the story's popularity seems to have originated from a single second-hand account. In captivity, thylacines were fed a wide variety of foods, including dead rabbits and wallabies as well as beef, mutton, horse, and occasionally poultry.
A 2011 study by the University of New South Wales
University of New South Wales
The University of New South Wales , is a research-focused university based in Kensington, a suburb in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia...
using advanced computer modelling indicated that the thylacine had surprisingly feeble jaws. Animals usually take prey close to their own body size, but an adult thylacine of around 30 kilograms (66.1 lb) was found to be incapable of handling prey much larger than 5 kilograms (11 lb). Researchers believe thylacines only ate small animals such as bandicoots and possums, putting them into direct competition with the Tasmanian devil
Tasmanian Devil
The Tasmanian devil is a carnivorous marsupial of the family Dasyuridae, now found in the wild only on the Australian island state of Tasmania. The size of a small dog, it became the largest carnivorous marsupial in the world following the extinction of the thylacine in 1936...
and the Tiger Quoll
Tiger Quoll
The tiger quoll , also known as the spotted-tail quoll, the spotted quoll, the spotted-tailed dasyure or the tiger cat, is a carnivorous marsupial of the quoll genus Dasyurus native to Australia...
. Such specialisation probably made the thylacine susceptible to small disturbances to the ecosystem.
Extinction from mainland Australia
The thylacine is likely to have become near-extinct in mainland Australia about 2,000 years ago, and possibly earlier in New Guinea. The absolute extinction is attributed to competition from indigenous humans and invasiveInvasive species
"Invasive species", or invasive exotics, is a nomenclature term and categorization phrase used for flora and fauna, and for specific restoration-preservation processes in native habitats, with several definitions....
dingoes. However, doubts exist over the impact of the dingo since the two species would not have been in direct competition with one another as the dingo hunts primarily during the day, whereas it is thought that the thylacine hunted mostly at night. In addition, the thylacine had a more powerful build, which would have given it an advantage in one-on-one encounters. Recent morphological examinations of dingo and thylacine skulls show that although the dingo had a weaker bite, its skull could resist greater stresses, allowing it to pull down larger prey than the thylacine could. The thylacine was also much less versatile in diet than the omnivorous dingo. Their environments clearly overlapped: thylacine subfossil
Subfossil
Subfossil refers to remains whose fossilization process is not complete, either for lack of time or because the conditions in which they were buried were not optimal for fossilization....
remains have been discovered in proximity to those of dingoes. The adoption of the dingo as a hunting companion by the indigenous peoples would have put the thylacine under increased pressure.
Rock paintings from the Kakadu National Park
Kakadu National Park
Kakadu National Park is in the Northern Territory of Australia, 171 km southeast of Darwin.Kakadu National Park is located within the Alligator Rivers Region of the Northern Territory of Australia. It covers an area of , extending nearly 200 kilometres from north to south and over 100 kilometres...
clearly show that thylacines were hunted by early humans.
Extinction in Tasmania
Tasmania
Tasmania is an Australian island and state. It is south of the continent, separated by Bass Strait. The state includes the island of Tasmania—the 26th largest island in the world—and the surrounding islands. The state has a population of 507,626 , of whom almost half reside in the greater Hobart...
. At the time of the first settlement, the heaviest distributions were in the northeast, northwest and north-midland regions of the state. They were rarely sighted during this time but slowly began to be credited with numerous attacks on sheep. This led to the establishment of bounty schemes in an attempt to control their numbers. The Van Diemen's Land Company
Van Diemen's Land Company
The Van Diemen's Land Company was created in 1824, received a Royal Charter in 1825, and was granted 250,000 acres in northwest Tasmania in 1826...
introduced bounties on the thylacine from as early as 1830, and between 1888 and 1909 the Tasmanian government
Government of Tasmania
The form of the Government of Tasmania is prescribed in its Constitution, which dates from 1856, although it has been amended many times since then...
paid £1 per head for dead adult thylacines and ten shilling
Shilling
The shilling is a unit of currency used in some current and former British Commonwealth countries. The word shilling comes from scilling, an accounting term that dates back to Anglo-Saxon times where it was deemed to be the value of a cow in Kent or a sheep elsewhere. The word is thought to derive...
s for pups. In all they paid out 2,184 bounties, but it is thought that many more thylacines were killed than were claimed for. Its extinction is popularly attributed to these relentless efforts by farmers and bounty hunter
Bounty hunter
A bounty hunter captures fugitives for a monetary reward . Other names, mainly used in the United States, include bail enforcement agent and fugitive recovery agent.-Laws in the U.S.:...
s. However, it is likely that multiple factors led to its decline and eventual extinction, including competition with wild dogs introduced by European settlers, erosion of its habitat, the concurrent extinction of prey species, and a distemper
Distemper
Distemper may refer to:*A viral infection**Canine distemper, a disease of dogs**Feline distemper, a disease of cats**Phocine distemper, a disease of seals*A bacterial infection**Equine distemper, or Strangles, a bacterial infection of the horse...
-like disease that also affected many captive specimens at the time. Whatever the reason, the animal had become extremely rare in the wild by the late 1920s. Despite the fact that the thylacine was believed by many to be responsible for attacks on the sheep. In 1928, the Tasmanian Advisory Committee for Native Fauna had recommended a reserve to protect any remaining thylacines, with potential sites of suitable habitat including the Arthur
Arthur River, Tasmania
Arthur River is the name of both a river and a small township on the northern part of the West Coast of Tasmania, Australia. At the 2006 census, Arthur River and the surrounding area had a population of 121.It is south of the town of Marrawah...
-Pieman
Pieman River
The Pieman River is a river on the West Coast of Tasmania, Australia. It was dammed with the 122m high Reece Dam in 1986 - creating Lake Pieman.-Name:...
ara of western Tasmania.
The last known Thylacine to be killed in the wild was killed in 1930 by Wilf Batty, a farmer from Mawbanna, in the northeast of the state. The animal, believed to have been a male, had been seen around Batty's house for several weeks.
"Benjamin" and searches
The last captive thylacine, later referred to as "Benjamin" (although its sex has never been confirmed) was captured in 1933 by Elias Churchill and sent to the Hobart ZooHobart Zoo
The Hobart Zoo was an old-fashioned Zoological Gardens located on the Queens Domain in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. The Zoo site is very close to the site of the Tasmanian Governor's House, and the Botanical Gardens...
where it lived for three years. Frank Darby, who claimed to have been a keeper at Hobart Zoo, suggested "Benjamin" as having been the animal's pet name in a newspaper article of May 1968. However, no documentation exists to suggest that it ever had a pet name, and Alison Reid (de facto curator at the zoo) and Michael Sharland (publicist for the zoo) denied that Frank Darby had ever worked at the zoo or that the name Benjamin was ever used for the animal. Darby also appears to be the source for the claim that the last thylacine was a male; photographic evidence suggests it was female. This thylacine died on 7 September 1936. It is believed to have died as the result of neglect—locked out of its sheltered sleeping quarters, it was exposed to a rare occurrence of extreme Tasmanian weather: extreme heat during the day and freezing temperatures at night. This thylacine features in the last known motion picture footage of a living specimen: 62 seconds of black-and-white footage showing it pacing backwards and forwards in its enclosure in a clip taken in 1933 by naturalist David Fleay
David Fleay
David Howells Fleay was an Australian naturalist who pioneered the captive breeding of endangered species, and was the first person to breed the platypus in captivity....
. National Threatened Species Day has been held annually since 1996 on 7 September in Australia, to commemorate the death of the last officially recorded thylacine.
The results of subsequent searches indicated a strong possibility of the survival of the species in Tasmania into the 1960s. Searches by Dr. Eric Guiler and David Fleay in the northwest of Tasmania found footprints and scats that may have belonged to the animal, heard vocalisations matching the description of those of the thylacine, and collected anecdotal evidence from people reported to have sighted the animal. Despite the searches, no conclusive evidence was found to point to its continued existence in the wild. Between 1967 and 1973 zoologist Jeremy Griffith
Jeremy Griffith
Jeremy Griffith is an Australian biologist and author on the subject of the human condition. He first gained notoriety for his comprehensive search for the Tasmanian Tiger or Thylacine conducted from 1967 to 1973...
and dairy farmer James Malley conducted what is regarded as the most intensive search ever carried out, including exhaustive surveys along Tasmania's west coast; installation of automatic camera stations; prompt investigations of claimed sightings; and in 1972 the creation of the Thylacine Expeditionary Research Team with Dr Bob Brown
Bob Brown
Robert James Brown is an Australian senator, the inaugural Parliamentary Leader of the Australian Greens and was the first openly gay member of the Parliament of Australia...
, which concluded without finding any evidence of the thylacine's existence.
The thylacine held the status of endangered species
Endangered species
An endangered species is a population of organisms which is at risk of becoming extinct because it is either few in numbers, or threatened by changing environmental or predation parameters...
until the 1980s. International standards at the time stated that an animal could not be declared extinct until 50 years had passed without a confirmed record. Since no definitive proof of the thylacine's existence in the wild had been obtained for more than 50 years, it met that official criterion and was declared extinct by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in 1982 and by the Tasmanian Government in 1986. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) is more cautious, listing it as "possibly extinct".
Unconfirmed sightings
The Australian Rare Fauna Research Association reports having 3,800 sightings on file from mainland Australia since the 1936 extinction date, while the Mystery Animal Research Centre of Australia recorded 138 up to 1998, and the Department of Conservation and Land Management recorded 65 in Western Australia over the same period. Independent thylacine researchers Buck and Joan Emburg of Tasmania report 360 Tasmanian and 269 mainland post-extinction 20th-century sightings, figures compiled from a number of sources. On the mainland, sightings are most frequently reported in Southern Victoria.Some sightings have generated a large amount of publicity. In 1973, Gary and Liz Doyle shot ten seconds of 8mm film showing an unidentified animal running across a South Australian road. However, attempts to positively identify the creature as a thylacine have been impossible due to the poor quality of the film. In 1982 a researcher with the Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service
Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service
Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service is the Tasmanian Government body responsible for the care and administration of Tasmania's National Parks and wildlife.-History:...
, Hans Naarding, observed what he believed to be a thylacine for three minutes during the night at a site near Arthur River in northwestern Tasmania. The sighting led to an extensive year-long government-funded search. In January 1995, a Parks and Wildlife officer reported observing a thylacine in the Pyengana
Pyengana, Tasmania
Pyengana is a village in north east Tasmania. The post code is 7216. At the 2006 census, Pyengana had a population of 123.Pyengana is a hamlet located in the north east of Tasmania. It is part of the Break O'Day Council administrative region. The regional centre is St Helens which is...
region of northeastern Tasmania in the early hours of the morning. Later searches revealed no trace of the animal. In 1997, it was reported that locals and missionaries near Mount Carstensz in Western New Guinea had sighted thylacines. The locals had apparently known about them for many years but had not made an official report. In February 2005 Klaus Emmerichs, a German
Germans
The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....
tourist, claimed to have taken digital photographs of a thylacine he saw near the Lake St Clair National Park
Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park
Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park is located in the Central Highlands area of Tasmania , 165 km northwest of Hobart. The park contains many walking trails, and is where hikes along the well-known Overland Track usually begins...
, but the authenticity of the photographs has not been established. The photos were not published until April 2006, fourteen months after the sighting. The photographs, which showed only the back of the animal, were said by those who studied them to be inconclusive as evidence of the thylacine's continued existence.
Rewards
In 1983, Ted TurnerTed Turner
Robert Edward "Ted" Turner III is an American media mogul and philanthropist. As a businessman, he is known as founder of the cable news network CNN, the first dedicated 24-hour cable news channel. In addition, he founded WTBS, which pioneered the superstation concept in cable television...
offered a $100,000 reward for proof of the continued existence of the thylacine.
However, a letter sent in response to an inquiry by a thylacine-searcher, Murray McAllister, in 2000 indicated that the reward had been withdrawn. In March 2005, Australian news magazine The Bulletin
The Bulletin
The Bulletin was an Australian weekly magazine that was published in Sydney from 1880 until January 2008. It was influential in Australian culture and politics from about 1890 until World War I, the period when it was identified with the "Bulletin school" of Australian literature. Its influence...
, as part of its 125th anniversary celebrations, offered a $1.25 million reward for the safe capture of a live thylacine. When the offer closed at the end of June 2005 no one had produced any evidence of the animal's existence. An offer of $1.75 million has subsequently been offered by a Tasmanian tour operator, Stewart Malcolm. Trapping is illegal under the terms of the thylacine's protection, so any reward made for its capture is invalid, since a trapping licence would not be issued.
Modern research and projects
International Thylacine Specimen Database
The International Thylacine Specimen Database is the culmination of a four-year research project to catalogue and digitally photograph all known surviving specimen material of the Thylacine held within museum, university, and private collections.“Certainly in my experience this is by far the...
.
The Australian Museum
Australian Museum
The Australian Museum is the oldest museum in Australia, with an international reputation in the fields of natural history and anthropology. It features collections of vertebrate and invertebrate zoology, as well as mineralogy, palaeontology, and anthropology...
in Sydney began a cloning
Cloning
Cloning in biology is the process of producing similar populations of genetically identical individuals that occurs in nature when organisms such as bacteria, insects or plants reproduce asexually. Cloning in biotechnology refers to processes used to create copies of DNA fragments , cells , or...
project in 1999. The goal was to use genetic material
Genetics
Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms....
from specimens taken and preserved in the early 20th century to clone
Cloning
Cloning in biology is the process of producing similar populations of genetically identical individuals that occurs in nature when organisms such as bacteria, insects or plants reproduce asexually. Cloning in biotechnology refers to processes used to create copies of DNA fragments , cells , or...
new individuals and restore the species from extinction. Several microbiologists have dismissed the project as a public relations stunt and its chief proponent, Professor Mike Archer
Mike Archer (paleontologist)
Mike Archer is an Australian paleontologist specialising in Australia vertebrates. He is a Professor at the School of Biological, Earth & Environmental Sciences, University of New South Wales...
, received a 2002 nomination for the Australian Skeptics Bent Spoon Award
Bent Spoon Award
The Bent Spoon Award is an award given by Australian Skeptics, "presented to the perpetrator of the most preposterous piece of paranormal or pseudoscientific piffle". The name of the award is a reference to the spoon bending of Uri Geller...
for "the perpetrator of the most preposterous piece of paranormal or pseudo-scientific piffle."
DNA
Deoxyribonucleic acid is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms . The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in...
from the specimens. On 15 February 2005, the museum announced that it was stopping the project after tests showed the DNA retrieved from the specimens had been too badly degraded to be usable. In May 2005, Professor Michael Archer, the University of New South Wales
University of New South Wales
The University of New South Wales , is a research-focused university based in Kensington, a suburb in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia...
Dean of Science at the time, former director of the Australian Museum
Australian Museum
The Australian Museum is the oldest museum in Australia, with an international reputation in the fields of natural history and anthropology. It features collections of vertebrate and invertebrate zoology, as well as mineralogy, palaeontology, and anthropology...
and evolutionary biologist, announced that the project was being restarted by a group of interested universities and a research institute.
The International Thylacine Specimen Database
International Thylacine Specimen Database
The International Thylacine Specimen Database is the culmination of a four-year research project to catalogue and digitally photograph all known surviving specimen material of the Thylacine held within museum, university, and private collections.“Certainly in my experience this is by far the...
was completed in April 2005 and is the culmination of a four-year research project to catalog and digitally photograph, if possible, all known surviving thylacine specimen material held within museum, university and private collections. The master records are held by the Zoological Society of London
Zoological Society of London
The Zoological Society of London is a charity devoted to the worldwide conservation of animals and their habitats...
.
In 2008 researchers Andrew J. Pask and Marilyn B. Renfree from the University of Melbourne
University of Melbourne
The University of Melbourne is a public university located in Melbourne, Victoria. Founded in 1853, it is the second oldest university in Australia and the oldest in Victoria...
and Richard R. Behringer from the University of Texas reported that they managed to restore functionality of a gene Col2A1
COL2A1
Collagen, type II, alpha 1 , also known as COL2A1, is a human gene that provides instructions for the production of the pro-alpha1 chain of type II collagen....
enhancer obtained from 100 year-old ethanol-fixed thylacine tissues from museum collections. The genetic material was found working in transgenic mice. The research enhanced hopes of eventually restoring the population of thylacines. That same year, another group of researchers successfully sequenced the complete thylacine mitochondrial genome from two museum specimens. Their success suggests that it may be feasible to sequence the complete thylacine nuclear genome from museum specimens. Their results were published in the journal Genome Research
Genome Research
Genome Research is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. The focus of the journal is on genome-wide studies in any organism, including single gene studies that are placed in a genomic context. This scope includes both experimental and computational...
in 2009.
Cultural references
The best known illustrations of Thylacinus cynocephalus were those in GouldJohn Gould
John Gould was an English ornithologist and bird artist. The Gould League in Australia was named after him. His identification of the birds now nicknamed "Darwin's finches" played a role in the inception of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection...
's The Mammals of Australia
The Mammals of Australia
The Mammals of Australia is a three volume work written and published by John Gould between 1845–63. It contains 182 illustrations by the author and its artist H. C. Richter...
(1845–63), often copied since its publication and the most frequently reproduced, and given further exposure by Cascade Brewery
Cascade Brewery
Cascade Brewery is the oldest continually operating brewery in Australia. It is based in South Hobart, Tasmania. The Cascade estate was founded beside the clean water of the Hobart Rivulet in 1824 by Peter Degraves, an entrepreneur who emigrated from England...
's appropriation for its label in 1987. The government of Tasmania published a monochromatic reproduction of the same image in 1934, the author Louisa Anne Meredith
Louisa Anne Meredith
Louisa Anne Meredith , also known as Louisa Anne Twamley, was an Anglo/Australian writer and illustrator.-Biography:...
also copied it for Tasmanian Friends and Foes (1881).
Coat of arms of Tasmania
The Coat of arms of Tasmania is the official symbol of the Australian state and island of Tasmania. It was officially granted by King George V in May 1917. The shield features significant examples of Tasmanian industry: a sheaf of wheat, hops, a ram and apples. It is surmounted by a red lion that...
. It is used in the official logos of Tourism Tasmania and the Launceston
Launceston, Tasmania
Launceston is a city in the north of the state of Tasmania, Australia at the junction of the North Esk and South Esk rivers where they become the Tamar River. Launceston is the second largest city in Tasmania after the state capital Hobart...
City Council. It is also used on the University of Tasmania
University of Tasmania
The University of Tasmania is a medium-sized public Australian university based in Tasmania, Australia. Officially founded on 1 January 1890, it was the fourth university to be established in nineteenth-century Australia...
's ceremonial mace and the badge of the submarine . Since 1998, it has been prominently displayed on Tasmanian vehicle number plates.
The plight of the thylacine was featured in a campaign for The Wilderness Society
The Wilderness Society (Australia)
The Wilderness Society is an Australian, community-based, not-for-profit non-governmental environmental advocacy organisation. Its purpose is to protect, promote and restore wilderness and natural processes across Australia for the survival and ongoing evolution of life on Earth.It is a...
entitled We used to hunt thylacines. In video games, Ty the Tasmanian Tiger
Ty the Tasmanian Tiger
Ty the Tasmanian Tiger is a 3D platformer video game for the PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube. It was developed by Krome Studios and published by Electronic Arts...
is the star of his own trilogy. Characters in the early 1990s cartoon Taz-Mania
Taz-Mania
Taz-Mania is a American cartoon sitcom produced by Warner Bros. Animation from 1991–1993, broadcast in the United States on Fox from 1991-1995...
included the neurotic Wendell T. Wolf, the last surviving Tasmanian wolf. Tiger Tale
Tiger Tale
Tiger Tale is a children's picture book illustrated by Marion Isham and written by Steve Isham. First published in 2002, the book retells the Aboriginal story of how the Tasmanian Tiger got its stripes. Tiger Tale is illustrated using torn paper collage that gives the book a folkloric...
is a children's book based on an Aboriginal myth about how the thylacine got its stripes. The thylacine character Rolf is featured in the extinction musical Rockford's Rock Opera
Rockford's Rock Opera
Rockford's Rock Opera is an ecological musical story created by Matthew Sweetapple, Steve Punt and Elaine Sweetapple. It was first released on the internet and as a three album set by Sweetapple in 2009....
. The thylacine is the mascot for the Tasmanian cricket team
Tasmanian Tigers
The Tasmanian cricket team, nicknamed the Tigers, represents the Australian state of Tasmania in cricket tournaments. They compete annually in the Australian domestic senior men's cricket season, which currently consists of the first-class Sheffield Shield, the limited overs Ford Ranger Cup, and...
, and has appeared in postage stamps from Australia, Equatorial Guinea
Equatorial Guinea
Equatorial Guinea, officially the Republic of Equatorial Guinea where the capital Malabo is situated.Annobón is the southernmost island of Equatorial Guinea and is situated just south of the equator. Bioko island is the northernmost point of Equatorial Guinea. Between the two islands and to the...
, and Micronesia
Federated States of Micronesia
The Federated States of Micronesia or FSM is an independent, sovereign island nation, made up of four states from west to east: Yap, Chuuk, Pohnpei and Kosrae. It comprises approximately 607 islands with c...
.
See also
- CryptozoologyCryptozoologyCryptozoology refers to the search for animals whose existence has not been proven...
- Fauna of AustraliaFauna of AustraliaThe fauna of Australia consists of a huge variety of animals; some 83% of mammals, 89% of reptiles, 90% of fish and insects and 93% of amphibians that inhabit the continent are endemic to Australia...
- List of extinct animals of Australia
External links
- The Thylacine Museum
- Seven short movies of the Thylacine
- Australian Megafauna
- BBC News item about Thylacine genome
- Interactive map of post-extinction Thylacine sightings
- Thylacine page at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History
- Preserved Thylacine body at National Museum of Australia, Canberra