What Is A Thylacine?

Thylacines (Thylacinus cynocephalus), also known as Tasmanian tigers or Tasmanian wolves, were actually not mammals, despite what their alternative names suggest. They were marsupials, like kangaroos and koalas, native to the Australian mainland, Tasmania and New Guinea. They were called Tasmanian wolves due to their distinctly wolfish appearance, and tigers because of the black stripes that ran vertically down their lower backs. Their bodies were otherwise a sandy-brown and muscular, with short legs and a long, stiff tail. Their heads were large with smallish round ears and strong jaws that could open to an impressive 80 degrees. Like other marsupials, thylacines had a pouch in which their young grew. Unusually, this pouch faced backwards towards the tail, and even males were equipped with one.

What Did Thylacines Eat?

Thylacines were carnivorous apex predators, and reportedly ate anything from birds to kangaroos. They had a reputation among European settlers for being a fierce and aggressive pest, which hunted sheep and other livestock. This was likely unfair, and was partly in response to a series of pictures published of captive thylacines eating dead chickens. In reality, thylacines were known to be shy and elusive, and avoided human contact as much as possible. Thylacines were nocturnal and crepuscular predators, preferring to hunt at night or during twilight hours. Though they were not particularly agile, they were able to hop on their hind legs, much like a kangaroo. It is believed that this enabled them to take down prey taller than themselves, such as emus.

Why Did Thylacines Disappear?

The thylacine was present on the Australian mainland only until around 3000 years ago, but survived on the island of Tasmania until well into the 20th century. As with so many species, the reasons for the thylacine’s extinction were largely human-related. There is some evidence that thylacines fared poorly in competition for food with dingos, after the latter were introduced to thylacine habitat. However, the biggest threat to their survival was active persecution by humans. As they were considered to be a “pest” by European settlers (as was just about everything else they encountered in their “new homes” around the world), thylacines were actively hunted, with the government going so far as to issue a bounty on their heads. This ultimately led to their downfall, with the last thylacine dying in Hobart zoo on the 26th of September 1936, just 59 days after the species was granted protected status.

Thylacine Sightings

There have reportedly been over 1200 thylacine sightings in the last century. Good news? Perhaps not: none of these sightings have actually been confirmed. Many sightings were likely the product of misidentification, delusion, over-excitement or straight-up lying. But surely well over a thousand people can’t have been wrong? To shed some light on the issue, Dr Barry Brook, professor of environmental sustainability at the University of Tasmania, and his team recently conducted a study in which they rated the sightings in terms of reliability. According to this study, the highest quality reports of thylacines (from park rangers, scientists and other experts in the field) were at their height in the 1930s, but had already began to fall in the 1940s. Over the following 80 years, there were roughly 300 credible sightings, with the most reliable recent report being in 1982 by a park officer. Dr Brook’s study suggests that the earliest time for extinction was likely in the 1950’s, and quite possibly as late as the 1980’s or 90’s, decades later than the official estimate. There is even a small chance small groups of thylacine exist in remote areas of Tasmania today, though many experts consider this implausible. This said, in May 2002, two thylacines, an adult and a juvenile, were reportedly seen by an environmental scientist on two different days in the same area. In February of 2018, three people saw a thylacine near Derwent Bridge, Tasmania, specifically noting the animal’s stripes.

Bringing The Thylacine Back

De-extinction company, Colossal Biosciences, the same company dedicated to bringing back the wooly mammoth, has announced that the thylacine is next on their list for resurrection. The project has already garnered some 10 million dollars in funding, from celebrities such as Chris Hemsworth and Paris Hilton, as well as the CIA (sure there’s nothing to worry about there…). Because the thylacine went extinct so recently, good quality DNA was able to be extracted from preserved thylacine specimens. Using this DNA, Andrew Pask, professor of epigenetics at the Univerisity of Melbourne, has managed to fully sequence the thylacine genome, and is working with Colossal on their de-extinction project. If all goes to plan, Pask estimates we will see a 90% “de-extincted thylacine-ish thing” in the next decade.
The goal of the project is to establish a healthy captive population of 99.9% thylacines, before reintroducing them into the wild. Colossal and Pask believe reintroduction of Tasmania’s apex predator will help rebalance the ecosystem, controlling booming populations of kangaroos and wallabies, as well as removing sick individuals from a population before they can pass on the disease. An example of the damage caused by thylacine extinction can be seen in their relatives, the Tasmanian devil. Tasmanian devils are rapidly approaching extinction themselves, largely due to a fatal facial tumour virus spreading uncontrollably throughout the population. Pask argues that thylacines would help control this spread by picking off the sick.
This theory has been met with some opposition, however. Tasmanian conservationist and wildlife expert, Nick Mooney, who has decades of experience with Tasmanian devils, believes that introducing an apex predator to an already extremely vulnerable population of devils would push them over the brink of extinction. Mooney and other conservationists opposing de-extinction projects believe that extinction prevention is better than a cure. Not only is the “cure” extremely costly, but there are so many risks involved (including complete failure) that the time, money and effort involved would be better spent protecting the animals we still have. At least, for now…