I await your further analysis. I may be completely wrong but I cannot see the Doyle animal as a fox. I am only conversant with european foxes being situated in England but I see plenty of them running about and they seem to run in a completely different manner. In addition the length of their tales would appear to be different.

You might also be interested in tasmanian-tiger.com as they have a series of Tasmanian sightings from the 1980s - 1990s documented on their site.

DT40 - I know very little about the Doyle footage; in fact - pretty much the only thing I know is what there is at the thylacine museum.

However, I have recently come across a thylacine/fox comparison which I plan to look at in more detail. In this case, the fox is missing about 70 percent of its fur and looks remarkably like a thylacine - more so from a distance. You might find it strengthens the case for the Doyle footage showing a fox.

In addition, I have received a new version of the Doyle footage which has had the subject (animal) stabilized and centered. It is also a higher resolution image and leads me to agree with Campbell that there are in fact several frames which seem to indicate the animal was striped. Exact details are yet to follow at Where Light Meets Dark, but in the meantime, I have added a little information about how it is that Klaus and Birgit ended up tourists in Tasmania without really knowing much at all about their destination - let alone the tiger.

I just cannot see a dog running and have discounted both fox and cat. Do we know the circumstances relating to the sighting and what the Doyles comments on the film’s subject were.

I was driving home late at night along a stretch of road called Old Beach Road, I think? that’s what it was called, it is a stretch of road cut from cliffs that runs between Risdon Vale and Lindisfarne, or there abouts. I haven’t lived there for a long time. Anyway, the road was very isolated and had no street lights as there weren’t many houses etc around. I was giving a friend a lift home, he lived in Risdon Vale. As we were driving along, an animal which we initially thought was a greyhound came into view in the cars headlights. As we drove past it my mate made comment that he thought it looked like a Tasmanian Tiger and he commented that he thought it had the distinctive strips and hindlegs and tail. It certainly had that look to it. Excitedly we pulled the car over and turned around, but unfortunately we were unable to locate the animal again.

Also, about a year later, we had a mutal friend who scored himself a job with the Tasmanian Wildlife Service and one day we got to talking about the Thylacine and he told us that he had seen proof that they knew where there were pockets of the animals but it was all very hush hush as you would imagine. Whether he was yanking our chains or not well who knows? Yet it sounded plausible.

Chris

Kittenz - I wouldn’t say that there was an absence of detailed study. Firstly, biologists of the day did study and describe the species.

Robert Paddle’s book “The Last Tasmanian Tiger: The History and Extinction of the Thylacine” looks in detail at how scientific and public perceptions of the animal formed and changed from its discovery to the present. Paddle’s work is based on a swathe of recorded documents - some scientific, many not (such as letters, newsletters, newspapers).

Apart from the works Paddle reviews, Paddle himself brings new insights into the hunting, migration and family/dominance behaviours of the species which have been acknowledged as useful new information on the species.

I’d recommend the Paddle book for a history of the thylacine and Col Bailey has also written a book titled “Tiger Tales”, of stories gleaned from first-hand witnesses of the animal (typically trappers) as well as post-extinction witnesses. The trapper accounts in particular contain numerous references to species behaviour also.

Chris.

My passion is actually the cat family, from the earliest known cat-like fossils to the modern cats with which we share the Earth. In my studies, I came across this wonderful book, The Big Cats and Their Fossil Relatives, by Alan Turner and Mauricio Anton. In chapter 4 there is a discussion of the stability of a plantigrade stance and the advantages of that stance for animals that climb trees. Turner also points out that a wide range of flexibility in the wrists and ankle joints is important because it allows the feet to adjust to irregular surfaces. He goes on to note that a long, flexible back, such as those found in primitive (and presumably tree-climbing) carnivores indicates that the animal possessing it would likely be an able tree climber. There is also discussion concerning the differences in hunting techniques between animals exhibiting these attributes, and animals such as wolves, which hunt mainly by coursing. The book is beautifully illustrated by Mauricio Anton, and on page 109 of my copy there is a depiction of a cat preparing to spring from a tree branch, which shows how even a digitrade cat uses its entire foot for stability in the trees. Viewing the short films of the thylacine, I was struck by some their similarities to the fossa, a completely unrelated placental mammal. When unrelated animals evolve similar features, it is usually because they share similar lifestyles.

Even the thylacines’ wide gape, long teeth, extremely powerful bite, and reputed savageness when fighting could be advantageous to a tree-climbing hunter. If you are a Tassie Tiger, on a tree branch, say, twenty or thirty feet above the forest floor, snapping at a wallaby or a bird that might escape in an instant, it pays to make that first bite count: you might not get a second chance to secure that prey, and you want it dead quickly so you don’t have to struggle with it and chance falling and injuring yourself.

My point is: people seem to have formed a mental image of the thylacine as a courser, like a wolf. One of its most common names is Tasmanian Wolf, because it superficially resembles a dog. But looking more closely, and given its physiology, and the fact that it has so many characteristics of tree-climbing animals, I don’t believe that the concept of it having a wolf-like lifestyle is very accurate. We need to throw away the term “Tasmanian Wolf”. If we are going to nickname it, Tasmanian Tiger is more appropriate. We need to broaden our thinking about thylacines to include the possibility that they may have been, or may indeed be, at least partly arboreal. Tasmania is a large island, and for thousands of years the thylacines lived there in a mature forest environment. Why would they have evolved features so well suited for tree climbing if they did not need to climb trees?

Their long, flexible backs, their semi-plantigrade feet, their flexible wrists, their propensity for vertical leaping - even their long teeth and wide gape - seem to indicate that they would be very capable tree climbing hunters. Why would it have evolved such adaptations, if not to utilize them?

I suppose an argument could be made that the thylacine has these characteristics due to its having evolved from tree-dwelling animals, and that it does not necessarily share that affinity for trees with its ancestors. After all, lions and tigers evolved from tree-climbers, and they still have those characteristics, but they do not regularly climb. But lions and tigers do not climb, as adults, because they are simply too heavy to be able climb safely. Thylacines are not too heavy to be efficient climbers. They appear to have had a body mass similar to that of the mid-sized cats such as small pumas or leopards or caracals - all of which very efficient at hunting in trees. Once you broaden your view of the thylacine to include the possibility, it is easy to imagine them lying along a large branch, or leaping up into the trees in pursuit of prey. Of course, the same adaptations that facilitate tree climbing would also be useful for hunting among rock cliffs, etc.

It’s too bad that thylacines disappeared before detailed studies of them could be done. I hold great hope that they are out there, and that the species can yet be saved.

However, I have to say - after learning about the thylacine informally for several years, and reading a handful of books, I have found no references to thylacines being tree dwelling.

At the same time, there are references to thylacines being able to do quite decent “standing jumps”. They did this (onto walls) whilst in zoos.

I recently had a long online discussion about one of Australia’s extinct marsupial carnivores (although there are those who believe it may not be extinct) - named thylacoleo.

Thylacoleo has received a one hour documentary screening here in Australia about 2 weeks ago, and the conclusion is that this predator was a tree dweller.

In many respects, thylacoleo had the physiology to climb trees in a similar way that a possum might, and the speculation is that thylacoleo was in fact a herbivore turned carnivore.

As mentioned, there are people here who believe thylacoleo lives today. Those who claim to have seen it say that its appearance is identical to a panther (in body shape and colour), but with a possum’s face.

DT40 - you mentioned scrutiny of the 1973 footage. I have spent two lengthy nights putting together a piece about exactly that. I am not yet finished though, so it is not yet online. I’ll do my best to finish it off tonight and make sure to let you all know.

The analysis looks at various frames from the 1973 footage, 1930s footage and footage of greyhounds.

Chris.

Scrutiny of the 1973 film appears to me to rule out the european fox and any type of cat as the mystery animal while most dogs do not possess a similar running style. It would appear sensible to compare limb/tail lengths and stride patterns etc in order to try and resolve this sighting. The comments above concerning possible tree climbing for hunting appear valid.

The 7th of September 2006 represented the 70th anniversary of the animals extinction in captivity and I really hoped conclusive evidence of its continued existance in the wild would have been found by now. I’m not that surprised that it hasn’t but I still fel that there is a good chance that it is out there.

Tasmania is a large island. It is about the size of Ireland but only has 1/10th the population (and Ireland has plenty of space) and there are still large areas of wilderness that remaine pretty much untouched and unsettled. The animal could easily exist in these remote areas and go undiscovered. So my moneys on its continued existance. Just hope it will be proven once and for all sometime soon!