See my latest article: Tasmanian tigers as pets.

A map of thylacine sighting hotspots in the Southwest of Western Australia can be found at this link on page 4 of the pdf file.

You really need to compare it with a map showing vegetated areas versus cleared areas and creeks and streams (more on that later…). I guess you could use GoogleEarth, though.

Places of interest on the map:

1. Just east of Capel is “Tiger Gully”. Where settlers used to allegedly play with the little critters. Note that a huge base of bush knowledge was lost when the early cattlemen who ranged the Southwest bush on horseback volunteered and perished on the Battlefields of France in the Great War.
2. The Whicher Ranges are those seven little X’s just East of Cowaramup. The ranges are still wooded, South and East of them are the Sunklands, a scrubby, swampy, hilly thylacine paradise. North of the Ranges is the Vasse – cleared pastureland. West is the Naturalist Ridge, but a cleared strip of farmland runs all the way down to Margaret River bounded by roads. Gullies and Creekbeds run out from the Whicher ranges to Vasse and past Cowaramup.

Farmers routinely report stock losses to “wild dogs”. The creeks provide perfect access for both predation and migration between habitats.

Personally, I believe that what you saw was a type of Thylacoleo – the Marsupial Lion, and that most Thylacine sightings down here are of Thylacoleo, but because Thylacines are so “popular”, that is what they are reported as being.

Don’t see it coming up in the U.S. listings, but here’s where you check.

Wild animals can be tamed and tamed animals can act very much like domesticated animals, but they still retain wild instincts and behaviors that have not beem modified by selective breeding. Take tigers, for instance. Tigers breed successfully in captivity, and they can be taught to do many things that tigers do not do in the wild, but tigers, even if they have been captive-bred for 4 or 5 generations, are still wild animals, no matter how tame individuals may become. Perhaps in many, many more generations of intensively selective captive breeding, a domesticated tiger could be produced. Truly domesticating a species means selecting for desired traits through many generations.

Dogs can interbreed with wolves and other wild canids, but dogs are still domesticated animals, and wolves and coyotes are not. Reindeer are domesticated; caribou are not.

The same is true with other species. Elephants can be tamed to the point of being beasts of burden for decades of their lives, but they do not breed well in captivity and their basic wild instincts remain intact. Captive elephants kill many people every year. Wild animals of many species can be tamed, but for a species to be domesticated take many, many generations of human intervention through selective breeding for desired traits.

kittenz – thanks for the info on “tame” versus “domesticated”. Not sure from your description though, on what you feel makes “domesticated” different from tame. Either way, I’d suggest only a handful of thylacines were kept in captivity – far fewer if you discount the zoo specimens.

Chris.

It would be a mistake to confuse “tamed” with “domesticated”, however. Many animals can be tamed, but only a few have been truly domesticated. A tame animal is one that will interact reasonably peacefully with people. It may have been caught wild and tamed, or born in captivity, but it is basically still a wild individual with modified behavior. A domesticated animal, on the other hand, is an animal belonging to a SPECIES that has been modified and propagated by humans, usually for a specific purpose or purposes.

To the best of my knowledge, although individuals of many species of marsupials have been tamed at one time or another, no marsupials have ever actually been domesticated.