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

If anyone had definite evidence of the Thylacine of course it'd be made very public, why wouldn't they it's such a high profile case. Christ knows how much WWWF and any other sort of funding they'd receive, plus tourism revenue it'd be economic and environmental suicide not to.
 
Most of my information on this subject, from fascinating book, IMO highly recommendable: “Carnivorous Nights”, by Margaret Mittelbach and Michael Crewdson (publ. 2005). Two American naturalists, long highly interested in the thylacine, who made a long visit to Tasmania about 2004, to look into the mystery of the creature’s possible continued existence. Travelled widely around the island and met many thylacine researchers / “believers”. Their conclusion, which I tend to be persuaded to share, is that (with great sadness) they reckon it probable that – at least in the sense of a straightforward relict population -- the animal does not survive. So many reported sightings, right up to the present day, but next to no supporting physical evidence. And according to the authors, Tasmania’s remaining forests are being ravaged by reckless logging; bad news habitat-wise, but one would think, in the short term, with some likelihood of uncovering surviving thylacines – but that seems not to have happened.

I have some inclination to put down continued sightings, to perhaps something spectral / paranormal going on (and would see that as going in spades, for sightings on the mainland) – a “take” which many would ridicule, but “so be it”. The book’s authors – who certainly don’t come across as weirdos – do not completely rule out paranormal explanations for the phenomenon.
 
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, as you say, without ridicule. While I would agree with you that the lack of physical evidence is very worrying as is the fact that sometimes it tends to contradict the sightings, I dont think either is conclusive.

One thing you can be sure of though is that the two authors of the book you mention are not credible naturalists (within the scientific community where all the funding and the scrutiny is) as to mention or even entertain a paranormal explanation would have been instant professional suicide, which they would have known so it indicates they had no current or any prospective careers to worry about.
looks like I was wrong about the last part
 
I was using the word “naturalist” in its wider application, including amateur same. I get the impression (lack the time right now, to explore further) that the authors of the book concerned are indeed not professionals in the biology / natural history field, with all that that entails – it would seem rather, that they earn their livings as writers / journalists, and can thus better afford to entertain eccentric / heretical notions natural-history-wise, than if they had academic careers in the scientific community.

It appears to me from the book that these two are, in their natural history interest, mostly on the mainstream scientific page (and widely knowledgeable about same); but are willing to leave the door open a crack – or perhaps a bit more – to other “takes”.

Any such willingness is indeed, as you observe, professional suicide if biological science is one’s career. This overall issue is one which at times gets quite rancorous, in the area of interest in and enquiry into, the matter of “Bigfoot” in North America. I tend to feel that mainstream science’s reaction re the paranormal is understandable, but none too admirable. Scientists ridicule the excesses of “religious establishments” in other times and places, in the matter of attempted enforcing of orthodox views, and stifling of speculation. They consider themselves far more enlightened – I sometimes wonder, with how much justification? Burning people at the stake is not an option these days; but I see at times, surprisingly much, same stuff, within the parameters of what is nowadays allowed, re “getting heavy with perceived heresy”. Being hypocritical, without realising it?
 
Any scientist worth their salt should be intrested in a feral domestic cat thats as big as a leopard!
As for the tazzy wolf, in my view the best places to search ate New Guinea and mainland Australia.
 
scientific dogma has to a large extent slotted nicely in where religious dogma once was, providing as it does not so much what to think but the context and way in which you think it. As well as you mention creating it's own heresies. Of course fashionable lines of thought, politics and economics colour what it does or doesn't deal with and how it interprets its results.

Despite that, personally I would like to see more rigour in this case. No more bloody dog casts, for example. I think that's the Thylacine's and the people who are besotted with it's best chance.

Do we have any more on this 6ft feral cat by the way.
 
One tends to suspect that many people have a big need of dogma in their lives...

Thylacines “up north”: there was a colourful character who for a while recently, posted on another crypto-interest site. He lived in the far north of Queensland, and was totally convinced of the (flesh-and-blood relict populations) survival in the forest fastnesses up there, of not only the thylacine, but the thylacoleo (marsupial lion-equivalent, per conventional wisdom died out 30K-odd years ago). He’d had no first-hand encounters, but claimed to have come across many accounts which he found compelling. This chap was by his own admission, fond of mind-altering substances – I’d suspect him of hitting too hard, the Bundaberg Rum, coupled with more-doubtfully-legal stuff...
 
I cant remember where I read this but originally the Queensland tiger cat was included in the official fauna lists, early reports didnt sound much like a a Thylacoleo though.
 
Bernard Heuvelmans’s “On the track of Unknown Animals” (1962) has a chapter – partly – on the “Queensland Marsupial Tiger”. Tells of many reports of such over the decades, chiefly from the very far north-east of Queensland – the Cape York Peninsula. General “word” therein, is of a striped cat-like carnivore, most usually reckoned the size of a large dog. Heuvelmans gives a passing mention to the Thylacoleo – he claims, around “until quite recently” [sic] – but reckons the “Queensland tiger” a different, and smaller, beast.

Heuvelmans indeed mentions the Northern Queensland “striped marsupial cat”, being included in the comprehensive book, published 1926, by A.S. Le Soeuf and H. Burrell: “The Wild Animals of Australasia, Embracing the Mammals of New Guinea and the Nearer Pacific Islands”.

The “poster elsewhere” whom I mentioned, said IIRC nothing about the “marsupial tiger” beastie –he was heavily beating the “thylacines and thylcacoleos still out there” drum. I suspect that a modestly big-ish cat-equivalent was too boring and plausible for him to bother with... Perhaps I’m unduly hard on this guy, but he struck me as an irritating buffoon and attention-seeker.
 
Meant to post this before. In 1996 the Atlanta Olympics closing ceremony finished being aired on BBC at 6am, after which a wild life documentary on Tasmania was scheduled, the information in the TV guide, cant remember the name, made particular mention that it included the ‘Tasmanian Wolf, until recently thought to be extinct’. Having read this I set all the alarm clocks I could find, set the video, and after a full day of work watched the entire ceremony through the night, in case the times were changed, or wrong or if the alarms didn’t wake me.

At 6 in the morning the ceremony finished and sure enough the documentary began, on desert reptiles.
 
How often one feels -- the great "leitmotiv" of anything involving matters cryptozoological is, for sure, frustration.
 
oldrover said:
Meant to post this before. In 1996 the Atlanta Olympics closing ceremony finished being aired on BBC at 6am, after which a wild life documentary on Tasmania was scheduled, the information in the TV guide, cant remember the name, made particular mention that it included the ‘Tasmanian Wolf, until recently thought to be extinct’. Having read this I set all the alarm clocks I could find, set the video, and after a full day of work watched the entire ceremony through the night, in case the times were changed, or wrong or if the alarms didn’t wake me.

At 6 in the morning the ceremony finished and sure enough the documentary began, on desert reptiles.
Click to expand...

1995 - Tasmanian Park Ranger confirms and then denies sighting
1996 - BBC axes on short notice doco on "until recently thought extinct Tasmanian Wolf"

I smell a conspiracy! :)
 
I smell a conspiracy! :)[/quote]

I definitely agree, I believe it was a sting in the tail of the TV schedules after 3 weeks of the Olympics.
 
I know this is Thylacines again, but I did search and couldn't find reference to it anywhere.

Just been reading the Thylacine museum website here-

http://www.naturalworlds.org/thylacine/ ... istory.htm

very good site well researched and referenced. I was initially disappointed to see this-

http://www.naturalworlds.org/thylacine/ ... e_1973.htm

featured there, seen it before but always dismissed it along with pretty much all mainland sightings, however after watching it again today I'm convinced it shows a Thylacine on the mainland in 1973, one slight reservation is the suggestion of fuzz at the end of the tail.

EDIT: Titled altered for clarity by WJ.
 
The late Peter Chappel of Australia Rare Fauna Research showed me a highly slowed down version of this then a slowed down film of a fox running and their legs moved very differently.
 
I don't know, thylacines have very short lower limbs, the running animal didn't appear to have particularly long lower limbs but they didn't look quite as short as a thylacine's. It also looks a bit shorter bodied/closer coupled than a thylacine. It doesn't look totally wrong, but not totally right either.
 
I hadn't seen that later clip before - but living in Australia I'm rather familiar with marsupial running action and this looks very much like it.

it makes mee even more hopeful that the little beasties are still out there!

The fact that it was shot in South Australia rather than Tassie or PNG makes it even more exciting.

Oh, and we have foxes in Sydney too - I have seen quite a few over the years and they run in a completely different manner. Colouring, head pose etc are totally different too. To me, this looks like the real thing.
 
I'm no expert, but, the video looks to me, very much like an urban fox. Dingoes run left left right right don't they? But this looks like a fox with a wet tail. There's no indication that its markings are thylacinic... and, as was previously commented upon by marionXXX... , the rear limbs don't match that of the animal in question. I seriously cannot see anything unusual about the footage at all, to suggest it is a thylacine, rather than a cayote/fox type cannis.
 
Look, I will respectfully disagree with you there.

I've seen urban foxes, and IMO they look and run very different. Also - the tail acts in manner common to all marsupials (not kangaroos of course, but the ones that run on 4 feet). There was something about the way it ran that made me immediately think "marsupial".

My fellow Australians - what do you think?

Also I don't really agree that they have very short lower limbs.

The below is a link to the only "official" footage of the (hopefully not) last Tassie Tiger - they don't look so short to me.

Re the stripes, they did vary in colour and on a 70s 35mm camera would certainly blur in motion. Heck, I even blur in motion on my dad's old movies!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vqCCI1ZF7o
 
Zilch5 said:
There was something about the way it ran that made me immediately think "marsupial".
Click to expand...

This will probably sound terribly cheeky, so I apologise in advance if it does, but if that footage had been entitled 'Film of my dog running' would you honestly have said, "no way is that a dog, it's a marsupial."? :)

Since we have no footage of thylacine running, I don't think anyone can definitively say that looks like how they would run. Here's some greyhound footage:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUTCv37K ... re=related

I'm far from an expert too but I'd be hard pushed to say the '73 footage definitely wasn't canine.
 
The key reason I think it's a mangy fox is the length of the back leg below the ankle joint - in a canid the lower portion of the back leg is much closer to the length of the upper portion, as seen on the animal in the video. On a thylacine, the length of the leg below the ankle is very small compared to above (google thylacine images to see what I mean).

The other key is the thickening of the tail at the end - a thylacine had a long, thick, tapering tail, which simply wouldn't look like this. A fox with mange on the other hand will often have a tail that looks like this.
 
After another look, plus the cylathine footage Dr_Balter posted, I'm more convinced. Sorry for my earlier post. The head and tail does strongly resemble that of a thylacine. I hope there are still some breeding pairs out there.
 
Dr Baltar you make a fair point there, personally when I first saw it some years ago I thought fox straight away, also I agree your quite right in saying that it's impossible to rule out a canid, that said I think the tail/body ratio makes a dog unlikely, but this of course still leaves a mangy fox as a candidate, a good photo of which can be seen here-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/3757934.stm


MarionXXX, while I agree that the limb proportions seem a little too long, the length of the body is hard to judge, because of the action of it’s running, equally though this could be used to counter the argument that the body tail/ratio ruling out a dog.

in a canid the lower portion of the back leg is much closer to the length of the upper portion, as seen on the animal in the video. On a thylacine, the length of the leg below the ankle is very small compared to above
Click to expand...

I cant agree with that, to me at least the measurements visible on the film do seem shorter than what you’d expect on a canid, admitidly though due to the quality of the film this is quite a subjective view. But as I said I find the apparent fuzz at the end of the tail worrying, in terms of identifying it as a Thylacine.

While there are many good arguments against this film’s authenticity, the animal if it is a mangy fox is too thick set from the diaphragm forward and too robust generally, the neck appears too short for a fox and more in keeping with a Thylacine. As for the head it’s too indistinct to comment on, but the stiff way the tail is carried, fuzz aside, I would say is uncharacteristic of a dog or fox.

Maybe if we knew the speed and size of the animal, it would be easier to say something persuasive about its gait, but so far I find what Zilch says convincing.

Returning to Dr Baltar’s point, while it is easy to overlook this as very mundane, on looking again despite the very well observed points raised against it here, I feel that overall what we’re seeing here is most likely to be a Thylacine.
 
oldrover said:
in a canid the lower portion of the back leg is much closer to the length of the upper portion, as seen on the animal in the video. On a thylacine, the length of the leg below the ankle is very small compared to above
Click to expand...

I cant agree with that, to me at least the measurements visible on the film do seem shorter than what you’d expect on a canid, admitidly though due to the quality of the film this is quite a subjective view. But as I said I find the apparent fuzz at the end of the tail worrying, in terms of identifying it as a Thylacine.
Click to expand...
I'm not entireley certain I can see this point as debatable oldrover - I'm not talking about overall leg length - I'm specifically referring to the length of the back leg below the ankle joint in proportion to the length above, which is a clear differentiator between canids and thylacines. Whatever the overall quality of the film, there are several points where the lower portion of the leg is very clearly visible as the animal extends its rear legs, and the proportion is way out for a thylacine. There's nothing subjective about it.

oldrover said:
While there are many good arguments against this film’s authenticity, the animal if it is a mangy fox is too thick set from the diaphragm forward and too robust generally, the neck appears too short for a fox and more in keeping with a Thylacine. As for the head it’s too indistinct to comment on, but the stiff way the tail is carried, fuzz aside, I would say is uncharacteristic of a dog or fox.
Click to expand...
If anything, I'd say it doesn't look thick-set enough and if anything the body isn't barrel-like enough to be thylacine - this however, I would say is subjective territory.

oldrover said:
Maybe if we knew the speed and size of the animal, it would be easier to say something persuasive about its gait, but so far I find what Zilch says convincing.

Returning to Dr Baltar’s point, while it is easy to overlook this as very mundane, on looking again despite the very well observed points raised against it here, I feel that overall what we’re seeing here is most likely to be a Thylacine.
Click to expand...
You haven't addressed the issue of the widening at the end of the tail - this and the rear leg bone length proportions pretty much damn the thylacine conclusion.
 
oldrover said:
Returning to Dr Baltar’s point, while it is easy to overlook this as very mundane, on looking again despite the very well observed points raised against it here, I feel that overall what we’re seeing here is most likely to be a Thylacine.
Click to expand...

I'd love you to be right. However, when all's said and done, I don't suppose it matters much if the film shows a living thylacine in 1973 or not. All I really want is film of a living thylacine in 2010. :)
 
There's been a bit of discussion based on the way the creature in the 1973 film ran. This very short clip, seemingly from 2009, shows a similar-looking animal, but it's interesting in that it shows the transition from "trotting" to "galloping" motion.
 
I haven't addressed the tail because I cant, it's the feature that gives me cause for concern, as I've acknowledged in the original post, that and the fact the film came from the mainland, where I always thought they'd become Australia's answer to Bigfoot.

Regarding the foot, I understand what you say about the proportions and I looked for the same thing but due to film quality I'm having trouble gauging this measurement. And though I've come to a different conclusion to you I acknowledge that my method of measuring, I can only keep pausing and am not able to go frame by frame and then I'm not getting a very clear image, is admittedly unreliable, subjective and prone to distortion not least from wishful thinking.

Though, clicking on the link that Peripart posted, which I'm sorry is definitely a fox, I came across this other video-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cax8FzIX ... re=related

which features a still at around 30 seconds, which does put the proportion firmly in the Thylacine range. Incidentally I've no idea what points they are making as my computer has no sound, other than I can't see the clearly visible stripes they can.

I'd love you to be right. However, when all's said and done, I don't suppose it matters much if the film shows a living thylacine in 1973 or not. All I really want is film of a living thylacine in 2010.
Click to expand...

Would be nice, wouldn't it.
 
Actually regarding the tail, the picture seems to be composed of little squares in a close up pause as in the stills in the last video link I posted, which in the first still shows no tail at all, and in the second shows a large fuzz with a distinct band running through the tail at a right angle near the tip, this last feature as well as the absence of a tail in the first still are obviously artifacts, from either the initial film or the process of transferring it to a computer. Also while viewing the film in it's entirety the tail disappears several times, and also to my eyes at least, the fuzz or widening of the tail appears to begin at different points along it's length at different times in the film.

So given the unreliability of the film to make out distinct detail as evidenced by the tails tendency to vanish occasionally, and the blurriness of the extremities in general, is it possible that the fuzz represents a pixilated (not sure if that's the right word for the little squares) blur caused by movement of the last portion of the tail, which if held stiffly as it appears to be in the film will be subject to a significant amount of movement
 
Dr_Baltar said:
Zilch5 said:
There was something about the way it ran that made me immediately think "marsupial".
Click to expand...

This will probably sound terribly cheeky, so I apologise in advance if it does, but if that footage had been entitled 'Film of my dog running' would you honestly have said, "no way is that a dog, it's a marsupial."? :)

Since we have no footage of thylacine running, I don't think anyone can definitively say that looks like how they would run. Here's some greyhound footage:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUTCv37K ... re=related

I'm far from an expert too but I'd be hard pushed to say the '73 footage definitely wasn't canine.
Click to expand...

Ah, look, any input is welcomed by me. But the point I am trying to make here is that living where I do and being familiar with marsupial motion, and owning a dog and having seen foxes (though not mangy ones in person) - to me, that looks like a marsupial. Proof? No.

But let me put it this way - I can identify the two cars by make and model that can be seen in the background. I don't think many people in England could. That's not putting blame on anyone, but these cars are native to Australia - as are these animals. There were bread and butter automotive transport over here. In England, they'd be exotics. What I am saying is that most people here could tell a marsupial from an introduced species. To me, the tail action gives it away - it is a marsupial.
 
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