An Overview of Australia’s Tasmanian Tiger

The thylacine is a large, four-legged carnivorous marsupial that closely resembles a wolf or dog. Similar to both, it has a large head, straight backbone, and legs of about equal length. It has dense, short, and soft hair of a sandy yellow color. Thirteen to twenty distinctive dark stripes run laterally across its back-side, from the back of its shoulders to the base of its tail. The thylacine’s longest stripes extend about halfway down each thigh and are 2-3 cm. thick. The pattern of strips varies between individuals (Smith 1980). It is these stripes that lead the first European settlers to mistakenly refer to the thylacine as a tiger. Among the first settlers in Hobart was Rev. R. Knopwood who recorded in his diary on June 18, 1805, “They [five prisoners] informed me that on May 2 when they were in the wood they see ‘a large tyger’ and that the dog they had with them went nearly up to it and when the tyger see the men which were about 100 yards away from it, it went away” (quoted in Guiler 1998: 78). Knopwood’s report is the first written account in which the term tiger is used in reference to the thylacine. Unfortunately the name tiger stuck with the animal and contributed to the European settlers’ predatory fears. The thylacine was hardly of the size or ferocity of the tiger.

Its scientific name, Thylacinus cynocephalus, has been translated in a number of ways, most of them incorrect according to academic Bob Paddle (2000). Each book I have read gives a somewhat different translation. Many mistakenly refer to a wolf-like head, when in reality the scientific name literally translates to “the pouched thing with a dog head.” While it might seem frivolous to argue over semantics, it suggests the confusion and misinformation surrounding the animal. One of the most respected experts on the thylacine, Eric Guiler, notes that, Pathetically little is known of the biology of the thylacine. It is possible to make reasonable deductions from the early anatomical descriptions but we have to complete the picture from the other sketchy information available. However, this is not made easy for us as the literature contains some contradictory statements and some observations are obviously incorrect (1985: 45).

Guiler’s statement is true, as it is not hard to find contradictory evidence on virtually any aspect of the thylacine.
The fossil record shows that Thylacinus cynocephalus was once widespread on continental Australia and the islands of New Guinea and Tasmania. However, in recorded history the animal only existed on the island state of Tasmania, which gives Tasmania a claim to the animal that no other place has. The thylacine is a truly ancient species and is the only large carnivorous marsupial in the world to survive into historic times. It outlived both Australia’s marsupial lion and the giant predatory kangaroo, among other marsupials (Owen 2003). Evidence of the species’s history is incomplete, however. No fossil evidence has been found earlier than the Miocene period, roughly 23 million years ago. Because of an incomplete fossil record, the exact origins and relationships of the thylacine are relatively unknown.

During the Miocene, Australia was separate from other land masses although its northern edge had collided with a group of islands in Southeast Asia. This explains the thylacine’s presence in New Guinea. At this time Tasmania was still connected by a land bridge to mainland Australia. Megafauna (i.e., animals over 100 pounds) dominated the landscape. Great herds of large wombat-like marsupials, gigantic thunder birds, and carnivorous marsupials such as the thylacine and marsupial lion roamed Australia. According to recent geochemical evidence, there was a mass extinction of Australian megafauna about 46,000 B.P. (www.utah.edu 2001). This was caused by the gradual destruction of habitat over thousands of years as aboriginal hunter-gatherers set fires to drive game into the open. Around 6,000 years ago, with the rise in sea levels, the Bass Strait was flooded cutting Tasmania off from mainland Australia thus creating an island sanctuary for some of the animals that remained. This isolation of Tasmania allowed the thylacine to survive into historic times (Owen 2003). The facts and theories behind the thylacine’s extinction on mainland Australia will be explored more in chapter 3.

The thylacine is the only species of the family Thylacinidae, a family that dates back to 30 million years B.P., to have existed to historical times (Owen 2003). The order Dasyuridae, to which it belongs, is only found in the Australasian region and includes the modern-day Tasmanian devil and various species of quoll (a spotted, cat-like marsupial). According to the fossil record there were initially five different genera of Thylacinidae (Badjcinus, Muribacinus, Ngamalcinus, Nimbacinus, and Wabulacinus) ranging in size from a large domestic cat to a dingo (Paddle 2000). These species thrived 25 million years ago, but then slowly died out. By 15 million years ago there were only two species left of Thylacinidae; by eight million years ago only one was left, and around four thousand years ago, the species had died out on mainland Australia and New Guinea (Owen 2003). Some of the best evidence of the existence of thylacines on the mainland was found in 1966 by geologists David Lowry and Jacky Lowry while exploring a cave for the Western Australia Geological Survey:

While we were surveying the cave, we discovered a well-preserved carcase of a thylacine on top of a rock pile 450 feet from the entrance. The remains of many other animals were also found, including five other thylacines. Although Thylacinus has been recorded in caves of the Eucla Basin, this carcase was in a more complete state of preservation than any previously found. It was laying on its ride side with skin and hair still intact on the exposed side. The characteristic dark bars could be seen on the back of the thylacine. Although thylacines closely resemble dogs, a simple character which can be used to distinguish them is the number of incisors in the upper jaws: thylacines have eight whereas dogs have six. A count of eight upper incisors therefore confirmed our discovery as a thylacine (quoted in Guiler 1998:34).

Radiocarbon dating of the animal indicated it was 4,650 years old (plus or minus 104 years). The animal was remarkably intact, having been well preserved by the warm dry air of the cave. The hide, fur, whiskers, and even the tongue and eyes were preserved which is amazing as it had been lying on the floor of a cave for 4,500 years.

The thylacine has a long face and pointed snout much like that of a fox or wolf. Its ears are short, round and erect. The teeth of the thylacine are like those of a typical carnivore, designed for shredding meat. Its jaws, however, are capable of opening nearly 180 degrees. Reports on the size of the thylacine vary, as does virtually all other information about the animal, but it is commonly reported to have been the size of a hyena or German Shepherd. Several old Tasmanian bushman make larger claims, saying thylacines were frequently around 7 feet in length including the tail. According to Guiler, an old bushman named Sawley claimed that a “tiger shot at McKay’s property at Trowutta was the biggest ever known in this area measuring 9 feet from the tip of nose to tip of tail” (1985:79). Few records of the thylacine’s weight are available. However, based on studies of its anatomy, it has been estimated at about 55 lbs., the range being 33 – 77 lbs. (Smith 1980).

The hindquarters of the thylacine are distinctive since its long, thick and stiff tail appears to be contiguous with the body. The merging of the tail and body does not share the canine appearance of the rest of the animal. The thylacine has restricted lateral mobility in its tail, according to eye witness accounts, which gives it a clumsy appearance when it turns around. Imagine someone in an animal costume with a thick, sturdy, immobile tail trying to turn around quickly. It does not make for agile movement. Col Bailey, a thylacine hunter I interviewed, remarked on the appearance of the tail when he told me about his sighting of a thylacine in 1967. “It had a very long stiff tail that seemed to drag in the sand. It then walked off with a clumsy gait on its way up through the sand dunes, its tail acting like a rudder, it didn’t wag.” The hind legs appear crooked compared to a dog’s legs since the angle between the heel and ground is much more acute than that of a dog. The thylacine has been known to stand erect, resting its entire heel on the ground. This ability has lead to claims that it is capable of bounding like a kangaroo.

This is one of the more interesting legends about the thylacine. Early Tasmanian trappers have reported that the thylacine took several kangaroo-like hops before going into its normal four-legged gait (Guiler 1998). Col Bailey also told me about this behavior when he saw a thylacine: “After three or four minutes, it kind of turned and put its back legs under its body and propelled itself like a kangaroo.” This kind of movement seems possible based on the old film of a captive thylacine which I watched at the Hobart Museum. The animal stood on its hind legs, using its thick tail as a support similar to the way a kangaroo uses its tail. According to Steven Smith, a man named Marthick, from northwest Tasmania, supposedly shot a tiger “early one morning as it jumped onto a log, and reared up on its hind legs, sniffing the air” (1980:11). There are many other references in the early literature to the thylacine sometimes bounding like a kangaroo. It is possible that the thylacine took several hops from time to time, but it is doubtful that the animal could sustain this type of movement for any length of time. No unusual features in its nervous system, muscles or the bone structure of the hind limbs are evident that would enable the tiger to move bipedally (Guiler 1998). The claim about the thylacine’s kangaroo-like bounding is another unique trait of this animal for which little hard data exists.

Marsupial mammals, such as the thylacine, differ from the more widely-known placental mammals in that their embryos are raised in a pouch instead of inside the mother’s body. The female thylacine has a backward-facing pouch where her young live during their development. At most, four young are reared at a time as there are only four teats in a mother’s pouch. No formal data on the length or timing of the breeding season exists, yet by looking at old bounty records it is possible to estimate the peak period of breeding. Most pups and half-grown young were found in the months of June to September which means that mating most likely takes place in December with the young being born in January (Smith 1980). The gestation period lasts about one month and after three months of being attached to the teat in the mother’s pouch, the young thylacine is ready for its first steps outside (Paddle 2000). The young continue to return to the mother’s pouch until they are so big that “when all are in the pouch it hung down very low, and seemed almost a deformity” (Smith 1980:9). The pups are dependent upon their mother until they are half grown and too large to be carried in the pouch. While the mother is out hunting, the young are left in a lair, only to tag along with her at a later stage in their lives.

Habitat and Behavior

Tasmania lies at 40’S latitude and is 68,300 square kilometers in area, roughly the same size as West Virginia. It is a heavily forested and hilly country with mountain ranges dominating the western side. Tasmania’s mountains are noted more for their ruggedness than size, with steep gullies and river valleys covered in thick rainforest that makes human passage nearly impossible. Tasmania’s central plateau, 700 m above sea level, has areas of open woodland and many herbivorous and carnivorous marsupials. The climate is moderate, but snow and cold weather are frequent during winter months in the mountains (Guiler 1985). Details of bounty payments beginning in the 1880s, which will be discussed in more detail later, provide a wealth of data on the distribution of the thylacine (Smith 1980). This information shows that thylacines were abundant throughout Tasmania except in the mountains of the west coast and southwest. However, the west and southwest coasts were thinly inhabited at this time so this variation in bounty numbers could reflect the lack of a human population more than the lack of a thylacine population. The largest number of thylacines caught for bounty were caught in the central plateau region, an area rich in game. Evidence from bounties also indicates that large populations of thylacines also lived in the northwest and along the east coast of Tasmania.

The thylacine is thought to be nocturnal, but sightings were often made in the daytime. Most prey of the thylacine (wallabies and other small marsupials) become active in the early evening when they emerge to groom themselves and graze. It is safe to assume that thylacines are also active at this time. An old trapper named Sawley who spoke to Eric Guiler firmly states that “thylacines commence hunting just at dusk at all times” (1985:79). Thylacines in captivity in the New York Zoo from 1902-1908 reportedly spent most of their day basking in the sun. However, captive animals seldom exhibit the same behavior as those in the wild.

Thylacines have a quiet, nervous temperament and often give up without a struggle when caught in a snare (Smith 1980). Several accounts of thylacines dying of no apparent cause soon after capture suggests that they are prone to shock. Captive thylacines are described as docile, but rather sullen and unresponsive to their human observers. The director of the Berlin Zoo wrote in 1912: “The clear, dark brown eyes stare vacantly at the observer. The expressiveness of the true carnivore is totally lacking” (quoted in Smith 1980:15). Some reports of thylacines becoming tame and being kept as pets exist. The earliest known example comes from 1826, when Edward Abbott raised four thylacine cubs (Paddle 2000). After six months in the captivity, its owner, Ronald Gunn, reported that a female thylacine had “become sufficiently tame to permit its head to be scratched, or to be otherwise touched through the bars of its prison, without showing any anger or irritation” (quoted in Smith 1980:15). Gunn also felt that the thylacine “is far from being a vicious animal at its worst, and the name Tiger or Hyena gives a most unjust idea of its fierceness” (Paddle 2000:71). Even George Augustus Robinson, the early Tasmanian settler who made it his mission to “conciliate” (i.e., settle and Christianize) Tasmania’s aborigines, talked about his desire to tame the thylacine, commenting on a young aboriginal boy’s find of three “fine cubs… a fit size to tame” (Plomley 1966:631). However, settler Louisa Anne Meredith who once gave a captured thylacine to sir Eardley Wilmot for his animal collection, notes that
Its untamable ferocity and savageness resisted all endevours to civilize and tame it, and, in consequence, the carefully-stuffed skin was eventually preserved, instead of the living form of my ungentle protege. I believe the tigers are truly untamable, and in that respect, if in no other, merit the name sometimes given them of Native Hyena; at least, I know several instances in which young ones have been kept and reared up kindly (chained, of necessity); but they never could be approached with safety, even by those who daily fed them; and so, on the whole, are perhaps rather ill adapted for pets (1852: 265-66).

Few records of thylacines attacking humans exist. The stories that do, seem exaggerated in order to emphasize the heroism of the human. “In 1830, a thylacine is said to have boldly entered the cottage of Mr. Blinkworth, and attempted to seize a small child by the hair. Mr. Blinkworth caught the animal by the tail, threw it to the ground, and speedily killed it” (Smith 1980:15). A 1924 report in the Weekly Courrier, a Tasmanian newspaper, recounts the following heroism, A bushman carrying an automatic pistol for protection against tigers encountered a large male and young female tiger near Waratah. The female sprang at him, the pistol wouldn’t fire so he hit it with some wood. The male leapt at him and he hit it with a stick and it crawled away whimpering. Later, the man saw a cub and thought this was the reason for the attack (quoted in Guiler 1998: 150).The real incidence probably didn’t resemble this story at all. It seems highly unlikely that the man would be able to try his pistol then still be able to reach down and fend off two thylacines with a stick. Stories like these become exaggerated as they are passed down to add in order excitement and bravado. Unfortunately, this gave people an impression of the thylacine as a dangerous animal.

Reports of the sound thylacine’s make describe it as making a terrier-like bark. Col Bailey reported to me that he has heard the thylacine in the bush a number of times. “I’ve heard them at night. They have a very distinct hunting call. It’s a high pitched, like a terrier, ‘yip-yip’. It just kind of moves away all the time. It’s haunting, and you know they are moving through the area.” Col’s report is backed up by the literature which describes the animal’s sound in a similar way. Steven Smith describes the sound as, “a distinctive, and penetrating, high pitched ‘yip, yip, yip’, or rather nasal ‘yaff, yaff, yaff'” (1980:14). Guiler describes a yapping sound “likened to that of a dog barking but quite distinctive” (1985:84).

The hunting style of the thylacine is a subject on which there is little hard evidence, but a wealth of anecdotal information. The animal is rather stiff in its movements, and has often been described as clumsy or ungainly. The thylacine does not have the speed to chase down its prey like many predators and it is not known to be a pack hunter either. All of the old trappers Eric Guiler talked to were unanimous in saying that the thylacine did not have the speed to outrun its prey in a straight chase. They also agreed that it did not use cooperative hunting techniques (Guiler 1985). Without the ability to outrun its prey or to cooperatively hunt, the thylacine must rely on a well-developed sense of smell, stamina, and an exceptional ability to stalk its prey. In 1863, a settler named West gave the following account, Hunting by night, their exquisite sense of smell enables them to steal cautiously upon these defenseless animals, in the thick covers of the low grassy flats and scrubs, or to run them down in the more open hill and forest land. They are not very fleet, but follow the track with untiring perseverance occasionally uttering a kind of low smothered bark (quoted in Smith 1980:12).

This untiring pursuit of their prey is also recounted in colonist Louisa Anne Meredith’s 1852 account of her life in Tasmania,
..a brush kangaroo came along the ridge where they [her friends] were, and hopped past, within a few yards of their fire. Ten minutes after this, a female tiger came cantering along in the same line, with her nose close to the ground, scenting out the kangaroo, and passed round the fire exactly in the same track, not noticing the cattle-party, who were observing the chase with some curiosity (1852: 267).

When pursuing its game, the thylacine is single-minded. Many sightings have occurred while a thylacine has been tracking prey and failed to noticed the presence of its human observer. “Ray and Eric Cornish were playing cricket in the yard…when a thylacine pursued a sheep into the area, completed a lap, and then left, still following the sheep” (Smith 1980:13). In 1916, Bill Cotton was walking with his father in the Blue Tiers at 6 a.m. when “a small wallaby, shaking with fright, appeared in a clearing followed shortly after by a thylacine on its trail with nose to the ground. The thylacine bumped into the small boy, and was kicked by his father, but without uttering a sound, as though mesmerized, it continued following the tracks of the fleeing wallaby” (quoted in Smith 1980:13).

No written descriptions of how the thylacines kill animals exist. Guiler has collected some information, however, by talking to former hunters. The hunters he spoke to agreed that “they hunt by lying in wait for their prey and then jump out onto it. Roo are killed by standing on them and biting through the short rib into the body cavity and ripping the rib cage open” (Guiler 1985:81). This account makes sense since the thylacine can open its jaw very wide and grab the neck or chest of a wallaby and crush it. It is able to open its jaw wider than any other mammal, only the snake exceeds it (Smith 1980).

A similar account of a thylacine kill was given to me by an artisan I spoke to in Hobart’s Salamanca Place who claims to have seen a thylacine kill 15 years ago ( c. 1988) on his remote piece of land in the northwest of the state:

There were some wallabies foraging in my backyard when a thylacine came up silently. The wallaby never saw him. He pounced on it and grasped it by the neck. They rolled over a few times before the wallaby went still, and the thylacine dragged it by the neck into the woods.

Many reports claim that the thylacine killed and ate its prey in a distinct way. In fact a number of people have reported sightings based only on the way their livestock or a dead animal had been discovered. According to Guiler (1998), the thylacine’s characteristic kill pattern is to open its prey’s throat and chest, then to eat its heart, liver, lungs, and other vascular tissues along with some meat from inside the ribs. Guiler also reports that the nasal tissues are often eaten as well. The thylacine’s kill method is clean with no unnecessary tearing apart of the prey. One problem with verifying these claims is that it is hard to find a carcass that has not been also ravaged by Tasmanian devils, who are notorious scavengers. In early September 1957 two sheep were found in Tasmania that had been killed in an unusual fashion. Their throats were cleanly torn out and their nasal bones had been eaten away, but the rest of the carcasses were intact. No blood was found next to the bodies which might mean that it had been lapped up by the killer. There was little evidence of a struggle (Guiler 1998). W. Pearce, an experienced trapper who had caught thylacines to collect the bounty on them early in the 20th century, said that he had no doubt that these sheep were killed by thylacines. Dogs, in contrast, are messy killers and will often mangle an animal before finally killing it. I asked Parks and Wildlife ranger Nick Mooney during an interview about these reports of a characteristic thylacine kill method. He denied it existed saying, I’ve seen sheep and also wallabies quite commonly killed in the ‘typical’ thylacine-fashion by dogs. I don’t think there was such a typical thylacine kill fashion. All the people who saw those kills are long dead. There were no photographs taken of what was definitely a thylacine kill.

Much has been written about the thylacine’s thirst for blood. Many sources claim that drinking the blood of its prey was one of its main sources of nourishment. However, as in other areas, contradictory evidence exists, indicating that there is no certain style for thylacine kills and the animal has no overriding lust for blood. According to early reports by farmers whose sheep had been killed, “a tiger will make only one meal of a sheep, merely sucking the blood from the jugular vein, or perhaps devouring the fat around the kidneys” (Smith 1980:13). Kathleen Griffiths whose brothers brought home a snared thylacine as a pet and later sold it to Hobart’s Beaumaris Zoo recounts, they were not satisfied to kill one [sheep] and eat it, but they’d kill four or five and get the blood, that’s all they wanted… They’ll come quite close to houses where there are sheep in the paddocks, sneak down out of the country, get a sheep and kill it and drink the blood. They were a blood feeder, wherever it came from they’d suck the blood. Blood is their main food… (quoted in Paddle 2000:31).

Col Bailey, the thylacine hunger I interviewed, is another strong believer of the thylacine’s blood-feeding behavior: “He [thylacine] is a blood feeder. Paddle has said blatantly that the animal didn’t drink blood and didn’t slit the chest and eat the organs. All the evidence we’ve got says that it did suck the jugular blood. It came from an age of blood feeders millions of years ago.”

To refute Bailey and others claim that the thylacine is a blood feeder, Paddle cites the comments of long-time trapper Adye Jordan, It’s eating and drinking habits are easily observed and I strongly contradict these people who have so often described the tiger as a blood-sucking animal. Many people…have claimed that a tiger had killed a sheep, kangaroo, rabbit and other animals and sucked the blood from their neck, some people thrive on myths, they prefer myths because nobody has anything to prove (Paddle 2000:31).

Proving or disproving the blood feeding habit is impossible. With no live specimens to observe, the matter lies with conflicting reports of early settlers who observed the animal’s behavior. Many of the scientific works written on the animal throughout the century, however, have accepted the idea of it being a blood feeder. Unfortunately, they offer no more evidence than the first-hand observer accounts mentioned above.

Some scientific works, however, reject the idea, claiming that blood-feeding was simply a myth created by farmers wishing to exaggerate the ferocity of the thylacine to instill fear of the species among the public in order to gain support for a bounty. Paddle suggests that the original idea that the thylacine was a blood-feeder came from the report of an Oxford academic and war hero, Geoffrey Smith, in 1909. Smith’s work was published by the respected Claredon Press, and because of his background, his ideas were taken seriously by the Australian scientific community (Paddle 2000). We will probably never know definitively if the thylacine drank the blood of its prey or if this is simply another myth.

All of the literature on the thylacine claims that they only ate what they had killed, and that only captive thylacines would eat previously-killed meat. The behavior of captive animals is never indicative of the behavior of wild animals. They occupy entirely different niches and thus cannot be expected to act the same. A captive thylacine cannot be expected to starve itself to death because there is no live prey to capture. The will to live would force the animal to alter its feeding habits. Tasmanian farmers did not find poisoning to be an effective method of killing the thylacine, because the animals did not return to a dead sheep (Smith 1980). Dunbabin, a sheep herder, recalled that, “poisoning was no good as they [thylacines] never came back to a kill a second time” (quoted in Guiler 1985:116). This fact, however, is disputed by an article appearing in an 1866 issue of The Mercury, Hobart’s newspaper. According to the article:

Last week in the new country, an unusually large tiger was poisoned by eating a portion of a possum in which had been rubbed some strychnine. We have been requested to state the above fact, in consequence of a very general belief which obtains with sheep owners and their shepherds that tigers will not eat any flesh not killed by themselves (Mercury 1866: 2).
Despite the evidence of this article, the poisoning of tigers was not a widely-used killing method. Apparently, it wasn’t widely used because it wasn’t effective. No one can argue with the fact that early Tasmanian sheepherders were eager to eliminate the tigers which they claimed were devastating to their flocks. If poison had been effective, they would have used it. The fact that thylacines were not widely poisoned suggests that the claim that they would not eat any meat that had not been killed by themselves is true.

This chapter has detailed the biology, habitat, and behavior of the thylacine. The thylacine is a truly unique animal that out-lasted other large carnivorous marsupials by thousands of years. Its ability to survive while others of its kind went extinct is remarkable. The thylacine was seemingly capable of surviving many more years, that is until European settlement came. The thylacine was not a terrifically large animal, nor was it prone to attacking humans. However, after European settlement it quickly gained a reputation as a ferocious animal that was a danger to man and his livestock.