Farewell, Thylacine

[Pabmusic]

78 years ago today, the last-known Thylacine died in Hobart zoo. They were known as the Tasmanian tiger, but they weren't cats. They looked like wolves, but they weren't any kind of dog. In fact they were as distant from dogs (or any other placental mammal) as kangaroos are, because they were marsupials. The kangaroo was quite a close cousin. It's a great, but sad, example of convergent evolution, where very different things evolve many similarities because they fill similar niches in their different environments.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vqCCI1ZF7o&w=350&h=263

[Pabmusic]

And on the 1st September it was the centenary of the day that Martha, the world's last passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) died in Cincinnati zoo, aged 29. Here she is, now in a museum:



Just a century earlier, there are estimated to have been billions (yes!) in North America.

[kernelbogey]

I recently watched an excellent film, The Hunter, (dir Daniel Nettheim, 2011), which was ostensibly about a hunter being commissioned to seek out and shoot a Tasmanian Tiger, reputed still to exist in the hills. There's a plot line about some biotech multinational wanting to clone its DNA.... But it's chiefly good for the interactions of a stranger with the local Tasmanians, and terrifically atmospheric filming of a man alone in the wilderness. Worth a viewing, even if you might think the plot is hokum!

[Pabmusic]

I recently watched an excellent film, The Hunter, (dir Daniel Nettheim, 2011), which was ostensibly about a hunter being commissioned to seek out and shoot a Tasmanian Tiger, reputed still to exist in the hills. There's a plot line about some biotech multinational wanting to clone its DNA.... But it's chiefly good for the interactions of a stranger with the local Tasmanians, and terrifically atmospheric filming of a man alone in the wilderness. Worth a viewing, even if you might think the plot is hokum!

Thanks. It's just about possible a small colony of thylacines exist (they're shy and nocturnal) - though it's unlikely after this time - but I can see it would make an interesting plot-line.

[Ferretfancy]

Thanks. It's just about possible a small colony of thylacines exist (they're shy and nocturnal) - though it's unlikely after this time - but I can see it would make an interesting plot-line.

Doug Richardson, who was a mammal expert from ZSL London Zoo, once told me that there had been sightings of an animal resembling a thylacine, not in Tasmania, but in Australia itself. That's a slight possibility, since there is so much remote country on that huge continent. It would be nice to believe it.

[Pabmusic]

Doug Richardson, who was a mammal expert from ZSL London Zoo, once told me that there had been sightings of an animal resembling a thylacine, not in Tasmania, but in Australia itself. That's a slight possibility, since there is so much remote country on that huge continent. It would be nice to believe it.

Wouldn't it? It's certainly more plausible that Yetis, Bigfoots (-feet?) or Loch Ness Monsters.

[french frank]

And on the 1st September it was the centenary of the day that Martha, the world's last passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) died in Cincinnati zoo, aged 29.

That's interesting. I'd heard of pigeons carrying post, but not passengers.

[Serial_Apologist]

That's interesting. I'd heard of pigeons carrying post, but not passengers.

Probably British tourists, with whom they conversed in Pigeon English!