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Thylacines (Post-1936 Sightings)

Years ago a sensible bloke in charge of an airport fire brigade told me he had been camping in central Oz and heard a noise outside his tent . It was a T t , he said. However we see pics of hungry dingos on Fraser island and possibly a thin dingo at night is similar or a sandy dingo no stripes.
 
There's an awful lot of wishful thinking going on Ancient on this subject. And like some people, there are those who reckon that If they repeat something often enough, people will believe 'em.

I have seen too many blurred, out of focus and extremely low definition photo's of 'Ole Stripey' [spare me bloody days] that those people are convinced is a 'new species of Thylacine', on facebook, that I have to refrain from swearing at the monitor. Somebody suggests a photo is possibly the rear end of a Thylacine, and before you know it, the story has grown exponentially to the point where someone swears that they'd recognise that 'thylo muzzle with it's sweet little ears' anywhere...even though it's a badly blurred rear end photo of nothing I can recognise.

Now, after saying all that - there is a curiosity out there, but it surely didn't look like a Thylacine to me.
 
Spots and stripes may look alike. The tiger quoll is in Qld and western quoll "Once found across 70% of the Australian continent, the western quoll is now confined to south-western corner of Western Australia. " Some feral cats are selected to survive by size and may specialise on sheep and calves . Possibly domestic cats came from large ancestors and are reviving their roots .
 
ancient said:
Years ago a sensible bloke in charge of an airport fire brigade told me he had been camping in central Oz and heard a noise outside his tent . It was a T t , he said. However we see pics of hungry dingos on Fraser island and possibly a thin dingo at night is similar or a sandy dingo no stripes.
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Thylacines are not really thin, they are actually stronger and stealthier than Dingoes. The difference between them is unmistakable, when looking at the tail.

Apart from Percy Trezise, nobody bothered asking Aboriginals about Thylacines in remote areas which is a shame. Those are the people (if they accept answering of course) who would know best about this incredible marsupial.
 
Wikipedia "Interbreeding of dingos with other domestic dogs" says that "Broken colour-patterns, ... and piebald striped patterns were also more prevalent in Southeast-Australia" (than central Aust). It has a pic of a dingo with striped fore-legs at Uluru . Thylacines and dingos both are built more like kelpies or even greyhounds than Labradors , which is expected for hunters .
 
MungomanII said:
There's an awful lot of wishful thinking going on Ancient on this subject. And like some people, there are those who reckon that If they repeat something often enough, people will believe 'em.

I have seen too many blurred, out of focus and extremely low definition photo's of 'Ole Stripey' [spare me bloody days] that those people are convinced is a 'new species of Thylacine', on facebook, that I have to refrain from swearing at the monitor. Somebody suggests a photo is possibly the rear end of a Thylacine, and before you know it, the story has grown exponentially to the point where someone swears that they'd recognise that 'thylo muzzle with it's sweet little ears' anywhere...even though it's a badly blurred rear end photo of nothing I can recognise.

Now, after saying all that - there is a curiosity out there, but it surely didn't look like a Thylacine to me.
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There is a better FB page opened recently, with quite a few grown ups on it. www.facebook.com/groups/ThylacineDebate/

On this page the phrase 'Ol stripey' is banned. Why do they call it that anyway? In their mad little world the thylacine has lost its stripes.
 
oldrover said:
That was only true in some parts of their range, in others thylacines were significantly smaller than dingoes.
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Yes, i know some were pretty small, the specimen found in the cave on the Nullarbor was a midget, by the way is it even a sure thing it was a fully grown specimen?

My point though is that taller doesn't necessarily means stronger, Dingoes would have to be at least 10 cm higher (to the shoulders) to be the same weight of a Thylacine.
The other day, i watched a documentary about some Dingoes in WA, at some point they showed a mother Dingo trying to feed on a Kangaroo roadkill, i was very surprised how she struggled to open up the carcass. I can't ever imagine a Thylacine struggling this much.
 
VinceWLB said:
is it even a sure thing it was a fully grown specimen?
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I don't know, but the Nullarbor (I always thought that was an Aboriginal term, it never struck me it was null arbour-no trees) is part of the region covered by this study. http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0034877

But then, I've also heard that some of the largest thylacine skulls are from elsewhere on the mainland.

VinceWLB said:
My point though is that taller doesn't necessarily means stronger, Dingoes would have to be at least 10 cm higher (to the shoulders) to be the same weight of a Thylacine.
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Yes, that is true, but the estimated body mass of the SW thylacines dealt with there are something like 37% less in the smallest thylacines compared to the largest dingoes. That will reflect a strength difference. Also I think that in a case where they're evenly matched weight wise, it'd come down to strength and weakness in different areas.

I think thylacines are smaller than people generally assume they were.
 
oldrover said:
I don't know, but the Nullarbor (I always thought that was an Aboriginal term, it never struck me it was null arbour-no trees) is part of the region covered by this study. http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0034877

But then, I've also heard that some of the largest thylacine skulls are from elsewhere on the mainland.
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Thanks, had never seen that specific study before, although i have read 80% of it elsewhere. I think where it has its flaws is how they estimate body weight based solely on bone structure, i bet most Thylacines were heavier than their estimates, yes it's true female Thylacine were smaller than male Dingoes in that region but i have read female Thylacines were far more agile than males, possibly to make up for the size disadvantage...

For what its worth i think the smaller species of Thylacine from the mainland is extinct as i have never read a credible report of small Thylacines but i bet there are still some larger ones.. Some of the reports from Far North Queensland where descriptions like "considerably larger than a Dingo" abound.. i doubt a Dingo would get anywhere near it.

There is something about these marsupials though that make them far stronger than meet the eye. Did you see that video of a Quoll dragging a Wallaby carcass across a road? Never i would have suspected this much strength and i can't see a canid or even a felid of the same weight being able to do this.
 
VinceWLB said:
For what its worth i think the smaller species of Thylacine from the mainland is extinct as i have never read a credible report of small Thylacines but i bet there are still some larger ones.. Some of the reports from Far North Queensland where descriptions like "considerably larger than a Dingo" abound.. i doubt a Dingo would get anywhere near it.
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There's no suggestion it was a 'species' or even sub species, it was just a size variation in the population.

I don't know where in the mainland the largest specimens came from, but I don't accept any modern sightings as being of thylacines, mainland or Tasmania. For me, the chance of misidentification is so high as to render them useless. So I don't recognise a connection between them and any remains anyway.

And there's no evidence that any have survived there for about 2,500 years or so. And plenty of evidence to suggest they didn't. As far as I'm aware there are no Aboriginal thylacine traditions, which is exactly what you'd expect. Paddle's marrukurli (like much of what he says) is completely out as far as I'm concerned and doesn't correspond well to his source material (Dorothy Turnbridge) at all well.
 
I've got the feeling this is another one like the last New Guinea expedition. As in, it's a general wildlife survey with the tiger's name attached to highlight something or other.
 
lordmongrove said:
http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world...-in-australia/ar-BByLUXR?li=AAnZ9Ug&ocid=iehp

A new Tasmanian wolf search in Northern Australia.
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Also in the Independent - I'd love there existence to be confirmed more than just about anything else ever, but if I was a betting man (and I am, occasionally) I'd put the odds at well under 100/1. Well under. I just find it hard to believe that there's an area of wilderness so large that a viable population of a largish carnivore has gone undiscovered. But, hey, I can still hope...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/s...redator-hunt-science-queensland-a7649561.html
 
Does seem odd when the expedition leader says " there is a very slim chance of seeing a Tiger" Mmmm.
 
cycleboy2 said:
Also in the Independent - I'd love there existence to be confirmed more than just about anything else ever, but if I was a betting man (and I am, occasionally) I'd put the odds at well under 100/1. Well under. I just find it hard to believe that there's an area of wilderness so large that a viable population of a largish carnivore has gone undiscovered. But, hey, I can still hope...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/s...redator-hunt-science-queensland-a7649561.html
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I've been down to Tasmania looking for the Tasmanian wolf three times now. I can confirm there is masses of wilderness. Miles ands miles of uninhabited mountains and forests in the west of the island. The human population is less than half a million and they are mostly in the east.
 
lordmongrove said:
I've been down to Tasmania looking for the Tasmanian wolf three times now. I can confirm there is masses of wilderness. Miles ands miles of uninhabited mountains and forests in the west of the island. The human population is less than half a million and they are mostly in the east.
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Where apparently no human has walked?

Lets hope.:drink:
 
Thing is if they "have cross-checked the descriptions we received of eye shine colour, body size and shape, animal behaviour, and other attributes, and these are inconsistent with known attributes of other large-bodied species in north Queensland such as dingoes, wild dogs or feral pigs.”

http://www.viralthread.com/an-anima...n-spotted/?utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=vt (this is the same quote, but from a diferent source as I can't look at MSN, while on here because it blanks out all the text on the message board for some reason)

Then they've also ruled out thylacines as, unless they've got a complete catalouge of every wild dog in North Queensland. Thylacine body proportions fall well within the range of the wide variety of shapes found in the domestic or feral dog.

I'm not sure if this one of the articles which they claim that they're keeping the witnesses identity confidential, or one of the ones that features media interviews with those witnesses who quite happily give their names and former occupations.

I am so sick of the thylacine being used.
 
Hi all. New to the forum but am a member of most of the fb Thylacine groups. Have read all 26 pages of this topic and look forward to contributing in the future.
 
Thanks for the welcome. I noticed in a post a few pages back it was mentioned that the 1946 David Fleay hair samples were not from a Thylacine. Just wondering what source of information was used to form that conclusion? Cheers.
 
G'day Tigerific. Species specific hair has properties that are recognisable - to the point that human hair can be grouped in certain ethnic divisions. I have a database specifically for differentiating genera and species which I've used for identifying arboreal and ground dwelling quadrupeds. It is a common practice to suspend tubing that has an adhesive applied to the inside to sample hair/fur when doing animal diversity surveys.

As we have Thylacine remains which include fur/hair, it would not be difficult to identify if a sample is, or is not belonging to a thylacine.
 
Tigerific said:
Thanks for the welcome. I noticed in a post a few pages back it was mentioned that the 1946 David Fleay hair samples were not from a Thylacine. Just wondering what source of information was used to form that conclusion? Cheers.
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Hi Tigerific. It was probably me who said that, truth is I can never remember where I came across that info, I periodically come across it again, then forget where. I do remember, the hairs submitted from the Fleay expedition were compared, as Mungoman describes above, to known thylacine samples and they were found not to be a match. As I recall, the researcher added though that they could possibly have come from an area on the animal which they didn't have reference samples for. I don't know if they were compared to other species.
 
Hi oldrover. Ok, think that testing was shown on the MonsterQuest doco performed on hairs found in an envelope in the Hobart Museum archives. Performed over 60 years after the event. Yet in 1946, the actual hairs and some faeces were tested by Dr. Joseph Pearson, director of the Tasmanian Museum, who found them to be from a Thylacine beyond any reasonable doubt. Something's not adding up here.
 
Tigerific said:
Hi oldrover. Ok, think that testing was shown on the MonsterQuest doco performed on hairs found in an envelope in the Hobart Museum archives. Performed over 60 years after the event. Yet in 1946, the actual hairs and some faeces were tested by Dr. Joseph Pearson, director of the Tasmanian Museum, who found them to be from a Thylacine beyond any reasonable doubt. Something's not adding up here.
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Tigerific you're a star. I had no idea that Pearson examined Fleay's samples. I'm not primarily concerned with the result as such, I think there were thylacines on the West Coast at that time whether samples were recovered or not, but the info you've brought to light is very important to me as I'm researching the relationship between Fleay and Pearson at the moment. Thank you. Do you have a source I can see for this?

As for the results of Pearson's examination, my initial thoughts would be to ask how did he determine the scat was from a thylacine? As in what method did he use? And as for the hairs, again the same question.
 
Just to add, on the importance of the results, my main concern isn't Fleay but his colleague Daly. If he did get it wrong in 1945, did he also get in wrong in '37/'38?
 
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