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Thylacines are cryptids.
Yesterday I answered a great question from a follower who wanted to know what were my top 5 favourite cryptids. At the top of my list was the Thylacine.
To that answer, anonymousgothcat had the following to say: “The thylacine is not a cryptid, dude. It actually existed, in many varied species.”
I would just like to say that according to Loren Coleman, one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, and who is an honourary member of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, and several other international organizations, “Cryptozoology is the study of “hidden animals” rumored to exist but for which there is no hard evidence.”
Cryptozoology, from the Greek kryptos, meaning “hidden,” and zoology, the study of animals, is literally “the study of hidden animals” and that doesn’t mean just still unknown animal forms, but hidden ones, as well…
That the Thylacine ever existed is NOT the debate, whether it STILL exists, has survived extinction, but is hidden from man, is the debate.
While I grant that the Thylacine stands unique amongst the other cryptids, because the proof is there that it previously existed, I am confused by any criteria in which a creature would have to not have proof of existance to be considered a cryptid… There is evidence of existence for many other cryptids like Bigfoot or Ogopogo, the same kind of evidence presented to the world before the gorilla, giant squid and okapi were verified by mainstream scientists when THEY used to be considered cryptids. And anyway, this field has always included animals that were thought to be extinct.
If the Thylacine officially became extinct in 1936, and is not recognised by mainstream science to CURRENTLY exist, and cryptozoology is the investigation of animals whose existence is hinted at by eye witness accounts, photos, or traces, then the Thylacine IS A CRYPTID.
Loren Coleman believes that the “Thylacine will be rediscovered” and this animal is one of his areas of interest, as a Cryptozoologist.
Creatures that are under investigation by cryptozoologists are called cryptids, dude.
Your Chronicler,
Sydney C. Squidney
cryptidchronicles.tumblr.com
The Hunter
I recently watched the gorgeously shot and poignant drama The Hunter, a film about the Tasmanian Tiger. It is a quite well-done narrative on the imagined possible survival of the Thylacine which is being tracked down by a mercenary hired by a bio-tech firm. I highly recommend it to you guys that haven’t seen it. Let me know what you think!
Hand feeding a Tasmanian tiger
John Austwick recalls a conversation with Frank Castle who looked after a Tasmanian tiger for three months before it was sent off to a buyer on the mainland.
Frank was only a young boy at the time, which was around 1910 and it wasn’t long after this time that the Tasmanian tiger became extinct.
In 1888 the government offered a bounty of one pound for an adult tiger. Seeing as that amount of money was the same paid for shearing 100 sheep, trapping became an easy way to supplement the income.
This interview was recorded with the help of Maureen Martin Ferris from the East Coast Heritage Museum and Visitors Centre.
http://vimeo.com/41338690
The photos and the trap used in the video are all part of the display the museum has about the history of tigers in Tasmania.
You may also be interested in
Tasmanian Tiger: The Tragic Tale of How the World Lost Its Most Mysterious Predator
To discover more cryptids and mysterious creatures, or see more Thlyacine posts please follow us at cryptidchronicles.tumblr.com
This is our 175th post.
Tasmanian tiger was no sheep killer
Australia’s iconic thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, was hunted to death in the early Twentieth century for allegedly killing sheep; however, a new study published in the Zoological Society of London’s Journal of Zoology has found that the tiger had such weak jaws that its prey was probably no larger than a possum.
This past September marked the 75th anniversary of the death of the last known tiger, or thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus), at a Hobart zoo.
When it was alive it had a bad reputation as a sheep killer.
From 1830 till 1909 there was a bounty on the species because it was considered a pest.
PhD candidate Marie Attard, from the University of New South Wales, says people thought each thylacine could be eating up to 100 sheep each year.
While it has been more recently acknowledged that that was an exaggeration, she says thylacines may not have even been capable of killing and eating sheep.
“We actually found that thylacines have really weak jaws,” says Attard.
“Even though it had quite a large body and a large head it actually wasn’t really very good at eating big animals.
“If you think about a sheep, it weighs about 90 kilos and thylacines were about 30 kilograms and their jaws were just too weak to be able to take on something that big.”
Instead, Attard believes thylacines ate small animals such as bandicoots and possums.
“Animals that weigh over 22 kilograms should be taking down animals that weigh about their body size or even a bit more,” she says. 
Despite the lack of genetic diversity, a bounty on the Tasmanian tiger is what lead to its extinction (Source: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery)
“So the fact that this animal is eating very small animals, probably around five kilos, is quite an interesting find and it would also mean that they have to eat a lot of small animals to be able to survive.”
Skull scans
The researchers used CAT scans of a thylacine skull to build digital 3-D engineering models.
“What we do is we can digitally crash test that skull to test its mechanical strength,” says Attard.
“It’s actually quite similar to the software that engineers use to look for weak points in materials used to build man-made objects such as bridges and aircraft wings.”
The researchers simulated thylacine behaviours including biting, tearing and pulling to see how they responded to struggling prey in their mouths.
In the images produced, different colours showed how much stress each part of the skull was under.
“In the end the skull basically, for the thylacine’s case, ended up lighting up like a Christmas tree because it had so much stress in it,” says Attard.
Study co-author Dr Stephen Wroe, also from the University of New South Wales, says the findings were surprising.
“I had expected that we would find that the thylacine would have been better adapted to take large prey,” he says.
“That would have meant there would have been less competition between the thylacine and its close relatives, the Tasmanian devil and the spotted tail quoll.” 
Caption: “Bagged Thylacine, 1869”
It is believed this competition for food, the bounty and settlers altering the land all contributed to the species’ demise.
Selina Bryan for ABC Science 2011
Thylacine DNA reveals lacks of diversity
The Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine, had very limited genetic diversity before it died out, according to a new study, which suggests a similar fate for the Tasmanian devil.
Hunted to the brink of extinction, the last known thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) died in captivity in 1936. But specimens of the dog-like marsupial are preserved in museums around the world.
A team of scientists, led by Dr Brandon Menzies from the Liebniz Institute and the University of Melbourne, collected genetic samples from 14 thylacine specimens, to measure their genetic diversity.
The findings are published online in the journal PLoS One.
“We’ve sampled a number of animals before the bounty in 1888 till 1909 and sequenced the DNA of a small piece of the genome,” says Menzies.
“Individuals show about five base diffferences between dogs, which is equivalent to 2 per cent of DNA. In the Tasmanian tiger it looks like only half a per cent of that region is variable, much less than what we would expect in a healthy population.”
Menzies says there could be a number of reasons for this.
“It could have been caused by previous bounties in Tasmania lowering the number of individuals,” he says. 
Geographic isolation
Menzies says it’s an important study, because genetic diversity is crucial to the long term survival of a species.
“We have to look at genetic diversity as something that we need to manage within the Australian landscape and we need to keep it intact as much as possible,” he says.
Lack of genetic diversity is a problem facing a number of Tasmanian species, due in part to the island state’s geographic isolation.
Menzies says this includes the Tasmanian devil, which is currently threatened by facial tumour disease.
“We need to look at all of Tasmania’s fauna as a group … and look at what we can do to better manage those populations so that they can deal with stress in the environment.”
Liz Hobday for ABC Science April 2012
Last photo: A female thylacine and her pups at the Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart. Like the wombat, the thylacine had a backwards-facing pouch and their young developed inside its protection. Females usually had litters of three to four pups.
The private zoo closed in 1937, one year after the death of the last thylacine, who died of neglect.
Sources abc.net.au/science/articles/2011/09/01/3307455.htm
abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/04/19/3481139.htm
You may also be interested in
Tasmanian Tiger: The Tragic Tale of How the World Lost Its Most Mysterious Predator
To discover more cryptids and mysterious creatures, or see more Thlyacine posts please follow us at cryptidchronicles.tumblr.com or on twitter @cryptidfans
Here is an Organic, Eco-Friendly Thylacine T-Shirt for Thylacine ♥‘rs
The last thylacine died in the Hobart Zoo.
Locked in a cage, she stared out through the lattice of wire to the distant warmth of the keeper’s house.
Alone all the long nights, she paced, fretful, the unfamiliar sound of her nails clicking on cement.
She was surrounded by the stink of bears, the roar of lions, the shit-hurling culture of the monkeys, the press and flow of humans.
The last thylacine was imprisoned between concrete floor and iron bars without even a kennel’s shelter.
There was thunder the night she died, and rain.
A springtime cold snap that followed days of merciless heat.
Above the thylacine’s cage was a deciduous tree, still bare of leaves. She called through the night, her high-pitched yip yip yip torn away by the wind.
You’ve heard that hypothermia causes the victim to feel paradoxically warm and you wonder if that’s what the thylacine felt as she died.
You hope so.
You hope she had a dying dream of forest and treefern, of other thylacines. Because the last thylacine’s final vision was strobe-lit by lightning: black and white.
Vertical bars.
Alone.
From Extinct Doesn’t Mean Forever by Phoenix Sullivan
You may also be interested in
Tasmanian Tiger: The Tragic Tale of How the World Lost Its Most Mysterious Predator
To discover more cryptids and mysterious creatures, or see more Thlyacine posts please follow us at cryptidchronicles.tumblr.com or on twitter @cryptidfans
This is our 150th Post.
New Alleged Thylacine Sightings
15 February, 2012
Officially they no longer exist, but that hasn’t stopped wildlife watchers spotting thylacines in northern New South Wales.
More alleged thylacine spottings have been reported to our wildlife expert Gary Opit.
Also known as tasmanian tigers, the last known thylacine is believed to have died in a Hobart zoo in 1936.
Since then, there have been hundreds of unconfirmed sightings of the animals across Australia, including a handful around Nimbin in recent weeks.
ABC North Coast wildlife expert Gary Opit says the recent spotters insisted the mysterious animals were not dogs, cats or foxes.
“It’s not a dog or a cat, but it’s about the size of a dog,” he says.
“It’s described as having a banded tail, a greyish animal with stripes across the tail and stripes along the flank.”
Gary hopes the rise in popularity of smartphones will mean that eventually someone can capture the creature on camera.
“It’s usually always the same thing, people driving their car and an animal they’ve never seen before crosses in front of them,” he says.
”People are always adamant it’s not a dog.
“No one has ever been able to get a photo of one, so we don’t know what it is or if it really exists, but the fact that people keep reporting them is interesting.”
Gary has written about the sightings reported to him here in an article entitled “The 50 Thylacine reports”, reports collected over the last ten years during his wildlife talkback radio broadcasts.
Source ABC North Caost NSW
More on the Thylacine:
In “Tasmanian Tiger: The Tragic Tale of How the World Lost Its Most Mysterious Predator”, David Owen tells the tragic story of the thylacine, from its evolutionary origins and its physical and behavioral characteristics to its ill-fated encounter with European civilization and the ongoing fascination with the “Tassie Tiger” as a potent symbol of wildlife conservation. Elegantly written and full of interesting facts and first-hand stories from those who saw the animal in the wild, Tasmanian Tiger offers a compelling account of how fear and ignorance doomed an entire species over the course of a century. And in recounting numerous recent sightings of the thylacine in Tasmania, Owen explores the power that this once-despised creature continues to hold on the imagination today.
Indeed, as described in this book, serious efforts are being undertaken to bring back the Tasmanian tiger through cloning, a controversial project that raises a number of ethical questions for scientists and conservationists everywhere. For both those familiar with the thylacine and those discovering this remarkable animal for the first time, Tasmanian Tiger is a poignant cautionary tale of human folly and the fragility of the natural world.
Above Photo: The last Tasmanian tiger in captivity, in ca.1936
Second Illustration: H. C. Richter’s illustration of the Tasmanian tiger, from John Gould’s The Mammals of Australia.
In July 1936, thylacines were finally granted full protection. Two months later, on 7 September 1936, the last known thylacine died in Hobart Zoo.
- Thylacine collection goes on display -
The permanent exhibition is showing in the Wilderness Gallery at Tasmania’s Cradle Mountain and helps shed light on both how the Thylacine lived and how it was driven to extinction in the early 20th century.
THE LARGEST PRIVATE COLLECTION of Tasmanian tiger artefacts sheds light on how the dog-like marsupials were driven to extinction.
The permanent exhibition on the thylacine has opened at the Wilderness Gallery at Tasmania’s Cradle Mountain, and includes relics such as a model of a thylacine skeleton and a rug composed of eight skins.
“It’s marvellous stuff: decorative objects like rugs are rare, because people didn’t like the animals, so they weren’t keen to preserve bits of them in their houses,” says Kathryn Medlock, curator of vertebrate zoology at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, which jointly developed the exhibition.
Feared in life, loved in death
The thylacine has become an Australian icon since its extinction in the early 20th century at the hands of Tasmanian hunters. However, according to Dr Nic Haygarth, an historian at the University of Tasmania in Hobart, mystery and fear surrounded the thylacine in years past.
Mineral prospectors, for example, lived in fear of thylacines in the Tasmanian wilderness. “These guys were alone in the bush, during the 1850s to 1870s, when there was no infrastructure,” Nic explains. “A thylacine could take their food, in which case they’d be in a desperate situation. But there was also genuine concern that a thylacine would kill, or bring its mate back and there would be two to deal with.”
There were reports of instances in which thylacines followed people for extended periods, Nic says. In particular, he remembers the story of surveyor Selby Wilson who, in the 1890s, claimed he was followed for a full day by a thylacine. “He was completely freaked.”
Threat to agriculture
The thylacines’ bad rap is likely a result of its perceived threat to agriculture, says Kathryn. “They were definitely a scapegoat for other problems that were occurring,” she says. “And it’s very easy to blame the largest carnivore.”
It wasn’t just individual farmers who wanted the marsupials gone; the wool-producing Van Diemen’s Land Company also lobbied for a thylacine bounty – its success accelerated the Tasmanian tigers’ extinction.
“The Van Diemen’s Land Company certainly thought thylacines were killing their sheep,” Nic says. “But no other grazing companies in Tasmania recorded the thylacine as being a problem. [VDL] actually had much bigger problems, and were perhaps looking for a scapegoat.”
Kathryn says a stigma was attached to the carnivorous marsupial because it was seen to be fierce among Australia’s relatively benign fauna. “It was called the Tasmanian wolf and Tasmanian tiger, and there were stories about this fierce thing wandering the Australian bush. There aren’t many fierce things in the Australian bush, besides snakes.”
No doubt of extinction cause
Thylacines may have suffered fluctuation in numbers, much like the Tasmanian devil populations, which changed dramatically between decades during the 20th century, Nic says.
While Kathryn agrees that it is common for marsupial numbers to experience peaks and crashes, she says there is no doubt that human intervention caused the extinction of the thylacine. “They were by no means on their last legs before European settlement,” she says.
There is no historical evidence, says Kathryn, that thylacines were aggressive towards humans, despite popular belief that the videographer of the famous footage of the last thylacine was attacked. “The bloke who took the video footage [of the captive thylacine] got bitten, but he was in the cage with the animal, mucking around with camera gear; that’s why he got a bit of a nip.”
Fascination about the Tasmanian tiger continues today and it’s largely spurred on by its mysterious past and the occasional claimed sighting.
The exhibition, developed with support from the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, has been permanently installed at the Wilderness Gallery at Cradle Mountain in Tasmania.
The Tasmanian Tiger is a thylacine, which is short for Thylacinus cynocephalus.
This is Greek, and it means “one with a pouch and a wolf’s head.” So what the thylacine really is — or was — was a marsupial. Because a marsupial is an animal that has a pouch that its babies live in until they are big enough to live outside the pouch. Kangaroos are also marsupials, and so are opossums. Oh, and guess what! The male thylacines have pouches, too.
A long time ago, thylacines lived in Australia, Tasmania, and New Guinea. The last place where they were seen alive was in Tasmania, which is an island that is also a state of Australia.
Thylacines looked sort of like dogs with thick tails, but they had a stiff gait, and they couldn’t run fast, like dogs. But if they were excited or trying to get someplace in a hurry, they could stand up on their back legs and jump, sort of like kangaroos.
If you measured thylacines from their noses to the tips of their tails, they could be about 6 feet long, and they were about two feet tall. They weighed between 40 and 70 pounds. Also they had these interesting dark stripes across their backs, and that’s why people thought they looked kind of like tigers.
People didn’t see thylacines too often because thylacines mostly liked to hunt at night. And what they ate was lots of meat and no veggies at all. The meat they liked best was stuff like kangaroos, wallabies, wombats, birds, and possums. They especially liked a bird called the Tasmanian emu, but that bird started becoming extinct about the same time as the thylacines did.
Baby thylacines were called joeys, and usually there would be 3 of them in a litter. These three little joeys were tiny and hairless when they were born, but they crawled into their mom’s pouch and latched onto a teat. As they grew, the mom’s pouch got bigger and bigger, until it almost dragged on the ground. Then the babies would come out and learn how to get along in the world for themselves.Thylacines started going extinct in New Guinea and Australia about 2000 years ago. This might have been partly because of the people and the dingoes there, because all of them were hunting for the same food. But on Tasmania, there were still thylacines until the 1930s. When Europeans started settling in the area, they *thought* that Tasmanian tigers were killing their sheep and chickens. Which may have been true, but it also may not have been true because the thylacines hunted at night, and no one saw them very often.
Anyway, the settlers wanted to get rid of the thylacines, and there was a bounty for every animal that could be killed and brought in. So lots of people shot thylacines so they could get the bounty money. The last known living thylacine was “Benjamin,” who lived in the Hobart Zoo in Tasmania. ”Benjamin” might really have been a female, but no one knows for sure now. If you want to see a film that was taken of the last few thylacines living in zoos, you can go to this Wikipedia page and scroll down partway.
Anyway, “Benjamin” lived in the zoo for 3 years, and then died on September 7, 1936. After that, people have been looking for another thylacine, and sometimes they think they’ve seen one, but they can’t really prove it. And when 1986 came, and nobody had seen a thylacine for 50 years, the animal was declared “possibly extinct.” Some people are trying to maybe clone one from DNA, but so far they have not had much luck.So that is the sad story of the thylacine.
