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Tasmanian Tiger - Exstinct or still living?

Posted: Sun Feb 24, 2008 1:19 pm
by fredriksam

Posted: Sun Feb 24, 2008 9:18 pm
by RedEye
The last reported Thylacine died in an Australian zoo just berore WW I.

Given that Australia is not that well explored, I really can't say that they are all gone, as in extinct. There are no more in captivity, for certain.
In the Bush? I don't know.
Being marsupials, Tyhlacines are at a disadvantage in competing with placental mammals (almost any other animal) due to their less evolved and restricted physical development. There might be more on the other islands of the Australian group, like New Zealand, for example.

Really, you might add a "The Jury is still out" to your poll, for those of us who really don't know.

Posted: Sun Feb 24, 2008 11:53 pm
by MoonKit
I like thinking that the sightings are werethylacines. But then again I have a good imagination.

I do love thylacines though. The few clips I saw of them...they're so strange and so pretty.

Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 5:17 pm
by Midnight
RedEye wrote:There might be more on the other islands of the Australian group, like New Zealand, for example.
There's fairly much no chance there'd have been any here... until about 1200 years ago there were no terrestrial mammals in New Zealand, full stop; if any Thylacines had ever made it here they'd have flourished, getting fat on wekas, kiwis, pukekos and moa eggs; about the only predator they'd have had would have been the (now also extinct) Haast's eagle. (From memory, what happened to the eagles was: original Polynesian settlers brought rats; rats ate moa eggs; moas died out; eagles that mostly existed on a diet of full-grown moas died out).

Fredriksam - whoever told you about Steve Irwin being hot on the trail of one must have been pulling your leg - he was swimming off the coast of (from memory) Queensland when he died. A long, long way from Tasmania.