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Posted: 23-04-2012 20:41 Post subject:

I'll trawl through the back issues of Animals and Men because i know we covered it at the time. I can't quote when untill i find the reference.
It may be that it was in some country were it was localy extinct and i've remembered wrong. If so apologies in advance.

Most of the people searching for the thylacine do it off their own backs with limited time and money (Col Baily for example).
I've yet to go to Tasmania but Lars Thomas has and he tells me the forests are huge and thick. On the mainland you are talking about a vast area and in NG you could hide King Kong.

Posted: 28-04-2012 18:07 Post subject: 1995 Thylacine sighting

Many of you here will be aware of the 1995 sighting from the North West of the island, it was made by a wildlife service ranger and was considered to be fairly reliable and sparked a Government search.

Posted: 01-05-2012 05:12 Post subject:

And how about that 2007 sighting? Plus there are still new sightings coming in almost monthly. Still hope IMO.

Posted: 01-05-2012 11:23 Post subject:

I don't know about that one, unless it's the German one.

Posted: 01-05-2012 16:06 Post subject:

I've just looked up that German sighting which was what I was afraid you were referring to, that was in 2005.

So please give us some more about this 2007 sighting.

Posted: 01-05-2012 20:45 Post subject:

New, to me, site containing thylacine sightings from the last 20 years or so.

http://www.tasmanian-tiger.com/guestbook.html

Each to their own about how good the accounts are, but I have to highlight this;

Posted: 01-05-2012 21:14 Post subject:

This from a Government website;

Posted: 03-05-2012 05:48 Post subject:

Posted: 03-05-2012 10:54 Post subject:

Posted: 03-05-2012 20:33 Post subject:

Have spent a bit of time going through the sightings often mentioned as anecdotal evidence for their survival. Came across this site; http://www.tassietiger.org/ It seems to deal mostly with mainland sightings
There are hundreds of them, sadly while some sound plausible enough the quality of many is on the whole incredibly low to puerile, as far as I can see any dog, fox, quoll or kangaroo that the witnesses can't immediately recognise is labelled as a thylacine.

While this doesn’t diminish the credibility of any of the more accurate sounding sightings, it does show two things; firstly that thylacines have had enough of a cultural impact to make misidentification a serious issue, this is also especially true of Tasmania,second that many of the so called large number of sightings don’t stand up to even passing scrutiny.

Reading these sightings a theme which often emerges is that the witnesses report noting that the animal has an unusual gait, sometimes saying it resembles an injured dog.

Also it seems that there are more sites on the net that deal with mainland sightings than those made in Tasmania. I can’t help being reminded of the man beast myths of the 20th century being moved over from Asia to the U.S where there’s more custom, and less scrutiny.

In my opinion the only place worth considering is Tasmania, given the lack of an Aboriginal tradition about thylacines on the mainland, except one possible exception from Victoria mentioned by Paddle, and the fact that there is no evidence that the often wished for relocation to Gippsland ever happened.

Posted: 05-05-2012 16:16 Post subject:

Posted: 05-05-2012 17:04 Post subject:

Yes there are, my own dog was striped. She was a Greyhound Alsatian cross and exactly on the upper size limit given for thylacines. And because of her breeding she was deep chested with a thin abdo, I can well understand someone confusing her for one (not here in Wales obviously).

Also there's this from Carnivouras Nights, it's an excerpt from an interview with a conservationist and major thylacine researcher from the 70's now turned Senator.

It was a sighting Bob made himself that permanently altered his perception-and Jeremy’s as well. Bob was driving home one night through a wooded area and saw a startling vision in the headlights. “Here was this animal. I immediately went back to get Jeremy, and I said, ‘you’ve got to see this.’ We went right to the spot, and the animal was still there. I got it in the headlights, and it was extraordinary. It had pointed ears and a long snout. It had a thick rump and a Kangaroo-like tail and four chocolate-coloured stripes across its fawn-coloured back .
“And this is the thing. It was a greyhound dog that had the pattern and colouring of a thylacine.”

Posted: 23-05-2012 22:26 Post subject:

Posted: 26-05-2012 21:14 Post subject:

A bit of topic but some lovely photos here.

http://australianmuseum.net.au/BlogPost/Rare-and-Curious/Investigating-a-picture-of-an-thycaline