/r/ThylacineScience
This is a subreddit dedicated to the study of the Thylacine, otherwise known as the Tasmanian Tiger/Wolf/Hyena.
See the Wiki page for more information.
This is a place for discussion of the natural history of Thylacines, old and new sightings, links to news and science articles, videos, photographs and art.
Report a sighting - PM the moderator or post to this sub
Useful links:
Thylacine pictures in one location
/r/ThylacineScience
I mean, let's say there will be news that some thylacines were seen and it will be confirmed. Do they have some ideas how to protect that animals from people and increase the population? Will they be protected from hunters or there will be no-go zone to limit human ingerence?
I’ve been looking for the life of me and I can’t find any possible sources to find this information. This is for a personal endeavor when it comes to thylacines, any help will be greatly appreciated.
Thoughts? This is looking more and more unlikely to be a fox imo. I'd lean towards 70% thylacine.
Just been reading about the lab work that's being done in the hopes of cloning thylacines, especially the recent apparent recovery of RNA from the 'head in a bucket' specimen
It claims that a "thylacine-looking-thing" could be born within three to five years. But surely this animal would not be Thylacinus cynocephalus, but something else?
And I guess by extension the same would apply to whatever mammoth or passenger pigeon or dodo lookalikes might come along over the next decades? Is there a system for naming cloned chimeras such as these if they are splicing the DNA of multiple species in order to achieve something that 'looks like' an extinct animal? In the example of thylacine cloning, the link above reports that the scientists would plan to use DNA from the fat-tailed dunnart to fill in the gaps in the thylacine DNA.
I've just been thinking about this and I'm unsure on how such animals would be 'classified' so to speak. Happy to have a discussion on this.
The quadrupedal subject does not display a gait that matches a foxes. It has a more robust skull compared to a fox. It scares away kangaroos, it has low hocks, unlike a fox, the torso is thick, sports a very long stiff, quoll-like tail.
It truly is a shame this wasnt captured in daylight.
There were already basically extinct with only an estimated 5,000 thylacines even before 2,184 bounties were collected officially for their heads beginning 1888, and humans introduced a distemper like disease and dogs; nobody has seen one since 1936 - nearly a century ago. I need to repeat that; nearly a CENTURY has passed without a clear verifiable photo! Now there’s just a bunch of eye witnesses and click-bait fuzzy images which is just preying on people’s gullible nature. Let’s face the music people, they’re long gone. Zero hard evidence. Zip. By now there should have been a dead body or a verified location of a family.
Edit: I want them to exist but how many years need to elapse for people to face reality? 200 years? 1,000 years?
Other points:
5,000 was just an estimate. It may have been only 2,000. People make mistakes. The evidence suggests it certainly wasn’t a massive underestimate, since now they have all vanished. People also forget the lethality of a farmer with a dog and that the number of bounties collected is a low estimate of the number killed.
They were relatively easy to find in 1888, even using the relatively low 5,000 number, now they’re impossible to find.
The only caveat people can provide is eyewitness testimony or grainy footage. If they knew where they were located, because they’d seen them, how come they cannot locate their dens? I mean if a farmer has a fox sighting, usually the poor thing is shot dead within a few days. How come all these smart sometimes even credible biologist eyewitnesses cannot do what a simple farmer can achieve?
What evidence would satisfy everyone? There’s no evidence that can satisfy everyone. There will always be a % of people that will believe in the Loch Ness monster, because we cannot use absence of hard evidence (like a body or DNA) as evidence for these people. They will say, this video here, this eye witness there, is cause for belief, but it’s never hard evidence, so this % continues to exist based on their belief in the relatively lower quality of evidence. Face it, we’re talking about a belief system based on faith of humanity to not lie or make misjudgment.
I believe the Thylacine is definitely alive. But I think we may be looking in the wrong spot. There are definitely none on mainland Australia, and if they were it would have to be something artificially moved there around Cape York by humans or I don't know, I only say this because Nick Mooney claimed a sighting there, it seems unlikely but it is Nick Mooney. Tasmania, could well have definitely have had them recently, I believe they probably survived there until late 20th century. Not 1936 as we believe. They probably died to out due to dwindling population and other causes. But. If they were to be still alive, 100%, they would have to be in West Papua. There are too many "confirmations" from local tribes and villagers. And they just recently rediscovered Singing dogs there. It is far too less explored. If they exist, we would only find them there. There was a Forest Galante video on this. But if you ignore the incredibly coincidental, almost cinema-like circumstances he talks about with Rose, it is definitely believable.
This image is from the handy natural history
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXCEsAh5rdI&t=662s
After posting this video, Neil Waters posted a picture from the video on his instagram saying "They just simply aren't extinct. This one in Western Australia isn't at least..."
But I have the question: Why didn't this find get more attention? Like it happened and everyone forgot about it in less than a month and it is one of the clearest thylacine videos ever taken though a trail camera.
If anyone know something, (e.g. it was disproven by experts, it was faked, ect) please let me know. :)
A new two-part documentary series investigating the age-old question of whether the Tasmanian tiger is still alive will soon hit screens.
Local filmmaker Tim Noonan’s ‘Hunt for Truth: Tasmanian Tiger’ will explore recent and historic sightings of the thylacine, with the help of UTAS scientists Professor Barry Brook, Dr Jessie Buettel and Associate Researcher Kenji Sabine.
Noonan interviews many eyewitnesses throughout the series, taking his search as far south as the wilderness of south-west Tasmania and as far north as Papua New Guinea.
“People love the unsolved mystery, it’s like a true crime story that pulls you in,” Noonan says.