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The thylacine , Thylacinus cynocephalus, (Greek for "dog-headed pouched one") was the largest known carnivorous marsupial of modern times. It is commonly known as the Tasmanian tiger (because of its striped lower back) or the Tasmanian wolf. Native to continental Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea, it is believed to have become extinct in the 20th century. It was the last extant member of its family, Thylacinidae; Specimens of other members of the family have been found in the fossil record dating back to the late Oligocene, extends from about 33.9 million to 23 million years before the present.





Like the tigers and wolves of the Northern Hemisphere, from which it obtained two of its common names, the Tasmanian Tiger was an apex predator. As a marsupial, it was not closely related to these placental mammals, but because of convergent evolution it displayed the same general form and adaptations. Its closest living relative is thought to be either the Tasmanian Devil or the numbat. The Tasmanian Tiger was one of only two marsupials to have a pouch in both sexes (the other being the water opossum). The male Tasmanian Tiger had a pouch that acted as a protective sheath, covering his external reproductive organs while he ran through thick brush. The Tasmanian Tiger has been described as a formidable predator because of its ability to survive and hunt prey in extremely sparsely populated areas.  

The Tasmanian Tiger is a candidate for cloning and other molecular science projects due to its recent demise and the existence of several well preserved specimens. 

The modern Tasmanian Tiger first appeared about 4 million years ago. Species of the family Thylacinidae date back to the end of the Oligocene period; since the early 1990s, at least seven fossil species have been uncovered at Riversleigh, part of Lawn Hill Natinal Park in northwest Queensland. Dickson’s thylacine (Nimbacinus dicksoni) is the oldest of the seven discovered fossil species, dating back to 23 million years ago. This thylacinid was much smaller than its more recent relatives. The largest species, the powerful Tasmanian Tiger (Thylacinus potenus) which grew to the size of a wolf, was the only species to survive into the late Miocene. In late Pleistocene and early Holocene times, the modern thylacine was widespread (although never numerous) throughout Australia and New Guinea.The modern thylacine first appeared about 4 million years ago. Species of the family Thylacinidae date back to the beginning of the Miocene; since the early 1990s, at least seven fossil species have been uncovered at Riversleigh, part of Lawn Hill Natinal Park in northwest Queensland. Dickson’s thylacine (Nimbacinus dicksoni) is the oldest of the seven discovered fossil species, dating back to 23 million years ago. This thylacinid was much smaller than its more recent relatives. The largest species, the powerful thylacine (Thylacinus potenus) which grew to the size of a wolf, was the only species to survive into the late Miocene. In late Pleistocene and early Holocene times, the modern thylacine was widespread (although never numerous) throughout Australia and New Guinea.


Numerous examples of Tasmanian Tiger engravings and rock art have been found dating back to at least 1000 BC. Petroglyph images of the Tasmanian Tiger can be found at the Dampier Rock Art Precinct on the Burrup Peninsula in Western Australia. By the time the first European explorers arrived, the animal was already extinct in mainland Australia and rare in Tasmania. Europeans may have encountered it as far back as 1642 when Abel Tasman first arrived in Tasmania. His shore party reported seeing the footprints of "wild beasts having claws like a Tyger". Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne, arriving with the Mascarin in 1772, reported seeing a "tiger cat". Positive identification of the Tasmanian Tiger as the animal encountered cannot be made from this report since the tiger quoll (Dasyurus maculatus) is similarly described. The first definitive encounter was by French explorers on 13 May 1792, as noted by the naturalist Jacques Labillardière, in his journal from the expedition led by D'Entrecasteaux. However, it was not until 1805 that William Paterson, the Lieutenant Governor of Tasmania, sent a detailed description for publication in the Sydney Gazette. 

The first detailed scientific description was made by Tasmania's Deputy Surveyor-General, George Harris in 1808, five years after first settlement of the island. Harris originally placed the Tasmanian Tiger in the genus Didelphis, which had been created by Linnaeus for the American opossums, describing it as Didelphis cynocephala, the "dog-headed opossum". Recognition that the Australian marsupials were fundamentally different from the known mammal genera led to the establishment of the modern classification scheme, and in 1796, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire created the genus Dasyurus where he placed the thylacine in 1810. To resolve the mixture of Greek and Latin nomenclature, the species name was altered to cynocephalus. In 1824, it was separated out into its own genus, Thylacinus, by Temminck. The common name derives directly from the genus name, originally from the Greek thýlakos, meaning "pouch" or "sack".

Several studies support the Tasmanian Tiger as being a basal member of the Dasyuromorphia and the Tasmanian devil as its closest living relative. However, research published in Genome Research in January 2009 suggests the numbat may be more basal than the devil and more closely related to the Tasmanian Tiger.


The Tasmanian Tiger held the title of Australia's largest predator until about 3500 years ago. The Tasmanian Tiger resembled a large, short-haired dog with a stiff tail which smoothly extended from the body in a way similar to that of a kangaroo. Many European settlers drew direct comparisons with the hyena, because of its unusual stance and general demeanour. Its yellow-brown coat featured 13 to 21 distinctive dark stripes across its back, rump and the base of its tail, which earned the animal the nickname "tiger". The stripes were more pronounced in younger specimens, fading as the animal got older. One of the stripes extended down the outside of the rear thigh. Its body hair was dense and soft, up to 15 mm (0.6 in) in length; in juveniles the tip of the tail had a crest. Its rounded, erect ears were about 8 cm (3.1 in) long and covered with short fur. Colouration varied from light fawn to a dark brown; the belly was cream-coloured.

The mature Tasmanian Tiger ranged from 100 to 130 cm (39 to 51 in) long, plus a tail of around 50 to 65 cm (20 to 26 in). Adults stood about 60 cm (24 in) at the shoulder and weighed 20 to 30 kg (40 to 70 lb). There was slight sexual dimorphism with the males being larger than females on average.

All known Australian footage of live Tasmanian Tigers were shot in Hobart Zoo, Tasmania, in 1911, 1928, and 1933. Two other films are known to be shot in London Zoo

The female Tasmanian Tiger had a pouch with four teats, but unlike many other marsupials, the pouch opened to the rear of its body. Males had a scrotal pouch, unique amongst the Australian marsupials, into which they could withdraw their scrotal sac.

The Tasmanian Tiger was able to open its jaws to an unusual extent: up to 120 degrees. This capability can be seen in part in David Fleay's short black-and-white film sequence of a captive Tasmanian Tiger from 1933. The jaws were muscular but weak and had 46 teeth.

The Tasmanian Tiger's footprint is easy to distinguish from those of native and introduced species. Thylacine footprints could be distinguished from other native or introduced animals; unlike foxes, cats, dogs,wombats or Tasmanian devils, Tasmanian Tigers had a very large rear pad and four obvious front pads, arranged in almost a straight line. The hindfeet were similar to the forefeet but had four digits rather than five. Their claws were non-retractable.  

The early scientific studies suggested it possessed an acute sense of smell which enabled it to track prey, but analysis of its brain structure revealed that its olfactory bulbs were not well developed. It is likely to have relied on sight and sound when hunting instead. Some observers described it having a strong and distinctive smell, others described a faint, clean, animal odour, and some no odour at all. It is possible that the Tasmanian Tiger, like its relative, the Tasmanian devil, gave off an odour when agitated.

The Tasmanian Tiger was noted as having a stiff and somewhat awkward gait, making it unable to run at high speed. It could also perform a bipedal hop, in a fashion similar to a kangaroo—demonstrated at various times by captive specimens. Guiler speculates that this was used as an accelerated form of motion when the animal became alarmed. The animal was also able to balance on its hind legs and stand upright for brief periods.


Although there are methods that can be used to identify the diet and feeding behavior of Tasmania Tiger, findings and theories on this subject remain hotly debated. A study published in 2011 yields some insight: "Dental and biogeochemical evidence suggests that T. cynocephalus was a hypercarnivore restricted to eating vertebrate flesh" The Tasmanian Tiger was exclusively carnivorous. Its stomach was muscular, and could distend to allow the animal to eat large amounts of food at one time, probably an adaptation to compensate for long periods when hunting was unsuccessful and food scarce. Analysis of the skeletal frame and observations of it in captivity suggest that it preferred to single out a target animal and pursue that animal until it was exhausted. Some studies conclude that the animal may have hunted in small family groups, with the main group herding prey in the general direction of an individual waiting in ambush. Trappers reported it as an ambush predator.

Little is known of the Tasmanian Tiger's diet and feeding behaviour. Prey is believed to have included kangaroos, wallabies and wombats, birds and small animals such as potoroos and possums. One prey animal may have been the once common Tasmanian emu. The emu was a large, flightless bird which shared the habitat of the thylacine and was hunted to extinction around 1850, possibly coinciding with the decline in thylacine numbers. Both dingoes and foxes have been noted to hunt the emu on the mainland. European settlers believed the Tasmanian Tiger to prey upon farmers' sheep and poultry. Throughout the 20th century, the thylacine was often characterised as primarily a blood drinker; according to Robert Paddle, the story's popularity seems to have originated from a single second-hand account heard by Geoffrey Smith (1881–1916) in a shepherd's hut. In captivity, Tasmanian Tigers were fed a wide variety of foods, including dead rabbits and wallabies as well as beef, mutton, horse, and occasionally poultry. Tasmania's leading naturalist Michael Sharland published an article in 1957 stating that a captive Tasmanian Tiger refused to eat dead wallaby flesh or to kill and eat a live wallaby offered to it, but "ultimately it was persuaded to eat by having the smell of blood from a freshly killed wallaby put before its nose.

A 2011 study by the University of New South Wales using advanced computer modelling indicated that the Tasmanian Tiger had surprisingly feeble jaws. Animals usually take prey close to their own body size, but an adult Tasmanian Tiger of around 30 kilograms (66 lb) was found to be incapable of handling prey much larger than 5 kilograms (11 lb). Researchers believe Tasmanian Tigers only ate small animals such as bandicoots and possums, putting them into direct competition with the Tasmanian devil and the tiger quoll. Such specialisation probably made the Tasmanian Tiger susceptible to small disturbances to the ecosystem.

Although the living grey wolf is widely seen as the Tasmanian Tiger's counterpart, a recent study proposes that Tasmanian Tiger was more of an ambush predator as opposed to a pursuit predator. In fact, the predatory behaviour of the Tasmanian Tiger was probably closer to ambushing felids than to large pursuit canids. Consequently, at least in terms of the postcranial anatomy, the vernacular name of "Tasmanian tiger" may be more apt than "marsupial wolf"

In 1921 a photo by Henry Burrell of a thylacine with a chicken was widely distributed and may have helped secure the animal's reputation as a poultry thief. In fact the image was cropped to hide the fenced run and housing, and analysis by one researcher has concluded that this Tasmanian Tiger is a mounted specimen, posed for the camera.  


The Tasmanian Tiger probably preferred the dry eucalyptus forests, wetlands, and grasslands in contential Australia. Indigenous Australian rock paintings indicate that the Tasmanian Tiger lived throughout mainland Australia and New Guinea. Proof of the animal's existence in mainland Australia came from a desiccated carcass that was discovered in a cave in the Nullarbor Plain in Western Australia in 1990; carbon dating revealed it to be around 3,300 years old.  

In Tasmania it preferred the woodlands of the midlands and coastal heath, which eventually became the primary focus of British settlers seeking grazing land for their livestock. The striped pattern may have provided camouflage in woodland conditions, but it may have also served for identification purposes. The animal had a typical home range of between 40 and 80 km2 (15 and 31 sq mi). It appears to have kept to its home range without being territorial; groups too large to be a family unit were sometimes observed together.  



Extinction from mainland Australia

The Tasmanian Tiger is likely to have become near-extinct in mainland Australia about 2,000 years ago, and possibly earlier in New Guinea. The absolute extinction is attributed to competition from indigenous humans and invasive dingoes. However, doubts exist over the impact of the dingo since the two species would not have been in direct competition with one another as the dingo hunts primarily during the day, whereas it is thought that the Tasmanian Tiger hunted mostly at night. In addition, the Tasmanian Tiger had a more powerful build, which would have given it an advantage in one-on-one encounters. Recent morphological examinations of dingo and Tasmanian Tiger skulls show that although the dingo had a weaker bite, its skull could resist greater stresses, allowing it to pull down larger prey than the Tasmanian Tiger could. The Tasmanian Tiger was also much less versatile in diet than the omnivorous dingo. Their environments clearly overlapped: Tasmanian Tiger subfossil remains have been discovered in proximity to those of dingoes. The adoption of the dingo as a hunting companion by the indigenous peoples would have put the Tasmanian Tiger under increased pressure.  

Prideaux et al. (2010) examined the issue of extinction in the late Quaternary period (1,000,000 to 500,000 years ago)  in southwestern Australia. This paper notes that Australia lost 90% or more of its larger terrestrial vertebrates during this time, with the notable exceptions of the kangaroo and the Tasmanian Tiger. The results show that the humans were obviously one of the major factors in the extinction of many species in Australia. But in reality, it was not until the humans had an adverse effect on the environment and brought disease to Australia that their arrival drove the Tasmanian Tiger to extinction.  

Menzies et al. (2012) examined the relationship of the genetic diversity of the Tasmanian Tigers before their extinction. The results of their investigation indicated that the last of the Tasmanian Tigers in Australia, on top of the threats from dingoes, had limited genetic diversity, due to their complete geographic isolation from mainland Australia.  

Johnson and Wroe (2003) observed the relationship between the dingo and the extinctions of the Tasmanian devil, the Tasmanian Tiger, and the Tasmanian native hen and the arrival of humans. The paper observed the obviously competitive relationship between the dingo and the Tasmanian Tiger and the Tasmanian devil, and noted that the dingo may have actually fed on the native hen. Yet, the paper concludes, people ignore the emergence of humans on the continent among all of this. In the end, the competitiveness of the dingo and Tasmanian Tiger populations led to the extinctions of the Tasmanian Tiger but the arrival of the humans only further exacerbated this.  

Another study brings disease into the debate as a major factor in Tasmanian Tiger's extinction: "Casually collected anecdotal records and early boutity analyses have, at times, prompted the suggestion that disease was a major factor in the extinction of the species, that occurred when the last known specimen died in Hobart Zoo during the night of 7th September, 1936. This study also suggests that were it not for an epidemiological influence, the extinction of Tasmanian Tiger would have been at best prevented, at worst postponed. "The chance of saving the species, through changing public opinion, and the re-establishment of captive breeding, could have been possible. But the marsupi-carnivore disease, with its dramatic effect on individual Tasmanian Tiger longevity and juvenile mortality, came far too soon, and spread far too quickly 

"While anecdotal accounts exist in the literature of epidemic disease as a significant factor in recent mammalian extinctions, harder data has not previously been presented. The statistics from the deliberate killing of thylacines as a pest species support contemporary records at the turn of the twentieth century, of an epidemic disease in thylacines and other marsupi-carnivores. For the first time, detailed symptoms and statistics of the disease are presented, as recorded by museum staff, and zoological-garden curators and veterinarians. It is argued that the effects of the disease in captivity, which more than halved thylacine longevity, and preferentially affected juveniles, are conformable with the expression of the disease recorded amongst wild thylacines, and demand a recognition of the importance of this disease as a major factor in the thylacine's recent extinction, and its consideration as an influential factor on the distribution and population dynamics of extant marsupi-carnivores. It also practically demonstrates the obvious potential for disease to have been involved in megafaunal extinctions in the past." [Source: Australian Zoologist;Apr2012, Vol. 36 Issue 1]

Extinction in Tasmania 

Although the Tasmanian Tiger was extinct on mainland Australia, it survived into the 1930s on the island state of Tasmania. At the time of the first European settlement, the heaviest distributions were in the northeast, northwest and north-midland regions of the state. They were rarely sighted during this time but slowly began to be credited with numerous attacks on sheep. This led to the establishment of bounty schemes in an attempt to control their numbers. The Van Diemen’s Land Company introduced bounties on the Tasmanian Tiger  from as early as 1830, and between 1888 and 1909 the Tasmanian government paid £1 per head. (Current value today, after inflation and introduction of decimal currency: $132.29) for dead adult thylacines and ten shillings for pups. In all they paid out 2,184 bounties, but it is thought that many more Tasmanian Tigers were killed than were claimed for. Its extinction is popularly attributed to these relentless efforts by farmers and bounty hunters. However, it is likely that multiple factors led to its decline and eventual extinction, including competition with wild dogs introduced by European settlers, erosion of its habitat, the concurrent extinction of prey species, and a distemper-like disease that also affected many captive specimens at the time. Whatever the reason, the animal had become extremely rare in the wild by the late 1920s. Despite the fact that the Tasmanian Tiger was believed by many to be responsible for attacks on sheep, in 1928 the Tasmanian Advisory Committee for Native Fauna recommended a reserve to protect any remaining Tasmanian Tigers, with potential sites of suitable habitat including the Arthur-Pieman area of western Tasmania.


The last captive Tasmanian Tiger, later referred to as "Benjamin", was trapped in the Florentine Valley by Elias Churchill in 1933, and sent to theHobart Zoo where it lived for three years. Frank Darby, who claimed to have been a keeper at Hobart Zoo, suggested "Benjamin" as having been the animal's pet name in a newspaper article of May 1968. However, no documentation exists to suggest that it ever had a pet name, and Alison Reid (de facto curator at the zoo) and Michael Sharland (publicist for the zoo) denied that Frank Darby had ever worked at the zoo or that the name "Benjamin" was ever used for the animal. Darby also appears to be the source for the claim that the last Tasmanian Tiger was a male; photographic evidence suggested it was female. Paddle was unable to uncover any records of any Frank Darby having been employed by Beaumaris/Hobart Zoo during the time that Reid or her father was in charge and noted several inconsistencies in the story Darby told during his interview in 1968.

The gender of the last captive Tasmanian Tiger has been a point of debate since its death at the Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart, Tasmania. Recent detailed examination of a single frame from the historic motion film footage taken by David Fleay in 1933, has confirmed that the Tasmanian Tiger was male. In Fleay’s historic film footage of the last captive Tasmanian Tiger, the Tasmanian Tiger is seen seated, walking around the perimeter of its enclosure, yawning (exposing its impressive gape), sniffing the air, scratching itself (in the same manner as would a dog), and lying down. When frame III is enlarged the scrotum can clearly be seen, confirming the Tasmanian Tiger to be male. By enhancing the frame (increasing exposure to 20% and contrast to 45%), the outline of the individual testes is discernable.

The Tasmanian Tiger died on 7 September 1936. It is believed to have died as the result of neglect—locked out of its sheltered sleeping quarters, it was exposed to a rare occurrence of extreme Tasmanian weather: extreme heat during the day and freezing temperatures at night. The Tasmanian Tiger features in the last known motion picture footage of a living specimen: 62 seconds of black-and-white footage showing it pacing backwards and forwards in its enclosure in a clip taken in 1933, by naturalist David Fleay. National Threatened Species Day has been held annually since 1996 on 7 September in Australia, to commemorate the death of the last officially recorded Tasmanian Tiger.

Although there had been a conservation movement pressing for the Tasmanian Tiger's protection since 1901, driven in part by the increasing difficulty in obtaining specimens for overseas collections, political difficulties prevented any form of protection coming into force until 1936. Official protection of the species by the Tasmanian government was introduced on 10 July 1936, 59 days before the last known specimen died in captivity.  It was too little too late to prevent the extinction.


A number of ongoing search efforts are currently being undertaken; typically these are self-funded initiatives conducted by Tasmanian Tiger enthusiasts who vary in approach, background knowledge and general modi operandi. Some searchers are 'believers', conducting searches on the basis that they firmly believe the Tasmanian Tiger to be yet alive. Other groups have a more practical and pragmatic view, hoping the Tasmanian Tiger to be extant although understanding the probabilities of its being extinct. The two different view points are important when understanding how each group views potential evidence or proof: the 'believers' group tend to err on the side of interpreting evidence with bias toward the Tasmanian Tiger being extant, while the skeptics will look for more plausible explanations regarding any evidence presented. One such group that is relatively active in producing videos for debate and analysis is the Thylacine Research Unit. This team of scientists conducts frequent expeditions and searches to various parts of Tasmania looking for evidence that the Tasmanian Tiger is still extant. They frequently receive foot prints from members of the public to analyse and report on. They operate a web site that allows people who have had sightings of Tasmanian Tiger (past or present) to confidentially report the details.

The Tasmanian Tiger held the status of endangered species until the 1980s. International standards at the time stated that an animal could not be declared extinct until 50 years had passed without a confirmed record. Since no definitive proof of the Tasmanian Tiger's existence in the wild had been obtained for more than 50 years, it met that official criterion and was declared extinct by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in 1982 and by the Tasmanian government in 1986. The species was removed from Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in 2013.


Some sightings have generated a large amount of publicity. In 1973, Gary and Liz Doyle shot ten seconds of 8 mm film showing an unidentified animal running across a South Australian road. Attempts to positively identify the creature as a Tasmanian Tiger have been impossible due to the poor quality of the film. In 1982 a researcher with the Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service, Hans Naarding, observed what he believed to be a Tasmanian Tiger for three minutes during the night at a site near Arthur River in northwestern Tasmania. The sighting led to an extensive year-long government-funded search. In 1985, Aboriginal tracker Kevin Cameron produced five photographs which appear to show a digging Tasmanian Tiger, which he stated he took inWestern Australia. In January 1995, a Parks and Wildlife officer reported observing a Tasmanian Tiger in the Pyengana region of northeastern Tasmania in the early hours of the morning. Later searches revealed no trace of the animal. In 1997, it was reported that locals and missionaries near Mount Carstensz in Western New Guinea had sighted Tasmanian Tigers. The locals had apparently known about them for many years but had not made an official report. In February 2005 Klaus Emmerichs, a German tourist, claimed to have taken digital photographs of a Tasmanian Tiger he saw near the Lake St Clair National Park, but the authenticity of the photographs has not been established. The photos were published in April 2006, fourteen months after the sighting. The photographs, which showed only the back of the animal, were said by those who studied them to be inconclusive as evidence of the Tasmanian Tiger's continued existence. Due to the uncertainty of whether the species is still extant or not, the Tasmanian Tiger is sometimes regarded as a cryptid 

In 1983, the American media mogul Ted Turner offered a $100,000 reward for proof of the continued existence of the Tasmanian Tiger.  

A letter sent in response to an inquiry by a Tasmanian Tiger-searcher, Murray McAllister in 2000, indicated that the reward had been withdrawn. In March 2005, Australian news magazine The Bulletin, as part of its 125th anniversary celebrations, offered a $1.25 million reward for the safe capture of a live Tasmanian Tiger. When the offer closed at the end of June 2005 no one had produced any evidence of the animal's existence. An offer of $1.75 million has subsequently been offered by a Tasmanian tour operator, Stewart Malcolm. Trapping is illegal under the terms of the Tasmanian Tiger's protection, so any reward made for its capture is invalid, since a trapping licence would not be issued.

Modern research and projects


In late 2002, the researchers had some success as they were able to extract replicable DNA from the specimens. On 15 February 2005, the museum announced that it was stopping the project after tests showed the DNA retrieved from the specimens had been too badly degraded to be usable. In May 2005, Archer, the University of New South Wales Dean of Science at the time, former director of the Australian Museum and evolutionary biologist, announced that the project was being restarted by a group of interested universities and a research institute.

The International Thylacine Specimen Database was completed in April 2005, and is the culmination of a four-year research project to catalog and digitally photograph, if possible, all known surviving Tasmanian Tiger specimen material held within museum, university and private collections. The master records are held by the Zoological Society of London.

In 2008, researchers Andrew J. Pask and Marilyn B. Renfree from the University of Melbourne and Richard R. Behringer from theUniversity of Texas at Austin reported that they managed to restore functionality of a gene Col2A1 enhancer obtained from 100 year-old ethanol-fixed thylacine tissues from museum collections. The genetic material was found working in transgenic mice. The research enhanced hopes of eventually restoring the population of Tasmanian Tigers. That same year, another group of researchers successfully sequenced the complete thylacine mitochondrial genome from two museum specimens. Their success suggests that it may be feasible to sequence the complete Tasmanian Tiger nuclear genome from museum specimens. Their results were published in the journal Genome Research in 2009.

Mike Archer spoke about the possibilities of resurrecting the Tasmanian Tiger and the gastric-brooding frog at TED2013. Stewart Brand spoke at TED2013 about the ethics and possibilities of de-extinction, and made reference to Tasmanian Tiger in his talk.

Cultural references

The best known illustrations of Thylacinus cynocephalus were those in Gould's The Mammals of Australia (1845–63), often copied since its publication and the most frequently reproduced, and given further exposure by Cascade Brewery's appropriation for its label in 1987. The government of Tasmania published a monochromatic reproduction of the same image in 1934, the author Louisa Anne Meredith also copied it for Tasmanian Friends and Foes (1881). 

The Tasmanian Tiger has been used extensively as a symbol of Tasmania. The animal is featured on the official Tasmanian coat of arms. It is used in the official logos of Tourism Tasmania and City of Launceston. It is also used on the University of Tasmania's ceremonial mace and the badge of the submarine HMAS Dechaineux. Since 1998, it has been prominently displayed on Tasmanian vehicle number plates. 

The plight of the Tasmanian Tiger was featured in a campaign for The Wilderness Society entitled We used to hunt thylacines. In video games, boomerang-wielding Ty the Tasmanian Tiger is the star of his own trilogy. Characters in the early 1990s cartoon Taz-Mania included the neurotic Wendell T. Wolf, the last surviving Tasmanian wolf. Tiger Tale is a children's book based on an Aboriginal myth about how the Tasmanian Tiger got its stripes. The Tasmanian Tiger character Rolf is featured in the extinction musical Rockford's Rock Opera. The Tasmanian Tiger is the mascot for the Tasmanian cricket team, and has appeared in postage stamps from Australia, Equatorial Guinea, and Micronesia.

The Hunter is a novel by Julia Leigh about an Australian hunter who sets out to find the last Tasmanian Tiger. The novel has been adapted into a 2011 film by the same name directed by Daniel Nettheim, and starring Willem Dafoe. In 2012, a demonic Tasmanian Tiger shapeshifter was introduced as the main antagonist in the #DeadThings series by author Reese Riley.

There was so much information available about the Tasmanian Tiger or Thylacine when I was collecting material for my slide shows on animals that became extinct between 1900 and 2000, that I felt impelled to write an additional blog on Thylacine. I would also be posting more blogs on the Barbary Lions and some other mammals.

Source: id=x3Xqp7DAo1gC&pg=PA59#PPA59,- M1 & Wikipedia – the free encyclopedia. 


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