The opening of the 19th century marked the arrival of British settlers to the island of Tasmania, found to the south of Australia’s mainland. Initially, the first islander communities consisted of whalers and seal hunters, but eventually the land was looked upon for supporting livestock.
As the British expanded their agriculture practices across the Tasmanian wilderness, tales were muttered amongst the recent inhabitants about the existence of a secretive wolf like creature, lined with stripes, reminiscent of a tiger.
Since Tasmania split from the mainland of Australia 12,000 years ago, the thylacine, commonly known as the Tasmanian tiger, has roamed freely across these lands along with native aboriginal tribes, until the introduction of the European colonists.
The Tasmanian tiger was the largest carnivorous marsupial of recent times and remains in many people’s eyes as the most extraordinarily peculiar predator humans have encountered.
Despite its affiliation with a tiger, the thylacine was undoubtedly a lot smaller growing to around 6 feet in length but only weighing roughly 30 kilograms. Tasmanian tigers fed off a range of prey such as kangaroos, wallabies and possums but their supposed insatiable taste for colonist’s livestock would be their demise.
Just like its most common ancestor the Tasmanian devil, the thylacine raised its offspring in pouches before transferring them to a den to reside. Strangely both sexes of the thylacine had a pouch which is increasingly rare in marsupials. To add to the list of the thylacine’s bizarrely unique adaptations, they had the ability to open their jaws almost 90 degrees demonstrating large gaping yawns in small clips of footage we have of them.
Interactions between thylacines and settlers were short-lived leaving us with countless questions and limited research about how these animals interacted and lived. With only a simple understanding of thylacine's physical attributes, we have pieced together a truly intriguing animal before even scratching the surface of its mysterious behaviour.
After being placed as the national symbol on the Tasmanian coat of arms, the Tasmanian tiger may appear to be loved and appreciated now, but this has rarely been the story for the thylacine’s existence. We are left with the real questions about what led to the thylacine's extinction, did they ever fully go extinct and can we rewind our mistakes and bring the Tasmanian tiger back from the dead?
Tasmanian tigers were seen to be primarily nocturnal animals hunting for prey at night. They also were seen to be able to perform a bipedal hop using their stiff tail.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF Wikimedia Commons
Thylacine’s preferable habitat lay throughout the woodlands and vast coastal heath of Tasmania. However, coincidentally, the coastal heath became the primary focus for British settlers to raise livestock. As farmers encroached further into the Tasmanian tiger’s territory, the two undoubtedly experienced conflict, ultimately leading to the Tasmanian tiger being branded as a sheep killer and poultry thief. Quickly, the thylacine’s reputation for killing livestock tagged it as a pest that must be removed.
The Van Diemen's Land Company was formed in 1825 to produce wool for the British textile industry. Due to the risk that thylacine posed to the livestock and subsequently profit, the company introduced a bounty scheme in 1830. Money was paid out for the body of each Tasmanian tiger. The Van Diemen's Land Company went as far as to employ full-time trappers and hunters to protect sheep flocks, known as the ‘tiger men’. Not only were private companies involved, but the Tasmanian government also set up its own bounty scheme in the late 19th century to curb populations. All in all, the government was seen to pay out more than 2000 bounties between 1888 and 1909 for tiger carcasses.
It has been fiercely debated about if thylacine really had the impact on livestock that they were perceived to have. Were they responsible for all the livestock attacks? Other predators in Tasmania have also been seen to take livestock such as feral dogs and the Tasmanian devil but the thylacine normally took the blame when a dead sheep was found.
Through analysing The Van Diemen's Land Company records, only limited attacks on livestock were actually ever accounted for. The Tasmanian tiger’s limited size, shy nature and supposedly weak jaws lead to the outcome that this predator’s reputation caused more damage than their actual actions merited.
The image of thylacine has always been tainted. Australian naturalist Henry Burrell took a hugely controversial picture which was published in The Australian Museum Magazine in 1921 showing a thylacine holding a chicken in its jaws. The picture has been linked with unfairly promoting thylacine as a poultry thief which fuelled public hatred for the animal.
Increasingly more controversial is the idea that the photograph is fake, the thylacine in the picture is believed to be a stuffed specimen. Additionally, the thylacine in the image was found to be taken in a zoo and was cropped to remove the cage, even if it is a real animal, it was set up to promote a negative image.
This is the cropped version of the controversial image taken by Henry Burrell. It has been responsible for igniting a seriously negative image across Tasmania for the thylacine being a poultry thief and sheep killer.
PHOTOGRAPH BY Henry Burrell
Direct hunting and capture by humans aren't believed to be the sole reason for the brisk extinction of the Tasmanian tiger. Humans had other indirect effects on the population too. British settlers brought with them dogs, many of which became wild. Competition for prey could have reduced thylacine numbers increasing their vulnerability to human hunting.
British colonialists were also responsible for habitat destruction and reduction in other species in Tasmania as a result of land clearing and hunting. For example, settlers led to the extinction of the Tasmanian emu in 1850 due to hunting which could have been a stable food source for the thylacine. As settlers hunted down kangaroos and wallabies, these knock-on effects most likely would have led to declining thylacine numbers and therefore driven occasional attempts to eat sheep or poultry.
Disease also was seen to ravage the remaining Tasmanian tiger population. Due to the rarity and striking appearance of the Tasmanian tiger, they were shipped to zoos around the world, from London to New York to Chennai in India. London zoo had 20 Tasmanian tigers in total. Whilst in captivity, a noticeable number of the Tasmanian tigers were seen to become ill. The diseases present were seen to half thylacine life expectancy and harm young who were born, ruining chances of captive breeding programs to salvage thylacine numbers. It clearly didn’t appear that the majority of Tasmania at the time have would want any reintroduction of the animal if it had been successful anyway.
In 1936, the thylacine known as Benjamin living in captivity in Hobart zoo died, marking the death of the last believed Tasmanian tiger. He died as a result of exposure, after being locked out of his shelter as a hot day was followed by plummeting night time temperatures. Ultimately, this final gesture summed up the attitude to how most people treated the Tasmanian tiger.
Wilf Batty, in 1930, supposedly shot the last ever wild thylacine in Tasmania which had been surrounding his home.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF Wikimedia Commons
The story of the Tasmanian tiger has not been a one-off event, it is current today. Humans, ever since the agricultural revolution, have constantly been expanding their living range as populations have been allowed to boom. As rural settlements and villagers sprawl, more wild lands are irreversibly converted to agricultural fields. Inevitably as animals and humans are squeezed closer together, it’s the poorest in our societies who have to battle to protect their livelihood as most of us sit on the sidelines. No greater example of this is found than in Botswana.
Across Botswana lies the area known as the eastern Okavango panhandle where the vast elephant and human population go toe to toe for supplies such as food water and land. Elephant populations yearly migrate south to the permanent waters of the Okavango Delta. Whilst the elephants follow their distinctly remembered pathways, ingrained over generations, they now face the problem of accidentally angering the villager inhabitants.
Herds of elephants unintentionally trample crops and strip fields bare of food from feeding in a single night which villagers critically rely on. Unfortunately, as tempers flare, retaliation killings by locals become more apparent as elephant numbers across Botswana have increased by over 50,000 in the last 30 years. Officials in Botswana are torn about how to implement policies to protect elephants and villagers. Recently, officials auctioned off packages for the killing of 70 elephants to curb populations and reduce conflict.
Due to the iconic nature of elephants and their constant battle already with illegal poaching, environmentalists lay torn between supporting something that could spark more poaching or could reduce the number of retaliation killings. This possibly could create a more harmonious relationship with villagers. However if not handled correctly, we could face areas dividing public image on elephants shifting to a similar scenario seen previously with the Tasmanian tiger.
A British settler poses with a thylacine after shooting it in 1869. Due to the low numbers of the thylacine in Tasmania, their overall impact on livestock appears to be hugely exaggerated. Whereas in Botswana, African elephants have been seen to destroy villager's whole livelihoods.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF Wikimedia Commons
Tasmanian tiger populations were believed to have vanished from the Australian mainland roughly 3000 years ago but it’s unknown exactly why. Ever since the last recorded living thylacine, Benjamin, died in Tasmania in 1936, wild sightings of Tasmanian tigers have been reported throughout Tasmania along with the Australian mainland. Are small surviving populations of thylacine still alive?
Sightings of the thylacine have been hugely widespread across Australia and Tasmania. Over 200 sightings alone have been documented in south Western Australia with people further admitting to spotting them in the northern reaches of Queensland. James Cook University funded a substantial camera trapping study in the Cape York peninsular of northern Australia after numerous reports from locals that they have spotted the animals with flashlights. In order for a university to put in the money for a generously large-scale research project, the reporting witnesses must have sounded credible and been convincing with their collected evidence.
Camera traps are set up throughout the wilderness, taking photos when the sensors are triggered by passing animals.
PHOTOGRAPH BY Weera Sunpaarsa
Reports of tiger sightings became so numerous that in the early 1980s the Tasmanian government began to equip wildlife officials and rangers with “thylacine response kits”. With more people armed with footprint identification guides and aware of their appearance, hopefully a fully evident response would emerge.
Due to 50 years since the last Tasmanian tiger was credibly alive, the thylacine has been declared extinct since 1982 as no hard evidence has been collected. To prove their existence, a mixture of camera trap images, scat sample collections and DNA analysis need to all be combined together to turn the status.
These exact methods allowed for the re-discovery of the New Guinea highland wild dog. Native to the remote wilderness of Papua New Guinea, the dog which is closely related to a dingo has been without credible sightings for almost 50 years. The University of Papua had a large-scale camera trap project, similar to Cape York, which allowed for numerous camera trap images of the dogs to be gathered which were followed up by scat and DNA samples. We seem to have an innate passion for the unknown which drives these searches for mysteriously lost creatures, but why is it good to ultimately find that they still exist?
After the New Guinea highland dog was recently found it makes us wonder what other large mammals are yet to be discovered. With such large pockets of isolated unexplored wilderness across places such as Siberia, China, DRC, Brazil and CAR, we may have more mysteries yet to unwind.
PHOTOGRAPH BY Patti McNeal
Finding lost species appears to be very beneficial for conservation on a funding and awareness front. The Fernandina giant tortoise was recorded to have disappeared over 100 years ago on the island of Fernandina due to no sightings. This was until wildlife biologist Forest Galante’s expedition found a single remaining female tortoise alive on the volcanic Galapagos Island.
With tortoise’s iconic relation and image to the Galapagos Islands, the discovery of this lost species allowed for supportive funding to be pumped into areas of the islands for protection and preservation. A whole new positive public image follows on the importance of maintaining undisturbed wild places which could have become hugely pressurised without this intervention.
As the Anthropocene looms from the result of destructive human actions, we have now believed to have entered the 6th mass extinction event on earth, where we are witnessing the highest seen extinction rates. But as these species are lost from the planet, we face the dilemma of if we should try to bring them back from the dead. Can we resurrect the Tasmanian tiger by carrying out the process of de-extinction?
Transforming an extinct animal back into a living animal with the same genetic material is the simple principle of de-extinction. In order to complete it, you need a source of thylacine DNA. Luckily, many museums across the world have a variety of thylacine skins, bones and preserved pups which have enabled the genome of a thylacine to be sequenced.
So once the DNA is sequenced, you have to face the reality of turning that into a living Tasmanian tiger. The supposed theory of doing this is as follows. Initially, an egg cell from a female Tasmanian devil would be surgically removed. The empty egg cell would then have the thylacine DNA inserted into it. The egg cell would be electrically shocked to stimulate the growth of an embryo. Finally, the growing embryo would be surgically placed back into the Tasmanian devil which acts as the surrogate mother.
Marsupials give birth to tiny young close to the size of a jelly bean. Due to this fact, the Tasmanian devil wouldn’t even know initially that it has given birth to a thylacine, an animal which is significantly bigger. Something that once appeared to be science fiction, is now on the verge of becoming reality.
This is the specimen of a 108 year old preserved thylacine pup. The alcohol is a natural DNA preservative. Extracted soft tissue from the pup was utilised to sequence the genome of the thylacine.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF Victoria Museum, Australia
Whilst holding the powerful potential that de-extinction has, it comes with immense ethical implications. Being so new into uncharted territory we can’t be sure if it would produce healthy animals. Finally, once you have a successful animal, how do you start to reintroduce it into the wild again and at what cost or gain? It’s been 3000 years since Tasmanian tigers became extinct on the Australian mainland, the environment has changed. We don’t know if the thylacine would survive in new environments and the potential imbalance they have the ability to cause to ecosystems.
These processes to facilitate de-extinction are obviously not cheap. We face an unanswered moral dilemma. Do we invest time, money and effort into bringing back a species which we decimated, or do we preserve what we already have, feeding that money into current conservation efforts?
The moral obligation is tremendous to awaken the Tasmanian tiger, as it was us who caused this recent tragedy. Regardless, we must focus on not repeating our previous mistakes, which has left a guilty world, that truly misses them.