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Oldrover, If we could afford it we would employ local people to do regular searches or stay in taget areas allo over the world. At the moment we are planning to pay a very trustworthy guide to do regular searches and use a number of trail cams in Sumatra.
 
I'm sure that's so. I wasn't questioning any methods of yours, just wondering about the efficacy of expeditions in general.
 
I agree, but I was just wondering if the conventional expedition is the most cost effective to results way to go.
 
We wouldn't nesisarily do it the same way if we had less money and time constraints. We will be giving a three of trail cams to our guide Sahar who lives in Kerinci national park. He will be setting these up in the deep jungle for long periods all year round.
 
Well good luck with it, personally I'd guess that's pretty likely to get results.
 
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.

Came across a brief 1993 article by Paddle entitled 'Thylacines Associated with the royal Zoological Society of New South Wales', which provided one of my favourite anecdotes so far;


'Thylacines were frequently kept in captivity by private individuals throughout the nineteenth a n d early twentieth centuries, and thus it was not unknown for specimens to occasionally appear for sale in the canine sections of agricultural shows'

(Truly enormous url, but will provide it if wanted)
 
o/r: thanks, but for self personally, ready to take this one "as read" -- will be Internet-less for roughly a week from tomorrow, anyway.

Repeating self somewhat, from a few months ago -- I have to feel that this species was wretchedly unlucky. Just a very little bit better fortune, and it could still be (for sure) with us today, even if not properly in the wild. If it had just been more inclined to breed in captivity -- one gathers from Mr. Paddle that a hundred years-plus ago, people didn't have all that much clue about how to "make that happen".
 
Wow, i've never heard of thy;acines at dog shows! Years ago i was writing a Dr Who novel (it was never compleated and the rites to publishing Dr Who books whent back to the BBC ant their in house clique) one of the characters had a pet thylacine! I knew they adapted quite well to captivity but i had no idea they could be that tractable.
The url would be appreciated if you can find it.
 
Thylacine passes extinction test

People should stop wasting time and money looking for the Tasmanian tiger, according to new Australian research.

Dr Diana Fisher and Dr Simon Blomberg from the University of Queensland's school of biological sciences report their findings in a recent issue of Conservation Biology.

Since the last wild thylacine was captured in 1933, there have been ongoing searches and numerous unconfirmed sightings of the carnivorous marsupial.

But, says Fisher, such efforts are misguided.

"There's been more search efforts for the thylacine than any other mammal globally," she says.

"I think that's just a waste of money."...

Thylacines were quite frequently sighted before they disappeared, says Fisher, and this, together with the huge effort made to look for them, virtually rules out the chance that they still exist.

The researchers estimate the thylacine became extinct in the wild in 1935...

Bollocks. To me this is as slipshod as the selective sort of crap you get from the poorer end of cryptozoology. Check your bloody facts.

“ you are some sort of hillside grazer of culture. You are a sheep, a? cow, what is a biologicaly classified as a ruminant. Fuck you.”

Rich Hall

Sadly though I think the overall conclusion is probably correct.
 
o/r: Yes, 1935, hey? These characters not as omniscient as it seems they'd like to think; and plenty of strong pointers to the species lingering on in the wild, well past that date.

Admittedly the erudite Mr. Paddle, in "The Last Tasmanian Tiger", is pretty much of the same opinion as these Queensland bods: so far as he's concerned, it was "curtains" for the species on 7th September 1936, when the last thylacine known for certain to have been seen (the Hobart Zoo one) died. It would seem to me, though, that Paddle is taking the rigid but basically fully reasonable "mainstream" line, of "last known-for-sure specimen, is the basis I'm going by: present me with a thylacine, alive or recently dead, and I'll change my mind."

With great regret, I concur with you, that per present indications -- the species would appear probably to be gone.
 
Here are the seven known thylacine films as collected over on 'The Thylacine Museum'.

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

Although most of this may be familiar to people here I think it's worth posting. Not just because it includes all known thylacine footage and gives rough dates and locations for them all, but because I think these days when they're being reinvented as a two tone pop icon it's good to remind ourselves what they really looked like. Also who doesn't want to see a thylacine eating a rabbit in the middle of London.

Another reason is the Fleay footage (film 5) along with films 4 and 6 are pretty much all that's ever shown. Leaving the others such as the London Zoo films, although short, pretty blurry and probably well known in part as stills, largely ignored.

Another interesting feature of film 2 is that it features a female not only with a distended pouch but also carrying fat at the base of her tail.

Well worth a look in my opinion.
 
Fascinating footage. Standard human-type response experienced: it's tantalising that the total existing, is so little ! Still, one should be thankful that the species lasted at all, into the moving-pictures era.
 
General question how many of you believe there is a possibility for the creature to still roam the earth? Scale from 1-10. 10 Being positive 1 being No way.

To answer this long question long after the OP has stopped asking it here; 0.01
 
Thanks - I only just got around to watching it. I am hoping against hope that it is still here.
 
It isn't I'm afraid. They only made it into the 20th by the skin of their teeth, they'd already been wiped out in many places in the 19th. Forget the 21st.
 
I disagree i think they are still there and are far more likley than any of the other classic cryptids.
 
(To be fair I should point out that I found the link to this documentary on the 'quest for thylocoleo.com site)

This film has got a few mistakes in the narration but there's plenty of expert opinion delivered by most of the major figures in thylacine research, most notably Guiler and Mooney. It's also got interviews with some of the names from the past such as Wilf Batty who recounts, in a thick northern English accent, his thoughts and actions leading up to and including this;

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Bv1n0yWwEj8/T ... GP1520.JPG

As well as Alison Reid who relates how the last captive specimen was received by the public in her father's zoo, and Pat Wessing's affecting if not especially convincing sighting.

It's a balanced view of the state of affairs back in the late 90's.

To be found here;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krf9f6iBrqU
 
I found this documentary fascinating, but not what you would call heartening: it confirmed my already strong feeling (echoing your sentiments on this matter, oldrover) that it appears 99.75% certain that, as purely-flesh-and-blood anyway, the thylacine is at the present time, extinct. If by some miracle a very few specimens still survive, their numbers would seem so low that the species is doomed.

A telling moment for me in the documentary, was Nick Mooney's remark that thylacine-sighting reports over the past three-quarter-century are overall as numerous / good in quality, from the Australian mainland, as from Tasmania (plus, almost all data is in the form of anecdotal accounts -- next-to-no hard evidence). And Mooney is convinced that the species does not exist on the mainland; and I would concur -- with the data for-and-against that I see, I find the notion of a flesh-and-blood population of thylacines on the mainland today, impossible to buy. (Others' mileages will, expectably, vary.)

My "take" -- others will no doubt disagree -- on the continuing sighting reports (Tasmania, and mainland), is that the least unlikely conclusion is: where it is not a matter of things being "all within people's heads", one way and another; then the paranormal is somehow in play. Regarding everything said in this post, I'd greatly wish to be able to think things were otherwise -- would love the thylacine still to be with us, and with a chance of continuing survival.
 
Following on from an earlier post, I'm starting a new thread because in some tiny way I can't help feeling that something has actually been achieved.

A few weeks ago I came across this photo on a German forum;

http://s1170.photobucket.com/albums/r53 ... ephoto.jpg

I PM'ed it to a couple of regular posters here to see what they thought. I must admit at first I thought the animal in it was dead and realised that, as it was a captive, if that was right then it'd make the picture quite rare, and possibly significant. One of those I posted it to correctly recognised that it was a live animal, but I wasn't sure so I also sent it off to the only thylacine expert I knew how t contact. I'll not say who as in their e-mails back there are short statements that make it very clear they like privacy.

The reply I got told me that the photo was rare and was probably taken in the early 1900's sometime before 1910, it was believed to be of a female known to be have been kept in London Zoo at that time. There is another rarely seen photo of what was believed to be the same animal in the same surroundings.

A few days ago I came across this old documentary on the Photographic Archive at London Zoo, which featured the photo and its back story. On the film it was stated that rather than being another albeit rather rare twentieth century photo, it was in fact taken in 1864 and is the only known photo of a living thylacine dating from the 19th C. The photographer was given as being Frank Haes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... EZmrJTIw0Q

Thinking that he might be interested I passed the documentary on to the other chap. After seeing the documentary he replied, it turns out that based on the info in the film he’s realised that it is in fact not only the first photo of a thylacine ever recorded, but one that was not reckoned to still exist. That Haes had taken the photo was well known but it had been believed to have been lost years ago. Up until yesterday it had been thought that the earliest photo still in existence was this famous image taken in 1869.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_hC30sWZ-gmw/R ... 69TMAG.jpg

Obviously the archives at London Zoo know that the photo was Haes’s and its age, but I’m not sure they know it’s the first ever taken. Certainly, and quite understandably being so similar to another set of shots, the photo wasn't recognised for what it was by at least some other thylacine experts, even though the image itself had been well known to them for years.
 
Thanks for posting that - very interesting!
 
Well done old rover,this is the first time I have posted anything and hope it goes to the write place. It sounds like you put a lot of solid work into finding this picture if your not a detective then perhaps you should consider it.well done again.
:D
 
Well thanks very much, but to be honest I only stumbled across the things by chance, I had no idea there was a supposedly lost photo.
 
Excellent documentary, oldrover! :) I'd so love to see new footage of this animal, with David Attenborough describing its habits and history. It seems fairly clearly extinct in Australia and Tasmania. I suppose I wouldn't rule out its continued existance in New Guinea. After all, if we rule out the possible survival of an animal known to have once existed in a little explored location, we may as well dimiss from consideration every man-beast, lake monster and prehistoric reptile described by natives and modern explorers, and this message board's moderators will suddenly get bored.
 
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