Topic: Do Tasmanian tigers still exist?
mightymoe's photo
Thu 09/07/17 08:28 AM

Published September 06, 2017
Fox News


Do Tasmanian tigers still exist?

A few trackers believe they have found evidence — releasing alleged footage of proof.

The grainy and fleeting videotape, according to The Mercury, showed Tasmanian tigers (also known as thylacines) in their natural state: a thylacine walking slowly at a distance, a thylacine nose at the camera lens, and a thylacine with a cub.

“I didn’t believe in” the thylacine, said Greg Booth, a wood carter from Ouse in the Central Highlands, who captured the footage.

“But when it’s in front of you … now I have no doubt at all,” he said.

Thylacines are known for distinctive high-pitched barks, distinguishing stripes, long tails and their size.

Official accounts, according to The Mercury, suggest the thylacine became extinct on the Australian mainland more than 2000 years ago, although unverified “sightings” occur across many states of Australia from time to time.

The images were taken by Booth and his 80-year-old father, Joe, a former forestry worker, in bushland more than 30 miles from a former forestry outpost in Maydena.

The men gave the footage to Adrian “Richo” Richardson, who has been researching thylacines for 26 years.
old tiger 96 Expand / Collapse

A thylacine in an image dated from 1933.

“I don’t think it’s a thylacine ... I know it’s a thylacine,” Richardson said.

“The thylacine exists and I want nothing more than for the species to survive and its welfare looked after,” he said.

Wildlife biologist Nick Mooney, retired from the Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment, spent decades investigating tiger sightings and analyzed the images.

“Assuming the footage is authentic, the animal is either a very large spotted-tailed quoll or a small thylacine,” Mooney said.

“I am happy to suggest that based on this limited analysis of the film, there is perhaps a one in three chance the image is of a thylacine,” he said.

The Booth men and Richardson have joined forces, calling themselves the Booth Richardson Tiger Team (BRT Team).

They have passed copies of the film to the Tasmanian government for further assessment as they hunt for more proof

no photo
Thu 09/07/17 09:02 AM
Beautiful and rare.

mightymoe's photo
Thu 09/07/17 09:33 AM

Beautiful and rare.
...lol..they are extinct...maybe, I hope rare is a word we can use...its so sad when a species dies out, especially when man causes it...

JasonKM's photo
Sat 10/14/17 10:50 PM
The extreme unlikelihood of any surviving thylacine in hiding is the notable behaviour common among Australian native animals of being oblivious to large predators (such as feral dogs), since other than thylacine all of them have been introduced within the last 200 years. The reason (other than a lack of medical resistance to foreign bugs and diseases), why feral dogs and cats have had such devastating effect upon native wildlife is because an Australian possum just hasn't learned to run for dear life at the slightest movement in the brush like an American possum is because they still don't expect a fox, bear, cat or wild/feral dog. They expect a koala.

Put simply the inherent characteristic of native Australian wildlife is being extremely vulnerable to imported predators, to an irrational degree by human way of thinking. Thylacine were just as vulnerable as others, it's basically a big carnivorous possum and so much more like a possum than a dog for things like fighting qualities. Hence when colonists first arrived in Tasmania there was a reasonable population of them, within about thirty years there were virtually none, probably due to pet dogs of colonists more than human hunting.

There are packs of wild dogs all over rural Oz and ferals all over urban forests. They kill livestock, thylacine wouldn't stand a chance and there's nowhere for them to hide. A lone big cat escaped from an open range zoo wouldn't last two weeks when the dog packs come for them and they're a thousand times more combat worthy than a thylacine.
Definitely extinct.