• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Thylacines (Post-1936 Sightings)

You have a very valid point. But animals with advanced mange do not usually, display that much energy. But the point about the leg is pretty solid. I guess we all hope the "tiger" still exists.
 
Watching the film, the hocks are too long, however that is one thick set fox........

The lady seems plausible, prompted a few times l thought.....

It occurred to myself that she may have filmed the wrong animal?

Just my thoughts.
 
Andy, what the lady in the video is saying isn't very plausible at all. And what she's describing is the pop culture version of the tiger.

Firstly she says that the animals she's seen have stripes on their tail, no tigers ever did. She says they were stocky, tigers weren't. She says that it had an awkward gait, tigers didn't. She also says that she saw what she first thought was a dead wallaby, but then it got up and she saw it was a blue eyed thylacine. They didn't have blue eyes, their eyes were described as being black. Lastly, she's presented a video of a fox, which proves beyond doubt that she's not capable of differentiating between the two.

It's worth noting here, that everyone with any knowledge of the tiger has dismissed this video. It was taken up by the media admittedly, but apart from his FB followers no one else is buying. It's hard to imagine Waters is convinced himself.
 
Hello everyone. My first post, huge Thylacine enthusiast here...

That's a very good post oldrover, you make some great point, the lady is obviously confusing a fox and a Thylacine and after the video was posted a few weeks ago i must admit my belief for sightings in Victoria took a huge drop..
 
Last edited:
Hi Vince, and welcome to the forum.

There's a lot of thylacine stuff here. Not just on the two fixed threads, there's a fair bit spread around on this sub forum.

There are also a few of us here with a special interest in the subject.

Personally, I'm of the opinion that it's a 1,000,000 to one shot that any are still left. Tasmania is almost certainly empty, but there's a tiny chance thee may be some in New Guinea. Although the evidence isn't strong. The only real source I know of is from the late Ned Terry, a Tasmanian researcher, and a good one, who visited West Irian Jaya sometime in the 90's.
 
Last edited:
Cheers, i have been lurking on here for some time now, obtained some great infos in the process thanks to all contributors. Felt it was the right time to come out of the wood work and finally post.

I think we have at hand a far greater animal than we realise. Even in Tasmania when there was probably more than 3000 of them they were never seen in the wild..

Yes NG is a good possibility although i understand the food supply there isn't as abundant as in Australia, no roo there, only some Wallabies and Pademelons, also some big birds. What must be a worry is the rarity of singing dogs.. suggesting not a great place for predators. That said there is someone on fb who mentioned a sighting (not first hand) from the Merauke region about 15 years ago. It was a positive sighting in the day time.
 
Estimations of their numbers (prior to 1909) were between 2-4,000. And average bounty paid in the government scheme was about 100 animals per year. But, that was only the government bounties. The Van Diemen's Land Company, also operated a bounty scheme, for which numbers aren't available as far as I know. . Plus, there were other small scale schemes, and not all dead tigers were presented for formal payment. Apparently, you could make a bit of money hawking a tiger carcass around the rural towns.

Although there's a number of 4,821 bounty payments being made between 1878 and 1908, in truth, we've got no real idea how many wild tigers were taken each year. What we do know for certain though, is that tiger numbers had crashed by 1909 as a result of disease. It's still not known what that disease was, but thylacine and devil numbers crashed in that year. Unlike the devil though, tiger numbers never recovered. The disease also hit the captive populations.

Another thing we're certain of is that the experienced tiger trappers failed to capture many thylacine between 1909 and 1933. We also know that during the depression, many of those trappers went back out into the bush, and all came back empty handed.

It's also worth noting that local police were surveyed well before the population crash, to try and determine tiger numbers. Many reported that the thylacine was now absent in their jurisdictions.

1938 saw the last trace of any sort of physical evidence found by men with any sort of experience with wild tigers, and that was only footprints.

Sorry to be so unrelentingly bleak, but that's the reality. Personally I think the thylacine became extinct in the 1950's. It may also be worth bearing in mind that 1950 again saw a disease related crash in devil numbers. Whether this was the same disease, or even if it was whether it had any implication for a possible surviving tiger population though is very speculative.
 
By the way Vince, your English is excellent, so I wonder, do you also read German? If you do you'll have access to Heinz Moeller's work.
 
Thanks, i must say i have been lucky to read English since a very young age when it's always easier to learn. So much more info to gather when you can understand the English language. Unfortunately, i don't understand one bit of German!
 
Nor me. Which is a shame as Moeller was one of the leading experts on the tiger.

As for new Guinea, I agree that the chances there look pretty small. But, it is very poorly documented here in the West. I'm not too worried about the abundance of prey though. I'm fairly persuaded by the evidence that the thylacine was a small prey specialist. But, I'm not sure about the suggestion here;

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2288692/

That the back of the skull was too weak to subdue large struggling prey. Especially not with them having a far greater range of flexibility in their wrists than canids. Which I think may well mean they could manipulate and subdue prey in other ways.

Again though, their tooth wear patterns suggest they were tackling things smaller than themselves. Which is odd given their size, and the associated nutritional requirements. As well as the fact that their stomachs were capable of expanding to an unusual extent, possibly suggesting an adaptation for bulk feeding.

Who knows though with thylacines though.
 
Last edited:
I too have been doubting that study since i first read it OR. Like all marsupials i believe Thylacines have a very powerful bite force, far stronger than meet the eye. When you look at this specimen:

11917677_740610519401324_8248696740072957258_n.jpg


It's impossible for me to believe they have weak jaws seeing that neck.
They did a lot of "studies" on specimen who spend their life in a cage with the wrong diet and in terrible conditions. There is a lot of pseudo science which has been doing the round sadly.
 
I definitely agree about the amount of nonsense that's talked about the tiger. I find it really frustrating.

I agree with that study that the back of the skull may have been a weak point, if it was used in a similar way to canids use theirs. I don't think they did though. I think we might, as you say, might be seeing a weakness where there isn't one. In fairness though, they do give a higher bite power for the tiger.

About the bite, have you read 'Bite Club', an earlier paper on the relative bite force quotient in extinct and extant mammalian predators, including the thylacine and the thylacoleonids?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1564077/

Pouches win hands down.
 
Thanks! Didn't know about that. Will definitely read it when i'm fully reposed.

The Thylacine is truly an amazing piece of work by Nature..
 
VinceWLB said:
Hello everyone. My first post, huge Thylacine enthusiast here.. from France.

That's a very good post oldrover, you make some great point, the lady is obviously confusing a fox and a Thylacine and after the video was posted a few weeks ago i must admit my belief for sightings in Victoria took a huge drop..

I believe that the animal in the video below (take a good look at that footprint) has more chance of being a Thylacine than any of the 2 videos posted by Neil Waters.

Click to expand...

Welcome to the FTMB!
 
Does the Thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) Still Exist?
By Branden Holmes

Introduction
It has now been more than 79 years since the last confirmed Thylacine died in the Hobart Zoo on September 7, 1936 (Guiler, 1985). Locked out of its sleeping quarters in the freezing cold like the rest of the zoo's last few remaining carnivores (Owen, 2003), it finally succumbed on that fateful night, the fate of its species as a whole mirrored in that one tragic event. For a species who's individuals traded hands live for such large sums of money only a few years previously, it is hugely ironic (and above all sad) that the last of its kind, the 'endling' as some would say, was treated so inhumanely. In fact it seems not to have been preserved in any museum collection in the world. It's remains seem to have simply been discarded like so much else. Even the identity of that last animal is still something of a mystery to this day, although we may be getting closer to solving the mystery, especially if that fabled body turns up in a garage sale like another supposedspecimen.

http://www.recentlyextinctspecies.com/13-articles/24-does-the-thylacine-still-exist

This is by far and away the best thylacine article I've ever read. With one exception, maybe not anything new to those who follow the subject, but an excellent synopsis of the myths and the evidence from the last eighty years. A really good read, and essential for anyone interested in developing a fair interest in the tiger. And an excellent antidote to the crap that's doing the rounds these days on Facebook.

Something there that was new on me, was a link in the references to a PDF regarding the New Guinea mandible. So far, the only trace of the thylacine from the island. It's the first time I've read about it in any sort of detail.
 
This came up today on the FB page of a bloke calling himself Thylacineman, I must say I find him to be OK.


It's a 28 minute interview with probably the most important thylacine witness of all time, Alison Reid. Aside from the fact that she saw so many tigers, she was well known enough to be sought out and interviewed right up until her death in 1997. I'm lucky enough to be acquainted on line with someone who met her in Tasmania back in the 70's. It's via this man's conversation with her that I learned tigers were grey.

So far I've only seen two thirds of it, but it's fascinating. Not only that, I'm not if sure some of what she says has ever been repeated elsewhere.

For those with a deeper interest, it may, as it did to me, come as a surprise that she mentions she believed the last specimen came from Tyenna. Given it's proximity to Maydena this sounds like good support for Elias Churchill's animal being the one. But, I've never heard her opinion cited.

Also fascinating to hear Hobart Zoo used tigers to barter with European zoos for more exotic, to Tasmania, animals.

When I was forced to put if off earlier, she was just starting to describe how to stuff a thylacine.
 
lordmongrove said:
The Tasmanian wolf in New Guinea

http://focusingonwildlife.com/news/could-the-tasmanian-tiger-be-hiding-out-in-new-guinea/
Click to expand...

It's still basically what Ned Terry came up with back in the 90's. And by the way I note there's no mention of his name in that article which is unfair.

This whole thing is pretty frustrating. It might still be there, but there's no new information coming out of the place. Although there was an expedition recently.

Thing is New Guinea is, as I understand it, the most dangerous country on the planet. So I hope your not planning anything in that direction.
 
oldrover said:
It's still basically what Ned Terry came up with back in the 90's. And by the way I note there's no mention of his name in that article which is unfair.

This whole thing is pretty frustrating. It might still be there, but there's no new information coming out of the place. Although there was an expedition recently.

Thing is New Guinea is, as I understand it, the most dangerous country on the planet. So I hope your not planning anything in that direction.
Click to expand...
I'd love to go but it would be costly. I'd need the weight of a tv production company behind me, or a rich philanthropist.
Nothing would surprise me out there. I'm also interested in giant Indo-pacific croc reports and giant monitor reports.
 
lordmongrove said:
I'd love to go but it would be costly. I'd need the weight of a tv production company behind me, or a rich philanthropist.
Nothing would surprise me out there. I'm also interested in giant Indo-pacific croc reports and giant monitor reports.
Click to expand...

I want someone to say that they think they've seen a live Mekosuchus from New Caledonia, or one of those big armoured land turtles who's names I've given up trying to remember. Even though I have one on my screen wallpaper. I'd suspend disbelief for either of those.

I'd love to see a giant Indo-Pacific croc too. Not that fused on giant monitors though, I don't think nature could improve on a perentie. Unless it was a giant perentie.
 
It's frustrating we haven't been getting anything new from New Guinea for the last 15 years, at least.

I did read about a credible sighting report however from the brother of the then provincial medical director. That was a daytime sighting at least 15 years ago in the Merauke region.

Also, i understand Singing Dogs are struggling outhere and are rarely seen, suggesting it might not be a great place for predators. Even though there are no roos there. There is still a large variety of preys available, small Wallabies, Pademelons, large birds.. I would expect Thylacine to be better hunter than Singing Dogs as well.
 
As I see it, the issue the signing dog raises isn't that the island is a place where predators struggle, there are plenty of dogs, as well as two quoll species. But that, the signing dog's problem, is as a feral domestic, it's being hybridised out of existence as a distinct breed. Across its once island wide distribution. I'm deliberately using the word 'breed', rather than subspecies.

All of which is bad news for any potential thylacine population. The signing dog's range was once very widespread, indicating that there would have been several thousand years of competition between them and a possible tiger population. Worse, is that now there are enough other dogs, across the entirety of that range, to make hybridisation a problem. So, in reality there are possibly more dogs, feral and domestic than ever before.

On the tiny dull sliver that is the upside, signing dogs don't seem to form large packs. Wild observation has apparently been of single animals, or groups of two. But, I'm getting that from Wikipedia, not the source articles. So, given that the best info we have for tiger social behaviour indicates they were solitary to forming small family groups of two adults, plus potentially related sub adults and young. Personally, I don't think that direct contact would necessarily favour the signing dogs over the tiger. But, who knows.
 
I don't believe in top predators of roughly the same size attacking each other, as long as the food supply is large enough, which i'm not totally convinced is the case in NG, unlike in the mainland.

Didn't know the singing dog problem was hybridization, i though that was more the Australian's Dingo problem. Basically not much is known about the singing dog but they are said to be shy and secretive, totally different from a domesticated dog.
Like the Dingo i know they are more solitary hunter but unlike them, they are rarely seen. They have almost never been photographed in the wild. The chance of getting a picture of a potential nocturnal Thylacine would be close to 0.

That said, i fear their decline could be due to lack of prey available and it would be the same problem for possible Thylacines.
 
There's plenty known about the signing dog, they're available worldwide from breeders, but not much is known about their behaviour in a feral state. There's no suggestion that I'm aware of that lack of prey is affecting their numbers. Just that interbreeding with other dogs is diluting their gene pool, so that now they're loosing their purity as a distinct breed.

Perhaps in their home range, 'domestic', in the sense that we'd use it here in Europe was the wrong way to put it. Obviously their presence on the island is only explainable by human transport. But, maybe co-habiting would be a better way to put the relationship between humans and NGSD's. Either way they're classed as Canis lupus dingo, without any further division. Although I'm not much of a fan of a lot (most/all) of the finer taxonomic divisions around the species/sub species level. Especially in canids.

I don't think apex predators tend to do too much interspecific fighting either. But they certainly do some. Just look at lions and hyenas. There has been a suggestion though that this may have potentially been the case between dingoes and tigers on mainland Australia, after its isolation. I can't find the paper at the moment. Equally, there are studies of changing human behaviour which exonerate the dingo. Tasmanian's isolation would also explain why a mainland culture/technology change would n't be transferred there. So, again who knows.

As I remember the dingo v tiger paper relied heavily on the fact that on the whole, but not always, mainland thylacine remains were smaller than those from Tasmania. From this, they proposed that they may have been vulnerable to direct conflict with dingoes, in this case who would have been both, larger than they, and at least to some degree, social hunters. Again though, as I recall the paper treated the tiger as a solitary hunter. And this is, as you'll know, an oversimplification of their behaviour.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top