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Although it was called tiger, it looked like a dog with black stripes
on its back and it was the largest known carnivorous marsupial of modern
times. Yet, despite its fame for being one of the most fabled animals in the
world, it is one of the least understood of Tasmania’s native animals. The
scientific name for the Tasmanian tiger is Thylacine and it is believed
that they have become extinct in the 20th century
Fossils of thylacines dating from about almost 12 million years ago
have been dug up at various places in Victoria, South Australia and Western
Australia. They were widespread in Australia 7,000 years ago, but have
probably been extinct on the continent for 2,000 years. This is believed to
be because of the introduction of dingoes around 8,000 years ago. Because
of disease, thylacine numbers may have been declining in Tasmania at the
time of European settlement 200 years ago, but the decline was certainly accelerated
by the new arrivals. The last known Tasmanian Tiger died in Hobart Zoo in
1936 and the animal is officially classified as extinct. Technically, this
means that it has not been officially
sighted in the wild or captivity for 50 years. However, there are still unsubstantiated
sightings.
Hans Naarding, whose study of animals had taken him around the world,
was conducting a survey of a species of endangered migratory bird. What he
saw that night is now regarded as the most credible sighting recorded of
thylacine that many believe has been extinct for more than 70 years.
“I had to work at night,” Naarding takes up the story. “I was in the
habit of intermittently shining a spotlight around. The beam fell on an
animal in front of the vehicle, less than 10m away. Instead of risking
movement by grabbing for a camera, I decided to register very carefully what
I was seeing. The animal was about the size of a small shepherd dog, a very
healthy male in prime condition. What set it apart from a dog, though, was
a slightly sloping hindquarter, with a fairly thick tail being a straight
continuation of the backline of the animal. It had 12 distinct stripes on
its back, continuing onto its butt. I knew perfectly well what I was seeing.
As soon as I reached for the camera, it disappeared into the tea-tree undergrowth
and scrub.”
The director of Tasmania’s National Parks at the time, Peter Morrow,
decided in his wisdom to keep Naarding’s sighting of the thylacine secret
for two years. When the news finally broke, it was accompanied by pandemonium.
“I was besieged by television crews, including four to live from Japan, and
others from the United Kingdom, Germany, New Zealand and South America,”
said Naarding.
Government and private search parties combed the region, but no
further sightings were made. The tiger, as always, had escaped to its lair,
a place many insist exists only in our imagination. But since then, the
thylacine has staged something of a comeback, becoming part of Australian
mythology.
There have been more than 4,000 claimed sightings of the beast since
it supposedly died out, and the average claims each year reported to
authorities now number 150. Associate professor of zoology at the
University of Tasmania, Randolph Rose, has said he dreams of seeing a thylacine.
But Rose, who in his 35 years in Tasmanian academia has fielded countless reports
of thylacine sightings, is now convinced that his dream will go unfulfilled.
“The consensus among conservationists is that, usually, any animal
with a population base of less than 1,000 is headed for extinction within
60 years,” says Rose. “Sixty years ago, there was only one thylacine that
we know of, and that was in Hobart Zoo,” he says.
Dr. David Pemberton, curator of zoology at the Tasmanian Museum and
Art Gallery, whose PhD thesis was on the thylacine, says that despite
scientific thinking that 500 animals are required to sustain a population,
the Florida panther is down to a dozen or so animals and, while it does
have some inbreeding problems, is still ticking along. “I’ll take a punt
and say that, if we manage to find a thylacine in the scrub, it means that
there are 50-plus animals out there.”
After all, animals can be notoriously elusive. The strange fish known
as the coelacanth, with its “proto-legs”, was thought to have died out
along with the dinosaurs 700 million years ago until a specimen was dragged
to the surface in a shark net off the south-east coast of South Africa in
1938.
Wildlife biologist Nick Mooney has the unenviable task of
investigating all “sightings” of the tiger totaling 4,000 since the mid-1980s,
and averaging about 150 a year. It was Mooney who was first consulted late
last month about the authenticity of digital photographic images
purportedly taken by a German tourist while on a recent bushwalk in the
state. On face value, Mooney says, the account of the sighting, and the two
photographs submitted as proof, amount to one of the most convincing cases
for the species’ survival he has seen.
And Mooney has seen it all—the mistakes, the hoaxes, the illusions
and the plausible accounts of sightings. Hoaxers aside, most people who
report sightings end up believing they have seen a thylacine, and are
themselves believable to the point they could pass a lie-detector test,
according to Mooney. Others, having tabled a creditable report, then become
utterly obsessed like the Tasmanian who has registered 99 thylacine
sightings to date. Mooney has seen individuals bankrupted by the obsession,
and families destroyed. “It is a blind optimism that something is, rather
than a cynicism that something isn’t,” Mooney says. “If something crosses
the road, it’s not a case of ‘I wonder what that was?’ Rather, it is a case
of ‘that’s a thylacine!’ It is a bit like a gold prospector’s blind faith,
‘it has got to be there’.”
However, Mooney treats all reports on face value. “I never try to
embarrass people, or make fools of them. But the fact that I don’t pack the
car immediately they ring can often be taken as ridicule. Obsessive
characters get irate that someone in my position is not out there when they
think the thylacine is there.”
But Hans Naarding, whose sighting of a striped animal two decades ago
was the highlight of “a life of animal spotting”, remains bemused by the
time and money people waste on tiger searches. He says resources would be
better applied to saving the Tasmanian devil, and helping migratory bird
populations that are declining as a result of shrinking wetlands across
Australia.
Gould the thylacine still be out there? “Sure,” Naarding says. But he
also says any discovery of surviving thylacines would be “rather
pointless”. “How do you save a species from extinction? What could you do
with it? If there are thylacines out there, they are better off right where
they are.”
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