Seeking the Thylacine
Posted by: Nick Redfern on November 2nd, 2013
The last Tasmanian Tigers in captivity.
From Australia’s Courier Mail newspaper…
“An international team of naturalists from the Centre for Fortean Zoology has arrived in Tasmania for the first in a series of well-resourced and professional expeditions into Tasmania’s wilderness to hunt for evidence of the Tasmanian tiger.
“Although the animal was officially declared extinct in the 1980s, reports of thylacine sightings are still common and expedition leader Mike Williams from NSW has high hopes that they can find something.
“‘The problem with a lot of the sightings from members of the public is that they’re generally caught by surprise, and their photos are taken on things like mobile phones and aren’t very good,’ he said.”
If, like me, you think there is a very good chance indeed that the thylacine is not extinct after all, you may want to keep watch for any and all developments in this story. I’ll be posting updates as I receive them from the CFZ’s Jon Downes.
About Nick Redfern
Punk music fan, Tennents Super and Carlsberg Special Brew beer fan, horror film fan, chocolate fan, like to wear black clothes, like to stay up late. Work as a writer.
is it possible there are some left?
living in pockets of remote areas
this would be very interesting to find out.
Thats interesting..
I hope they don’t do what the Finding Bigfoot guys do. ONE night in the bush. Never find anything
1980s? Really? This is not an area of study I’ve spent much time on, but if that’s true, it’s WAY too early to close the book on the Tasmanian Tiger.
Goodfoot, for an animal to be declared officially extinct, it needs to have not been recorded for at least 50 years. The thylacine was officially declared extinct in the 1980s, but the last known specimen died in a zoo in 1936 (and the last known wild specimen some years before that).
As @Malcolm Smith has documented, the best place to look is prolly not Tassie at all, but West Papua. But then, the political situation there is such that leaving it alone right now might be the best thing…
The Late Croc Hunter was a believer that a small population was still out there somewhere.
There is in south portion of the Island,Been many sightings in recent years.Plus this was a know species hunted to extinction the jaw is really cool how far it can open.My guess is they find one if they spend enough time but going to be a living hell to get there and do it.
“‘The problem with a lot of the sightings from members of the public is that they’re generally caught by surprise, and their photos are taken on things like mobile phones and aren’t very good,’ he said.”
Count on that.
Send somebody into a local woodlot to get a photo of that fox everyone in the neighborhood knows is in there, and don’t bet on a photo in a week with the best equipment…and bet the house, or at least the cars, no photos ever that are any good on a camera phone.
Elusive wildlife is like that. Give everyone in the society a camera phone; train them intensively in how to use it; have everyone keep the phone ready to shoot whenever they’re outdoors…and your chance of documenting sasquatch just….didn’t go up.
For me, the thylacine is one animal that I feel is a distinct possibility of still being out there and being rediscovered in some remote area. I do not think this is a fool’s folly but rather a good expedition. I hope they find what they are looking for. And I wish them good luck!
Maybe there’s a one in a hundred chance that thylacines still exist somewhere. But even if they did, they won’t be rediscovered by this group just looking for another new book to publish rather than doing serious fieldwork.
I probably have the largest collection of thylacine “stuff” in N.A. so I’m very serious and knowledgeable about this particular animal. Just maybe one survived in Tasmania until about the late ’70’s or even early ’80’s. But in Tasmania, anyway, it is now definitely extinct.
Maybe it will turn up in Irian Jaya or somewhere on mainland Australia, who knows? But like virtually every other extinct rediscovered animal we can predict the how. By accident.
Relict Thylacines, out of all cryptids, are one of the most likely to exist. I do not see a problem with the animals surviving up to the modern era, learning to be so elusive as to detect scientific discovery (having people nearly wipe you out could do that to a critter). I believe there are also sighting of it on mainland Australia, and even in New Zealand and Indonesia. I would do the world good, and my heart good, for the Thylacine to exist.
Normally, in proving new species, a type specimen is needed, the best being a body, part of a body, live specimen or a fossil. This can work well in rediscovering new species as well, but in this case a capture, not a kill, is what is needed. We do not, and should not, kill Thylacines: It is far more likely to have a small, critical population than Bigfoot, Sea Serpents, and other well known cryptids that live in vast remote regions, and unlike Sasquatch and Sea Serpents, we know enough about the Thylacine to do this (we knew it well enough until early last century to figure out a sound method of doing this). Plus, killing a Thylacine, considering the mass killings of them by humans in the not too distant past, would be wrong on countless, countless levels.
It is not super intelligent, it lives on an island, it is flesh and blood: it can be captured.
corrick:
“I probably have the largest collection of thylacine “stuff” in N.A. so I’m very serious and knowledgeable about this particular animal. Just maybe one survived in Tasmania until about the late ’70′s or even early ’80′s. But in Tasmania, anyway, it is now definitely extinct.”
Oh, you definitely KNOW it’s “extinct” do you? Would love to see your peer-approved scientific study. The arrogance of “experts” . . .
The declaration of extinction is a soggy scientific relic of our species’ inability to hold suspended judgment. It means, well, we haven’t seen one lately, and you know our track record. So stay tuned.
My apology, David. It’s my opinion only.