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The Tasmanian Tiger, or Thylacine, is a creature of mystery. Abel Tasman was probably the first Western man to record its existence. In 1642 he wrote in his journal that an expedition ashore had "observed certain footprints of animals, not unlike those of a tiger's claws". Over three hundred years later people are still on the trail of tiger footprints, hoping to prove that these elusive animals have survived against all the odds.
During the early days of colonisation in Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) the thylacine was not seen as a threat to livestock but by around 1830, when many farmers had large flocks of sheep, it gained a reputation as a ferocious sheep killer. There is little foundation for this reputation: naturalists observed that it only killed one animal at a time rather than creating the havoc that a pack of wild dogs could. Farmers and large landholders were convinced, however, that it was a serious threat to their livelihood. Their insistence was enough to persuade Colonial governments to sanction its slaughter, offering generous bounties to hunters. From around 1830 it was systematically hunted and snared making it inevitable that in the words of the renowned naturalist John Gould "the numbers of this singular animal will speedily diminish". Ironically total protection for the animal only came into force just before the last known thylacine died in 1936.
Following the death of the last captive animal in 1936, an expedition set out in 1937 looking for another specimen. Though the expedition members did not see any thylacines, they recorded many recent sightings by other persons in the area around the Arthur and Pieman Rivers. In 1945 well-known Australian naturalist David Fleay found possible thylacine footprints in the area bordered by the Jane River and Lake St Clair. Fleay also records how, when sitting round a campfire one night, they heard an eerie animal cry that they were convinced must have been made by a thylacine. Fleay described the cry as a sounding like "a brief sharp creak of a door" and "quite unlike any cry of a mammal or bird" that he had ever heard. Despite numerous reported sightings, and a set of footprints said to be only twenty-four hours old, Fleay's expeditions provided no conclusive evidence of the continued existence of the animals.
Footprints were found by Eric Guiler in the far north-west of Tasmania in 1959, though his search of the Sandy Cape area in 1963 found no evidence. Further searches by private individuals and National Parks and Wildlife officers have been undertaken on a regular basis but there have been no confirmed sightings or photographs of the thylacine in the wild since the 1930s.
Worldwide interest, however, continues. A New York newspaper offered a reward of $5,000 for a photograph of a thylacine in 1950. The World Wildlife Fund has provided a number of grants to Tasmanian government agencies concerned with fauna protection to investigate its existence and its biology and behaviour. It has caught the imagination of many prominent people including such disparate characters as Sir Edmund Hillary and Brigitte Bardot.
What kind of animal has excited this continuing interest? It most distinctive feature was the band of dark stripes running in a horizontal sequence from shoulder to the base of the tail, thus giving rise to the common name of Tasmanian Tiger. But the thylacine's relatives were the kangaroo and other marsupials and it had the distinction of being the world's largest carnivorous marsupial. It had a rigid tail and females had a pouch for carrying their young, though this opened from the rear which protected the young from being scratched by vegetation as the adult animal moved through the scrub. The body colour seems to have been variable, ranging from a grizzled tawny grey to olive or yellowish brown. It had eight upper incisors in its mouth (dogs only have six) and an enormous gape, being able to open its jaws to about 120 degrees.
Where prints of the animal have been found they are clearly distinguishable from of those of a dog. Noted Tasmanian naturalist Michael Sharland describes how the manus or "hand" of the thylacine leaves a print where five digits and claws are generally visible. A print from a dog will leave only four digits visible since the fifth digit is about an inch above the level of the others. In addition the hind feet of the thylacine have only four digits, the hallux or big toe being absent.
As a hunter the thylacine was a nocturnal and generally solitary animal. Its principal food would have consisted largely of kangaroos and wallabies, which it would pursue relentlessly until they collapsed from exhaustion. The introduction of domestic animals such as sheep to the island of Tasmania gave it a further choice, which probably required much less effort to stalk.
With no recorded sightings for more than sixty years, it would seem that the thylacine is most likely extinct. But there are still groups and individuals who believe otherwise. Professor Henry Nix, a former director of the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies at the Australian National University, has undertaken an extremely detailed study in recent years. In the early 1990s Nix gathered all the available records of trappings and shootings during the late 1800s.
Professor Nix has developed a computer program, called BIOCLIM, to map the environmental factors that shape the distribution of plant and animal species. This program was used to generate a map showing the optimum environment for thylacines - the grasslands and open woodlands of northern Tasmania.
He then graded over more than 300 reported sightings of thylacines into three data sets: Presumed reliable, possibly reliable and crank sightings. The next step was to superimpose these sightings on the BIOCLIM map. The presumed and possibly reliable sightings both overlapped almost perfectly with BIOCLIM's prediction of where the tiger was most likely to be found. More tellingly, the areas of most frequent sights coincided with two small hotspots of prime habitat identified by BIOCLIM.
Professor Mike Archer, Director of the Australian Museum and Professor of Palaeontology at the University of New South Wales, has recently announced plans to clone an infant male thylacine that has been preserved in alcohol and kept in the Museum collection since late in the nineteenth century. Other scientists question the viability of such a project, pointing out that the money needed for such an undertaking would be better spent on protecting other endangered species.
The most recent project to be announced is a local Tasmanian initiative. Dr David Pemberton from the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery is now looking at developing molecular markers for thylacines, Tasmanian devils, eastern and tiger quolls, feral dogs and cats and ferrets by collecting scats from likely habitats for thylacines and then submitting them for DNA testing.
Even if the thylacine is extinct, it is certain that the public will not lose interest in the animal. The Government of Tasmania may declare that its status is "probably extinct", but there are still enough reported sightings for believers to hold on to the hope that this elusive animal still prowls remote areas of the island.
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