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I can't see any frames where the head sor neck shape are damnimgly unfoxlike. If it has mange, it could have swollen skin due to scratching injuries and infections. I've seen mangey foxes in London with horribly swollen faces.

And, yes, even foxes with quite advanced mange can put on a turn of speed.
 
Ookay, well, balance of probability is - mangy fox then!

Sigh...
 
AngelAlice said:
Ookay, well, balance of probability is - mangy fox then!

Sigh...

Well, the movement to me STILL seems marsupial - the bushy tail however does not.

Yes, sigh, sad to think they really might be all gone. I am hoping against hope.
 
Tough one to call - way too short and fuzzy.

Though there are certain aspects of marsupial movement there - ie slight jumpy movement propelled by the hind legs, it is really not clear enough to tell.

However, I have seen foxes move and they do move differently IMO.
 
Based on the running, and the body shape, my instincts say "fox". I always have problems with determining scale on these things, though.
 
Anome_ said:
I always have problems with determining scale on these things, though.

I agree on this one - I wouldn't bet five bucks on this being the one or the other. Colour though - hm - I really can't form an opinion from this vid at all.

PS: I just read that the whole vid is over 8 minutes long and this is just a teaser.

That could change the ballgame. Hope they will show it here too.
 
the man that took the video also managed to get some dna samples that have been tested...its a red fox :(
 
Did anyone post the thylacine footage for comparison with the specimin in the OP? I couldn't find a link on this thread, so...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMmQexGLYFo&feature=related

After watching this and comparing the mannerisms of both they do share that marsupial bounding quality that Zilch5 is referring to. I'm totally in agreement with you about the manner of its movement, from lifelong experience observing various marsupials here in SA. The shape could be a greyhound but it doesn't seem like any fox I've seen trotting. They tend to maintain a more horizontal momentum at that pace than this specimin, which demonstrates quite a bounding, even rocking motion. A very interesting comparison can be made. The skipping quality of a fox trotting along suggests lightness of foot while the unknown specimin doesn't impress me as lightfooted - more weight in the impact and the vertical variation of each hop. No expert here, tho. Just my layman's observations. You guys have covered the rest of the forensics, however I can't see anyone determining the species from the footage alone.

The likelihood? Is it a thylacine? - very low probability; much higher probability of it being a greyhound or related species of dog.

Furthermore, could they continue breeding 80 years beyond their formally confirmed extinction without their numbers increasing to the point that someone would have captured a definitive specimin, let alone a mere photograph or film? - also extremely doubtful.
 
The shape could be a greyhound but it doesn't seem like any fox I've seen trotting.

I'm very familiar with grey hound like dogs and it really doesn't look like one of those, personally I doubt it's a fox either, but as Fats Tuesday conclusively pointed out it isn't a thylacine, so we're left with a canid of some sort.

Furthermore, could they continue breeding 80 years beyond their formally confirmed extinction without their numbers increasing to the point that someone would have captured a definitive specimin, let alone a mere photograph or film? - also extremely doubtful.

The main strike against it being a thylacine, though I must admit I was willing to overlook this, is that it was filmed on the mainland. One point though, the Thylacine was not declared or considered extinct in 1936, that date is the result of hindsight. Official expeditions, and I can never remember the name of the man involved, found evidence of their survival in the wild after Benjamin's death, also Eric Guiller found evidence as late as the sixties. Though later in life became less hopeful of their continued existence.

Personally these days I doubt they're still around, but I don't think that they've been gone much more than about twenty or so years.
 
Tasmanian tiger pelt might be African antelope

By Carl Ciaramella

Originally published February 11, 2011 at 6:19 p.m., updated February 14, 2011 at 11:47 a.m.

Fallbrook resident Bill Warren believes he may have a valuable animal pelt belonging to the now-extinct Tasmanian tiger, but a SDSU biology professor says it’s more likely the skin of an African antelope.

Warren said he bought the unusual looking animal skin at a garage sale in Rainbow in June for $5. After a couple weeks of Internet sleuthing, he became convinced it was a Tasmanian tiger.

The Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine, was a dog-like marsupial carnivore native to Tasmania. Due to hunting and loss of habitat, the tiger was declared extinct in 1936, when the last known animal died in captivity.

Most of the known skins reside in museums and universities. All of which makes a pelt worth upward of $60,000 to private collectors.

But whether Warren’s skin is actually a thylacine is unclear. SDSU biology professor J. David Archibald inspected the pelt last Wednesday and wrote in an e-mail that it appeared to be a zebra duiker, a small African antelope.

“While I cannot make any definitive assessment other than the pelt is genuine, I lean toward it being a zebra duiker based on the cumulative evidence,” Archibald wrote in the e-mail provided by Warren. “Even if this identification is correct, this is a threatened species, and the pelt might be valuable if it can be sold legally.”

However, he wrote that one of his colleagues in Sydney believed the pelt was indeed a thylacine.

Warren wants to send it to the Australian auction house, which would pay for expensive DNA testing that would conclusively determine the species, but he can’t.

Although there haven’t been any confirmed sightings of the animal in more than 70 years, it’s still listed as an endangered species by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service, and Warren must obtain a special permit to sell or ship the pelt over state lines.

The department denied his request for a permit because he couldn’t prove the species of the pelt. It also questioned the age of the pelt, saying it looked too new to belong to the long-dead species.

Warren appears to be caught in a catch-22 because he can’t ship the pelt to Australia for testing without the permit, but he can’t get the permit without proving the pelt is genuine. He’s been pressing the department for the past four months.

“I told them I’m flat broke and need to sell it,” Warren said.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife service did not return calls seeking comment.

© Copyright 2011 The San Diego Union-Tribune, LLC

Scradje
 
Certainly looks more like a Thylacine pelt going by the length and width of the stripes.
 
A pelt that looked very like a thylacines was brougt to the Weird Weekend in 2010 and examined under a powerul microscope by Las Thomas. It turned out to be a zebra duiker (Cephalophus zebra).
 
The way the end points of the stripes at the rear end start to converge is characteristic of the zebra duiker. Not so of the thylacine as far as I'm aware.
 
Very interesting article, linked-to above. All oh-so-tantalising; but overall impression, that things don't look bright for the species.

Small nitpick re the article: it says that "the last known wild individual killed was in 1918". Date that I have for that event, is 1930. By my understanding, a fair number of anecdotes of thylacine encounters in the wild in the 1920s, though animal of course getting very rare by then.
 
You're right Wilf Batty shot the last in 1930, anyway there were certainly captures well after 1918. Plus there's a couple of incidents reported from much later. The last I remember was in the 1990's I can't imagine it was genuine, despite photo's of a thylacine's distinctive paws.
 
Extinct Australian thylacine hunted like a big cat

The extinct Australian carnivore known as a thylacine was an ambush predator that could not outrun its prey over long distances, a new analysis shows.

The thylacine has been variously described as a "marsupial wolf" or a "Tasmanian tiger".

This study suggests the latter term might be more appropriate; the animal's hunting strategy was more like that of a big cat than that of a wolf.

Details appear in Biology Letters journal.

Thylacines once roamed mainland Australia, but their numbers declined as humans settled the continent from around 40,000 years ago and as the dingo was introduced around 4,000 years ago.

Eventually, they were confined to the island of Tasmania, which was dingo-free. The species was eventually wiped out during a large-scale eradication effort in the 19th Century and 20th centuries.

BBC Source (full article)
 
Very interesting with good links to similar articles. Here are some links to related pieces on the genetic article.

http://thylacine.psu.edu/supplement.pdf

http://thylacine.psu.edu/thyla2.html

The only thing is some of the background info used in the article is popular myth, such as the 1936 extinction date. This is the year they received official protection, extinction was declared fifty years later.

The fact that protection was granted the year the last captive specimen died is sometimes quoted as an example of governmental stupidity, i.e. to protect an animal only after it became extinct. Whereas in fact it was known through official expeditions, that there was still a wild population in the North West.

The Thylacine Museum website, which also has info on the Fleming expedition, also casts doubts on some other ‘facts’ about Benjamin the last known specimen.

Firstly there’s no evidence that during its lifetime the animal was ever named, the first time Benjamin was used was in the 1960’s, and then by someone whose claims to have worked at Hobart zoo at the time, proved to be false.

Secondly the only contemporary reference to the animal’s gender, made by naturalist David Fleay who was lucky enough to be bitten by it, categorically states it was a male.

http://www.naturalworlds.org/thylacine/
 
I seem to recall reading a few years ago (lack anything definite to cite, and may well be wrong) that the species was declared officially extinct 70, rather than 50, years after 1936: i.e. in 2006.

Latching on to mention in the current “kakapo” thread, of hypothesised hope for endangered species, in being domesticated and kept as pets: there is a suggestion that this scenario was not unknown, with thylacines. Asking forgiveness for forthcoming bits of self-quoting – a passage in the IMO splendid book about the thylacine, and Tasmanian wildlife in general, “Carnivorous Nights” (described in a post of mine of 8/3/2010, on this thread), cites the words of a Tasmanian thylacine “researcher / believer”:

“...a surprising number of Tasmanians had kept captured tigers as pets. ‘Ones taken at an early age made a hell of a good pet. There was no wagging the tail – they’re physically incapable of it – but they would sit by the table while you were eating and they would follow you along. Very loyal.’ Of course, there were limits to what these wild predators would put up with. ‘There was a guy...he had one. He thought he would take him out on a lead and the tiger bit him on the backside.’ “

And – mentioned in a post of mine of 28/6/2010 on the “Possible post 1936 Thylacine sighting” thread – I understand that there is a work of alternative-history fiction, which has a scenario of pet thylacines becoming all the rage in the nineteenth century among the British upper classes; a land-office business done in exporting the beasts to the mother country, and getting them to captive-breed.

One feels that the thylacine had the most horribly bad luck: just one or two slightly more favourable turns of events, and we’d likely still have the species, even if no longer truly in the wild.
 
Brief mention here of there being at least one example of captive breeding. The source that it quotes appears to be reputable.

http://www.naturalworlds.org/thylacine/ ... itsd_1.htm

More can be found in an excerpt from Paddle's 'The last Tasmanian Tiger. The history and extinction of the thylacine' on Google books by typing in thylacine captive breeding. Where there's some conjecture about why breeding in captivity was so rare.
 
Thanks for the links -- the Paddle one, especially interesting. So it would seem to be down to: before the mid-20th century, zoo conditions were ususally poor, with no attempt to make them "as much as possible, like in nature"; and with little deliberate intent to encourage the animals to breed. As regards breeding, attitude was seemingly: "if it happens, fine; if not, not".

Seems to us today, a hideously unenlightened attitude on the part of zoos; but such a view is from our perspective, and "then, was then".
 
Excerpts from an article on research regarding the Thylacine's hunting behavior

Both its nicknames reflect the fact that the thylacine was an awesome creature — one that makes the human race kick itself for helping
to drive such animals to extinction — but new research suggests that the “Tasmanian tiger”/“marsupial wolf” was indeed more tiger-like than wolfish.

Apparently, it's all in the elbow, which shows that the animal was more of an ambush predator — like cats — than one that chased its food — like wolves, hunting in packs. Australian Geographic explains:

the thylacine elbow joint allowed it to twist its arm in different directions, making it easier to wrestle and kill prey at close range or in a surprise attack. The arms of dog-like species, such as dingoes or wolves, are far less flexible and are usually fixed in a palm-down position, making it easier to run long distances to wear down a target.

http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/05/06/tas ... thylacine/
 
I have to say of all the cryptids, this is the one i am 100% sure is out there. Having talked to witesses like the late Peter Chapel. Also Professor Henry Nix and his BIOCLIM findings. If i were hedging my bets i'd sat Irian Jaya is the best place to look.
 
Would that really be the best way to go. I'm just thinking back to what lordmongrove said in another thread about the Orang Pendek, in which he mentioned a local baiting program.

I'm just assuming here but wouldn't the money needed to send an expedition over from Europe be more productively spent employing and equipping someone who was already based in the area. But then I suppose as people are the same everywhere you'd never know if they were really doing what you paid them for.
 
You are right, i just have hundreds of ideas about what the cfz can do fizzing through the leaking sponge bag i laughably call a brain. :D
 
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