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The Thylacine ('Tasmanian Tiger' Or 'Wolf')

The trouble with all of this, at least so far as I can see, is that you have what appears to be a biotech company which is making fairly grand claims that aren't being backed up by peer reviewed publications. Obviously there'll be areas of their research which they need to protect, and that's fair enough, but something more than press releases is probably long overdue.

They have a web page describing the animal they imply they're attempting to ressurect (I won't use de-extinct, because often that isn't what's being described), which has obviously been prepared without any specialist input. Believe me, there are some real clangers in there. That in itself isn't too unusual, there's often a major disconnect between specialist and the person who writes the web page, but given their obvious need to communicate their aims to the public, and the fact that to those in the know there's no evidence yet of an understanding of the animal or the threats which it faced is concerning.

I think the question many of us are left with is how real is all of this and why are they trying to do it? Are they really going to release the world's most expensive organism into an area where 700,000 animals were officially culled last year? Really? Come on.

I do occasionally get interviewed about this for a historical perspective and I asked one of the journalists what they thought about that question and their reply was that essentially they're very rich geeks and if they weren't doing this they'd be trying to land on Pluto ir something equally whacky. I can't say whether that's a fair description or not but, all in all I can't say the whole thing is convincing a lot of the people I've spoken too.
 
oldrover said:
The trouble with all of this, at least so far as I can see, is that you have what appears to be a biotech company which is making fairly grand claims that aren't being backed up by peer reviewed publications. Obviously there'll be areas of their research which they need to protect, and that's fair enough, but something more than press releases is probably long overdue.

They have a web page describing the animal they imply they're attempting to ressurect (I won't use de-extinct, because often that isn't what's being described), which has obviously been prepared without any specialist input. Believe me, there are some real clangers in there. That in itself isn't too unusual, there's often a major disconnect between specialist and the person who writes the web page, but given their obvious need to communicate their aims to the public, and the fact that to those in the know there's no evidence yet of an understanding of the animal or the threats which it faced is concerning.

I think the question many of us are left with is how real is all of this and why are they trying to do it? Are they really going to release the world's most expensive organism into an area where 700,000 animals were officially culled last year? Really? Come on.

I do occasionally get interviewed about this for a historical perspective and I asked one of the journalists what they thought about that question and their reply was that essentially they're very rich geeks and if they weren't doing this they'd be trying to land on Pluto ir something equally whacky. I can't say whether that's a fair description or not but, all in all I can't say the whole thing is convincing a lot of the people I've spoken too.
Click to expand...
It might be one of those occasions where these rich people haven't quite thought through what they might do with the end result - it's getting the end result that they are interested in. More as though it's a thought experiment. I'm sure if anything they might come up with results in a live birth of something which may or may not be partly or wholly a Tasmanian Tiger, THEN they might start researching what to do with it. But as it may well come to nothing and it's more in the nature of 'shall we mess about a bit and see what happens', there's not too much to say about the possible end result yet.
 
catseye said:
It might be one of those occasions where these rich people haven't quite thought through what they might do with the end result - it's getting the end result that they are interested in. More as though it's a thought experiment. I'm sure if anything they might come up with results in a live birth of something which may or may not be partly or wholly a Tasmanian Tiger, THEN they might start researching what to do with it. But as it may well come to nothing and it's more in the nature of 'shall we mess about a bit and see what happens', there's not too much to say about the possible end result yet.
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That makes a lot of sense. Although, there's supposedly a lot of private money on the table. I don't know, I sometimes wonder if it isn't a house of cards. They've released a video on YouTube now, which has tipped into parody. Think of the scene in Jurassic Park where they watch the film explaining how they made the dinosaurs, but with the animated DNA strand replaced with a cartoon thylacine.
 
@Lord Lucan

Not the only UK Thylacine report:

UK.1810.xx.xx #1-#?​

The Girt Dog of Ennerdale. A livestock-killing predator that terrorised Cumberland in 1810[-1811?]. The beast was said to have been striped, and to have attacked many sheep, leading to modern speculation that it was an escaped thylacine (Freeman, 1999). However, both scientific and social evidence suggests that the thylacine was not a serious livestock pest, and that other factors were to blame for most Tasmanian farmers' losses.

Moreover, 1810 would be extraordinarily early for a thylacine to have made its way to the UK. With little chance of smuggling it such a long distance on a ship unnoticed, the absence of contemporary reports of such an attempt is good evidence that such a journey never took place. In reality, the animal could have been anything. If we accept that the animal had stripes, then a more natural candidate, as has been pointed out, would be a hyena.

The first paragraph from Richard Freeman's article 'The case of the British thylacine':

"In the spring of 1810, a bizarre series of livestock killings began. Over the next six months, a mystery predator cut a bloody swathe through Cumberland. This creature was never identified, but became known as the Girt Dog of Ennerdale. Though often quoted, this chapter In British animal mysteries is one of the most cryptic and obscure. On re-reading the tales recently, I found a strange thread that no-one (to my knowledge) has picked up on before. The saga of the Girt Dog may be even odder than anyone has ever realised: and the 'Dog' itself may be a doubly Fortean beast."

Source: Freeman, Richard. (1999). The case of the British thylacine. Animals & Men 19: 16-18.

"In 1810 a savage predator began mercilessly killing sheep in the Cumberland valley of Ennerdale. The attacks went on for months with up to eight sheep a day being slaughtered. Alarm spread, children were kept inside for safety’s sake and a £10 reward was offered for its capture.

Eventually it was spotted but it was not what the locals expected. It was described as having the qualities of both a large cat and a large dog, tawny in colour with dark stripes running down its back."

Source: Rothery, Emily. (2015). The tale of the mysterious Girt Dog of Ennerdale. Lancashire Life, 3 April.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girt_dog_of_Ennerdale

UK.1974.4.7​

"On April 7, at 3:30 A.M., Joan Gilbert spotted a "strange striped creature half cat and half dog" as it passed in front of her car's headlights. "It was," she recalled, "the most peculiar animal I have ever seen. It had stripes, a long thin tail, and seemed to be all gray, though it might have had some yellow on it. Its ears were set back like a member of the cat family, and it was as big as a medium-sized dog. It was thin, and it definitely was not a fox." It was, she learned when she looked through reference books at the library, an animal she had never heard of: a thylacine...on the outskirts of Bournemouth. In England."

Source: Clark, Jerome. (2013). Thylacines, pp. 198-208. Unexplained!: Strange Sightings, Incredible Occurrences, and Puzzling Physical Phenomena, third edition. Canton, Michigan: Visible Ink Press.

UK.197X.xx.xx​

"I remembered reading a a couple of years back about a Thylacine sighting in the UK during the 70s."

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/2007060...anian-tiger.com/forum/Forum3/HTML/000026.html

https://recentlyextinctspecies.com/thylacine-archive/uk-thylacine-reports

I note that @lordmongrove wrote about this British Thylacine case (bold and underlined),
 
Paul_Exeter said:
@Lord Lucan

Not the only UK Thylacine report:

UK.1810.xx.xx #1-#?​

The Girt Dog of Ennerdale. A livestock-killing predator that terrorised Cumberland in 1810[-1811?]. The beast was said to have been striped, and to have attacked many sheep, leading to modern speculation that it was an escaped thylacine (Freeman, 1999). However, both scientific and social evidence suggests that the thylacine was not a serious livestock pest, and that other factors were to blame for most Tasmanian farmers' losses.

Moreover, 1810 would be extraordinarily early for a thylacine to have made its way to the UK. With little chance of smuggling it such a long distance on a ship unnoticed, the absence of contemporary reports of such an attempt is good evidence that such a journey never took place. In reality, the animal could have been anything. If we accept that the animal had stripes, then a more natural candidate, as has been pointed out, would be a hyena.

The first paragraph from Richard Freeman's article 'The case of the British thylacine':

"In the spring of 1810, a bizarre series of livestock killings began. Over the next six months, a mystery predator cut a bloody swathe through Cumberland. This creature was never identified, but became known as the Girt Dog of Ennerdale. Though often quoted, this chapter In British animal mysteries is one of the most cryptic and obscure. On re-reading the tales recently, I found a strange thread that no-one (to my knowledge) has picked up on before. The saga of the Girt Dog may be even odder than anyone has ever realised: and the 'Dog' itself may be a doubly Fortean beast."

Source: Freeman, Richard. (1999). The case of the British thylacine. Animals & Men 19: 16-18.

"In 1810 a savage predator began mercilessly killing sheep in the Cumberland valley of Ennerdale. The attacks went on for months with up to eight sheep a day being slaughtered. Alarm spread, children were kept inside for safety’s sake and a £10 reward was offered for its capture.

Eventually it was spotted but it was not what the locals expected. It was described as having the qualities of both a large cat and a large dog, tawny in colour with dark stripes running down its back."

Source: Rothery, Emily. (2015). The tale of the mysterious Girt Dog of Ennerdale. Lancashire Life, 3 April.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girt_dog_of_Ennerdale

UK.1974.4.7​

"On April 7, at 3:30 A.M., Joan Gilbert spotted a "strange striped creature half cat and half dog" as it passed in front of her car's headlights. "It was," she recalled, "the most peculiar animal I have ever seen. It had stripes, a long thin tail, and seemed to be all gray, though it might have had some yellow on it. Its ears were set back like a member of the cat family, and it was as big as a medium-sized dog. It was thin, and it definitely was not a fox." It was, she learned when she looked through reference books at the library, an animal she had never heard of: a thylacine...on the outskirts of Bournemouth. In England."

Source: Clark, Jerome. (2013). Thylacines, pp. 198-208. Unexplained!: Strange Sightings, Incredible Occurrences, and Puzzling Physical Phenomena, third edition. Canton, Michigan: Visible Ink Press.

UK.197X.xx.xx​

"I remembered reading a a couple of years back about a Thylacine sighting in the UK during the 70s."

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/2007060...anian-tiger.com/forum/Forum3/HTML/000026.html

https://recentlyextinctspecies.com/thylacine-archive/uk-thylacine-reports

I note that @lordmongrove wrote about this British Thylacine case (bold and underlined),
Click to expand...

Astounding really. Whilst the chances of the sightings being being actual actual thylacines are next to nothing, the question begs to be asked, what dis they see? Dogs? Cats? ABC's? Foxes with mange? Something else?
 
Lord Lucan said:
Astounding really. Whilst the chances of the sightings being being actual actual thylacines are next to nothing, the question begs to be asked, what dis they see? Dogs? Cats? ABC's? Foxes with mange? Something else?
Click to expand...
So bizarre. Although the creature was seen "on the outskirts of Bournemouth" the town is surrounded by countryside, with the New Forest national park and Cranborne Chase close by. But there are no records of Thylacines being kept in captivity in this country and so the idea of some feral escapee is a non-starter.

if we are going for a paranormal theory then I wonder if she had any Australian ancestry and that somehow there was trigger that caused a memory from along deceased family member to be played out in front of her eyes?

But the rational answer of misidentification will always win out. However, without doubt a Thylacine sighting in Bournemouth was more believable in 1974 that it is is 2024
 
I'm getting hyaena vibes from that Bournemouth sighting. They are about the right size, shape and colouring and have those oddly set rounded ears which are a little bit catlike. So perhaps a young hyaena?

Although presence of a young hyaena around Bournemouth is damn near as inexplicable as the appearance of a Tasmanian Tiger.
 
catseye said:
I'm getting hyaena vibes from that Bournemouth sighting. They are about the right size, shape and colouring and have those oddly set rounded ears which are a little bit catlike. So perhaps a young hyaena?

Although presence of a young hyaena around Bournemouth is damn near as inexplicable as the appearance of a Tasmanian Tiger.
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Maybe a lead:

9 things you may not know about The Durrells (and the Bournemouth zoo that never was)​


6. The family returned to Bournemouth after the war. Gerald worked on a farm at Longham. His sister Margo married her first husband Jack Breeze at St Andrew's Church, Charminster.

7. Years later on a hired typewriter in a cramped attic of his sister's home in St Alban's Avenue, Charminster, Gerald wrote his hilarious account of their time in Corfu.

8. Gerald would turn up with hordes of animals from his expeditions and put them in Margo's garden and also kept a menagerie in the basement of JJ Allen department store.

9. Gerald tried to tried to open a zoo in Bournemouth, then Poole, and was all set to go with Upton House but it fell through.

https://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/n...rells-and-the-bournemouth-zoo-that-never-was/
 
Paul_Exeter said:
So bizarre. Although the creature was seen "on the outskirts of Bournemouth" the town is surrounded by countryside, with the New Forest national park and Cranborne Chase close by. But there are no records of Thylacines being kept in captivity in this country and so the idea of some feral escapee is a non-starter.

if we are going for a paranormal theory then I wonder if she had any Australian ancestry and that somehow there was trigger that caused a memory from along deceased family member to be played out in front of her eyes?

But the rational answer of misidentification will always win out. However, without doubt a Thylacine sighting in Bournemouth was more believable in 1974 that it is
Click to expand...

I'm not sure where you get the idea that there are no records of captive thylacine in this country, but there certainly are. That's got nothing to do with this sighting though obviously.
 
oldrover said:
I'm not sure where you get the idea that there are no records of captive thylacine in this country, but there certainly are. That's got nothing to do with this sighting though obviously.
Click to expand...
This was new to me:

Thylacines at ZSL​

The last thylacine at London Zoo, a female, died on the 9 August 1931, and was the last to be displayed outside of Australia. The last thylacine in captivity died in Hobart Zoo on 7 September 1936. The species is now considered to be extinct, but some material has been written by people who claim to have seen them in the wild in Tasmania.

https://www.zsl.org/news-and-events/feature/history-of-the-thylacine
 
Paul_Exeter said:
This was new to me:

Thylacines at ZSL​

The last thylacine at London Zoo, a female, died on the 9 August 1931, and was the last to be displayed outside of Australia. The last thylacine in captivity died in Hobart Zoo on 7 September 1936. The species is now considered to be extinct, but some material has been written by people who claim to have seen them in the wild in Tasmania.

https://www.zsl.org/news-and-events/feature/history-of-the-thylacine
Click to expand...

London displayed more thylacines than other other zoo, and over the longest period. It wasn't just zoo's though, Wombwell's Travelling Menagerie also had one, so did someone up in Scotland. I can't remember the details. There are also spurious stories, the daughter of the owner of Chester Zoo spoke of a 'Tasmanian devil' among the animals they had during the mid 1930s but gave a description of a thylacine. That might sound possible but it's absolutely not. There was also a ship carrying Australian animals, some I think from Tasmania, which ran ashore on England's south coast. Definitely no thylacines on it but I think people have speculated there might have been.
 
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