THE EXTINCT TASMANIAN TIGER
WIPED OUT BY 1936
photo by Dorne Lovegrove
The extinct Tasmanian Tiger cased by Henry Murray is on display at the Kendal Museum
The extinct Tasmanian Tiger cased by Henry Murray is on display at the Kendal Museum and is also known as the Tasmanian Tiger or Wolf. It was donated by Dr. William Rushton Parker in 1939, but where it was acquired is unknown.
There’s no other indication about how it arrived in Britain, but given Dr. Parker’s connections and social status, it’s likely to have been bought from an explorer or hunter in Australia just before the species became extinct in 1936.
This is one of just twelve on display in Britain today.
There have been no sightings of the extinct Tasmanian Tiger for at least half a century, although people sometimes do claim to have seen them in Australia.
About the extinct Tasmanian Tiger
About the extinct Tasmanian Tiger
On 7 September 1936 the last known Tasmanian Tiger, or Thylacine, died at Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart in Tasmania. The species had been given protected status just two months before.
Around 5,000 thylacines were in Tasmania when Europeans settled there. But over-hunting combined with habitat destruction and introduced disease quickly led to the extinction of the species.
Its scientific name, Thylacinus cynocephalus, means ‘dog-headed pouched one’. It looked like a medium-sized dog, with yellowish-brown fur and a stiff tail. Female thylacines had a pouch for carrying their young.
The thylacine is commonly known as the ‘Tasmanian tiger’ because of the dark stripes on its back. Although it had a fierce reputation as a hunter, the thylacine was partly nocturnal and quite shy, so it usually avoided contact with humans.
References:
The National Museum of Australia
Why Thylacines were hunted
Explaining the demise of the extinct Tasmanian Tiger.
The first European colonies were set up in Tasmania in the early 1800s. Colonists cleared large areas of land for sheep and cattle farms. They believed that thylacines were preying on their farm animals. Although it is likely that feral dogs were mainly responsible for killing farm animals, the colonists began to hunt thylacines.
As early as 1830 farmers paid hunters who could prove that they had killed a thylacine.
In 1888 the Tasmanian Government began paying people a bounty of £1 for killing a full-grown thylacine and 10 shillings for killing a thylacine pup.
At least 3,500 thylacines were killed by hunters between 1830 and the 1920s. The number of thylacines also fell because of exposure to new diseases, and because they had to compete for food with introduced wild dogs. Also, as the colonists’ farms expanded the thylacines’ natural habitat was destroyed.
HUMAN DESTRUCTION
Humans are to blame for the disappearance of the extinct Tasmanian Tiger
At the top of the food chain, humans have excelled in survival.
But at what cost?
We’ve destroyed the planet and its resources.
We’ve hunted to extinction the marvels of evolution. Even if we could bring them back – where would we put them?
Zoos and conservation programmes are now empathetic with conserving species.
The taxidermied species are of utmost importance now to education, re-education, and the acceptance of our folly.
