Thylacine Studies From The Colorized Footage.

Here is the Smithsonian thylacine as it currently appears in the museum’s Hall of Mammals. This individual was a female that lived at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. from 1902 to 1904. She was carrying three pouch young upon her arrival, two of which survived to adulthood (a male and a female, pictured here). Thanks to this little family, the Smithsonian has an impressive collection of thylacine material, but only the mother’s mounted skin is viewable by the public.

Unfortunately, this lovely specimen is displayed behind a fabric curtain in an effort to drive home the concept of extinction. If you go around the side of the display, you can barely catch a glimpse of her rear end.

The exhibit claims that the dingo was responsible for the thylacine’s extinction on mainland Australia, which occurred about 2,000 years ago. New research suggests that the dingo was not really to blame; rather, a changing climate and overhunting by growing Aboriginal populations were the likely causes. [x]

In case you’re curious, here’s a rare “pre-curtain” photo from Flickr:

For more information about the Smithsonian thylacine and her legacy, click here.

“Museum staff were excited last week when they came across our mounted thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger (Thylacinus cynocephalus), specimen in a storeroom.”

Posted by Canterbury Museum on Facebook, April 13th 2019.

some more images of the thylacine you have probably never seen before

Here’s a nice thylacine photograph I personally hadn’t seen before. From Eric Guiler’s book “Tasmanian Tiger: A Lesson to be Learnt.”

Photo caption in the book states that it’s a male at the Beaumaris Zoo.

This thylacine footage was recently rediscovered by researchers Gareth Linnard, Branden Holmes and Mike Williams on March 4, 2020.

Originally filmed by the Bester family c. 1933-1936, the 9.5mm black and white film includes 7 seconds of a captive thylacine in its enclosure at the Beaumaris Zoo.

Such a rare and amazing find!

thylacines made good pets?? ;_; they do look like they'd feel soft and glossy to the touch. I'm obsessed with tassie devils, myself, but I'm resigned that they may go extinct before I can travel far enough to see them. I wish I could pet one.

They were obviously not domesticated to the level of having domestication syndrome features (not that I'm sure a marsupial animal *would*), but there are historical records of Tasmanians who kept them as pets, including both white settlers and indigenous people.

Thylacines were somewhat prone to capture myopathy (a stress reaction that causes some animals to die if trapped/captured) and sometimes died after capture, but many did not. If the animals were treated kindly they would generally respond well to attempts to tame them, and this was even more true of orphaned baby thylacines that were raised by humans. There are several stories of people who tamed thylacines very shortly after capture. One such thylacine was let go when she went into season and became restless, and she later introduced her pups to the man she had lived with.

Indigenous people were recorded as having kept them. One indigenous informant stated that they called them "stripey dogs" when they spoke English.

One of my favourite stories was of a white settler family had a large house and kept their thylacine on an extremely long chain in the front so that she could act as a sort of watchdog. This thylacine would watch over the children playing and did not react violently to them even if she was accidentally hit by a ball (she knew that this was an accident) and would give warning of anyone approaching.

The likely reason that thylacines did not become popular household companions was the hate campaign that sprung up around them, stating that they were sheep killers. Once that got to be a big issue and bounties were offered for killing them, people who were taming and raising the animals frequently found them killed, and they gave up on it.

Many of these stories are in Robert Paddle's book, which is an academic study but is extremely readable.

Captive thylacine, c.1920′s. [x]

Everytime I see this I exhale deeply XD

It's Sept 7th, which means that Benjamin gets to be dead, his favorite activity

I still haven't found a way to colorize gifs. But I don't think a lot of people know about this thylacine footage.

(will update when I pull out my info I wrote down, I just woke up =w=)

EDIT IM SO SORRY

LOOK BEHIND THE DEVIL GDFSGDHFFVB LOL

Don't even get me started they have a Thylacine at the museum and it was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen