Crikey! Thylacine Update
Posted by: Loren Coleman on June 14th, 2006
Australian cryptozoologist Debbie Hynes has sent along the following update to be shared with you:
There have been a lot of sightings down there. There are two thylacine "hot-spots" in Victoria. One is the Portland area – as far inland as Ozenkadnook and west as far as the Koorong, a coastal national park in South Australia, next door to Victoria. The other is he so-called Foster-Wilson’s Promontory-Wonthaggi "Triangle". The animal (thylacine?) is part of local legend, being known as the "Wonthaggi Monster", and the small country town of Foster even has a billboard on its outskirts boasting of "Coming Attractions".
Said billboard features a picture of, guess what, a thylacine. It’s hard to know what to make of it all. Apparently there have been more reports of thylacines from these two areas, which of course are on mainland Australia, than from the whole of the island state of Tasmania, their former home.
It’s firmly held my many CZ researchers that Tasmanian thylacines were released circa 1905-1910 into the then newly created Wilson’s Prom Nat Park, and also into the Portland Bay area. Apparently there was a band of naturalists known as the "Thylacine Preservation Society" who undertook the deed because it was obvious, by that time, that the Tasmanian thylacine’s days were numbered. It’s certainly feasible because, technically, the feat would have presented little difficulty. Trade between Tasmania and the mainland was, in those long-gone days, conducted by coastal sailing vessels and small steamers. There were experienced thylacine handlers available too. Thylacines captured from the wild were at that time exported from Hobart and Launceston in Tasmnia to mainland and foreign zoos. Their destinations were mainly Melbourne, Sydney, London, Berlin, Cologne and Washington (I think?). So basically the problem would have come down to a question of money & motivation: the animals were routinely shipped across the Strait and a minor "diversion" would have been easy to set up.
I’m starting a modest survey down in Gippsland right now. It’s a follow up to that out-of-place Bobuck discovery I made about 18 months ago. Hah, it just goes to show how much easier it is to attract "official" interest in "known" animals!
To read more, go here, www.thylacoleo.com and click "Bobuck Underground."
The survey will use my infrared cameras and I’m hoping it’ll be the biggest study of nocturnal animals that’s ever been done in the region. As it happens the main study area is the Foster-Wilson’s Prom-Wonthaggi part of Gippsland.
Crikey! I only just realised(!!) ….. that’s The Triangle! 🙂 But, of course, I can’t talk about thylacines. They don’t exist, right? 😉
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Those pix made me think of the so called chupa body they found in Texas. Most thought it was a coyote hybrid of some sort, maybe it was a thylacine – coyote hybrid. 🙂
Again really hope that they survived all this time. Those cute little huge jawed animals!
I wonder what their temperment and intelligence is like compared to that of a dog or wolf (being that they are actually marsupials rather than a type of canid)
I hope they have survived also. I wonder how long before the croc hunter guy goes out their and try’s and find one of these? Good luck with the infrared cameras. I know BF does not like his picture taken with these infrared and trap type cameras. At least the real ones anyway. Just the hoaxers.
How do you prenounce thylacine??
Oh wow. This is really exciting. 🙂
Is there any factual basis for researchers’ belief that thylacines were released onto the mainland shortly before their extinction? What I’m asking is, what reason do they have to believe this happened?
I know it is a disputed topic but I have heard little evidence supporting the thylacine’s mainland release.
To cor2879 – It has been said that thylacines are very timid animals which do their best to avoid humans. They are mainly nocturnal/crepuscular hunters. There are only a couple records of thylacine aggression towards humans, one of which involving a very famous picture of “Benjamin” opening his/her huge jaws – after the photographer took the picture, the thylacine allegedly bit him in the behind!
“How do you pronounce Thylacine??”
I believe it is pronounced ‘Thigh-luh-seen’
Lesley – a hybrid would be impossible, in that they’re from two entirely different subclasses/superorders of mammals – you would have more chance of success crossing a bat and a dolphin, since they are at least both placentals.
Cor2879 – in terms of intellect? Probably not that brainy. Marsupials are notably low down on the mammalian brainpower scale.
If the Thylacine Preservation Society really existed, and they did what was claimed, and what we are now seeing are the offspring of those animals they rescued…well, then one day, their names shall be celebrated in song and film, and many will be their praises. Rightly too, for they were heroes (Unlike those misguided miscreants in the secretive League of Extraordinary Cane Toads)…
You go Debbie!
cor2879 – you asked about temperament and intelligence…
Robert Paddle’s book, ‘The Last Tasmanian Tiger: The History and Extinction of the Thylacine‘ has quite extensive notes on thylacine behaviour. By all reports, they were extremely intelligent creatures.
Additionally, there are reports of captive thylacines hearing the approach of humans several minutes before the property dogs did.
According to the book, no individual dog would choose to fight a thylacine – it would be too timid. The only way in which a dog might win a fight with a (full grown) thylacine is if there were several dogs, and it would help if the farmer were shooting at it too.
One last interesting report (from the book) is of a trapper who put a rope around the neck of a thylacine. He forced the thylacine to walk about half a mile and from then on – as if accepting the new authority figure – he marched the thylacine into town and down the main street. All the while, the thylacine heeled beside its new master as if it had been trained to do so all its life.
There is even a report of one owner taking a thylacine along to a societal meeting. By all accounts they were able to behave as domestically as any dog.
Check out the the thylacine museum online also – it has 7 videos.
I think it would be great if they did survive, with or without man’s help. hats off to anyone back then who did try to help them.
Wow that will be the day when a very interesting animal like the thylacine would again be seen living in the wilds of Tasmania or mainland Australia. I am one for prevention of extinction,so I am hoping that a miracle happens that these creatures come back.