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Posted: 12-05-2012 02:55 Post subject:

You're yanking our chains. According to you they don't exist.

Laughing

Posted: 12-05-2012 16:37 Post subject:

Actually according to me they probably no longer exist, and almost certainly not as a viable species.

Quite what that's got to do with this question though is beyond me.

Posted: 12-05-2012 23:07 Post subject:

Because things that don't exist don't have color.

For the record, I do think that they probably still exist, but every thread about them you are there saying they don't. Now, you want to know what color they are.

You're yanking our chains.

Posted: 12-05-2012 23:52 Post subject:

Posted: 13-05-2012 00:27 Post subject:

The one in Leeds museum is fawn/brown sort of colour, I will have to go back and have a look but from memory seemed a fairly even colour. ETA do a google image search for 'Leeds museum thylacine' and you will find a fair few images of it.
All the illustration linked to earlier appear to be variations of agouti (rabbit colour), agouti can vary widely from almost yellow to almost black with various shades of dull or warm colours in between. Also animals living in areas with seasonal changes in temperature might have different coloured coats at different times of year and there might have been differences in sub-species too.

Posted: 13-05-2012 00:34 Post subject:

Posted: 13-05-2012 21:56 Post subject:

It is an interesting point.

The trouble with any museum specimen is that it's old and faded, most of the skins in the NH are the same sort of fawny browny shade. There's just no way to tell from them. Rather like the pictures I posted, I should have realised that whatever colour they are in reality I'm only looking at copies on the web, and photos of paintings seldom catch the colours well.

I'd say that whatever the true thylacine colour was, looking at the film footage although it's black and white, it varies over the animal, to an extent.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/files/2011/05/Thylacine.jpg

It's more than highlights we're seeing there over the coat especially in the negative spaces between the stripes. The face is also clearly marked, this is especially obvious on the film.

I think what we think of now as the look of a thylacine is a bit of a poor shadow of what it really was.

Agouti as you say rabbit colour the exact same term used by Alison Reid.

Lots of other animal as you say do change colour over the seasons. As far as differing subspecies go I don't see this as a factor in Tasmaian thylacines, there is so far at least only one type known from there in historical times. There's also some, though in my opinion pretty poor, evidence that genetic diversity in the population was quite low.

I find this question particularly interesting because aside from the obvious implications it has for current sightings, I think it also shows how much info we've lost about the thylacine. Further I'd say it points to the fact that whatever slim info we do have is in danger of being overtaken by the picture we've built up over the last few decades since the animal started to take on the status it's now got.

There's so much false information, second guessing and modern myth building up about them that before long the real flesh and blood animal, the only thing that really matters, may be be completely overtaken and forgotten.

Posted: 14-05-2012 14:04 Post subject:

Mammals can exhibit quite a veriation in colour. Look at placental wolves. They have a number of different recorded shades of fur. Thylacines are probobly the same.

Posted: 14-05-2012 21:42 Post subject:

True, perhaps my asking the question illustrates a tendency to think of them in unreal and uniform terms, not like a real species at all. At least on my part.

Posted: 27-06-2012 15:57 Post subject:

Looking around for a photo of a taxidermy that came up in another thread I've found some truly extraordinary stuffed thylacines, bad to the extent where you wonder how anyone has the neck to show them. So far in reverse order they are;

http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs49/i/2009/234/f/f/KBIN__Thylacine_by_SSJGarfield.jpg

http://www.howtobearetronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Stuffed-Thylacine.jpg

http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6132/6037673898_0f59a5056e_z.jpg

Mind you other animals have it harder;

http://i.imgur.com/ddBwM.jpg

http://www.outdoorlife.com/files/imagecache/photo-gallery/photo/1001321579/2_18.png

Posted: 27-06-2012 16:01 Post subject:

Posted: 27-06-2012 18:02 Post subject:

Personally I prefer the Polar Bear, the Leopard poor bugger, is stuck outside a mini market by the look of tings but the bear is in a museum. Surely to God they must realise it looks like an advert for a high caffeine drink of some sort.

Mind you I think this one has the edge on it;

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/07/13/article-2014186-0CFDCDBC00000578-237_634x457.jpg

Posted: 27-06-2012 18:14 Post subject:

Posted: 01-05-2013 13:23 Post subject:

Here is a skin which has never been on view;

http://thylacine.psu.edu/thyla1.html

Regarding the conditions under which it's been kept, the Smithsonian says;