http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Thylacine_cubs.jpg

Here is the same group of juveniles and mother one year later

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Thylacines.jpg

stinks that they are in B&W, makes it very difficult to distinguish shades of coat color, but it gave me a decent reference for size in a juvenile TT. That I didn’t have before. Assuming that the photographer is not freakishly tall or freakishly short. When I saw OP’s photo, I thought, that seems rather small. But, and this is not to say I believe it is a TT, it SEEMS to be relative in size to the proven photos of TT juveniles.

As for the animal:

The thylacine’s striped are skinny and close together, these, however, are quite thick and go up all the way to the neck while the thylacine’s striped only went from the tail to the mid-part of the back. And the striped aren’t light brown as portrayed in the picture above but dark brown.

As for what animal this might be… perhaps a smaller animal considering the thylacine was not this tiny, maybe a numbat, a small marsupial with stripes, could be the cause of this hoax.

It does have a genuine feel of a realistic animal to it, and if it’s a photoshop job, it’s a damn good one. The reflection of the camera flash and the contrasting shadow on the back of the creature are in perfect congruence, starkly visible, and the fur pattern seems small and fine enough to be appropriate for the small creature (which would usually not be the case if the striped pattern fur was cropped off of an image of an animal with similar stripes, such as a tiger).

However, I think I might be leaning towards the comment about the photoshopped platypus. References have been made to the odd taper of the leg as I agree, but I was also trying not to dismiss the aforementioned “padding” on the back of the leg, and also, the seemingly strange “toes” that fold under the said foot. After hearing the suggestion of the platypus photoshop, it occured to me that that padding and foot could just as easily be the webbing of a platypus (er,) foot, photoshopped so as to best look like the foot of a conventional mammal.

This is all not to mention the fact that, unless I don’t understand the process of pickling (which is very possible so don’t give me a whole lot of credit for anything I say…), there are pickled specimins of Thylacine pups at the Thylacine museum, and though they have no fur patterns left on them they are certainly not shaped anything like the subject in this photo; in fact, they most closely resemble a miniature sized version of their parents in proportion perfectly, as is much the case in most marsupial species (again, I’m no expert).

(1) It’s totally absurd that the person who took the photo would be afraid to reveal his identity because he’s afraid of the police. That sounds like a lame excuse for hiding the identity of the supposed photographer, and avoiding closer scrutiny.

(2) It’s totally absurd that the police would be deliberately suppressing evidence that the tiger is alive and well — least of all because of financial interests. Tasmanians would stand to make millions and millions of dollars if the tiger is still alive.

(3) The supposed photographer called the animal a ’striped puppy kangaroo thing.’ This suggests he had never heard of the Tassie tiger — one of the world’s most famous animals — even though he was out in the Tasmanian bush with a camera taking pictures of animals. This even more totally absurd than (1) and (2). The description is a feeble attempt to portray the photographer as innocent and honest, while also sounding like it must be a tiger: “If he doesn’t even know what a Tasmanian tiger is, then how could the photo possibly be fake?”

(4) I can’t understand what the rest of you are saying about the photo. No legs of any kind are visible. Where are the tiger’s legs??? Assuming the right hand side is the front of the animal, then it seems to have a short stump for a front right leg, and a slightly larger stump at the back right. What is this? A double-amputee tiger? Also, no head is visible. You can’t see any part of the animal’s head. HELLO!!!! Isn’t that a bit odd? I mean, if you were going to fake a picture of a tiger using some other animal, isn’t that exactly the part you’d have to leave out. Y also can’t see the tail, which is another part you’d have to leave out if, for example, your picture was actually of a platypus…

(5) The body shape, as noted by others, is exactly like that of a platypus. If this is in fact a platypus, then you would expect the faker to have real trouble making (a) the head and (b) the legs and (c) the tail look convincing, since a platypus’ heads and legs and tail are not even remotely tiger-like. Maybe that’s why the legs are TWO LITTLE STUMPS and the head and tail are INVISIBLE.

(6) As noted by others above, there’s a strange pink patch at the back right of the animal. That strange pink patch is exactly where the faker would have to mess around with the image to get rid of the platypus foot. So what we have is a stumpy, indistinct leg with a strange pink patch. Surely this is a totally obvious fake??

This seems to be a photo of a platypus, crudely patched up, cropped, and given a silly and obviously false back-story.

It looks very much like a small dog with what appear to be floppy ears.