Is the Tasmanian Tiger STILL Alive?

In this video, we're going to talk about the thylacine, a creature that many believe is extinct but which some people believe still exists. We'll discuss the cloning surrounding the thylacine and discuss whether or not it still exists.

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Sources:
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1984 Cameron photos

Racoon mistaken for tiger:

Early Tasmanian Tiger:

List of sightings:

Ostrich in Australia

Thylacine release on mainland:

Not Benjamen:

[wildworld]

I keep getting comments that 1936 isn't thousands of years ago. To be clear I'm saying that the extinction of the thylacine on mainland Australia was thousands of years ago.

[greghelton]

Years ago I saw a canine that looked like a cross between a fox and a wolf. This was in the mountains in Japan and I thought what a strange looking animal it was. Then I saw a stuffed Japanese wolf one day and my jaws dropped since I was told they were extinct. Can’t prove it was a Japanese wolf but sure gives me hope. Hope the Aussie tiger is still around.

[Dr_V]

May not be strictly relevant here, but miss-identification can work both ways. Last summer my mom found a small owl laying on her patio, apparently ill. Thinking it's a juvenile barn owl, she took the bird indoors and nursed it back to health over the following days, as a retired MD and long time animal lover she had a pretty good idea how to achieve that, but she also sent a few pictures to a veterinarian friend for a bit of specialized advice. To everyone's surprise the vet told her it wasn't a baby barn owl, but an adult from an extremely rare and endangered species (in our area), they initially planned to get it to a specialized conservation center but the bird got better much faster than expected and flew off just a couple of days later. It didn't leave the area though, slept in mom's barn for more than a month and still comes around her garden every now and then.

[KingMoon]

The idea of Thylacine being alive in Papa New Guine is plausible, the black-naped pheasant pigeon was recently rediscovered after 140 years of it's supossed extinction there.

[robertlawrence]

One of the saddest things about this is seeing the bare concrete enclosure that the poor creature was kept in. That it died due to being locked out of it's sleeping enclosure doesn't speak well for the care the animal was given.

[DrunknMaser]

Friends Ex worked for the Tasmanian devil breeding project around 2005 after the face cancer dramas. The team lived for months in the southern forest's of Tassie, tagging and capturing devils for breeding. Many reports from the team, the tigers are still out there.

[VitaminearthAus]

I'm so disgusted this happened to our beautiful Thylacines. My ex's great grandmother thought she saw one at back of her property in Lune River in the 80's. I hope they still exist in the deep forest on the west coast somewhere.

[markcorlett]

I live in Tasmania, and work quite a lot in Papua, Indonesia - It's interesting the locals in Papua talk seeing of the laughing dog (dingo) and also the devil/demon dog (thylacine) ...hoping there are still some about there and in Tasmania!

[jewleetee]

Just want to say I absolutely love this video, well done!

As a zoologist, zookeeper, and animal lover; I truely believe a small population of thylacines may still exist. Thank you for covering this topic throughly and w/o bias. :)

[Thylacinuscyno]

So the specimen that was found a few months ago in the museum drawer was the last individual at beaurmis zoo. Benjamin was before her. She was bought under the table because trapping was illegal by the time she was caught. When she died her pelt toured Australia then ended up at the museum then was rediscovered. Thanks for the video!

[roysharrock]

Really enjoyed your take on this and the amount of research that you must have done. Being from Australia and living in Tasmania for years I can report that Tasmanian Tiger sightings are not rare for Tasmanians. They don't get reported for several reasons. No one wants to get called batty or a story tella. Or most crew don't want the Tiger to be disturbed by Tiger enthusiasts and repeat the past.
Also it is commonly believed in Tasmania that Tasmanian Tigers are extremely intelligent and do there best to avoid any human contact, especially after being slaughtered. Very similar to native quolls found in the suburbs of Melbourne thought to have been wiped out over 50 years earlier, they were thriving but very rarely seen!! Fingers and toes crossed that this is the case for the

[rebelliousreptile]

I love the tasmanian tiger. I live in melbourne australia and have heard the fair share of stories on the thylocine being alive. Last year was probably the most interesting year for the animal as so many new items came up on the news with cloning and finding the pelt of the last thylocine. I really hope that a thylocine is found, but from the way the australian media has been spinning the cloning narative, its seems like the fight is on to see which animal gets cloned first, the wooly mammoth or the thylocine. Im very excited for the future of this animal.

[NotesFromTheVoid]

Plot twist: we clone one then we find one in the wild.

[tk-zhdd]

Former forensic tech here. Great video - I love learning more about this stuff. Just FYI: AI upscaling is not appropriate for forensic video/audio work. Its great for fixing zoomed in vacation photos, but it does not present a credible source for analysis considering that the image has literally been changed by a computer which is making guesses about what a shape "probably" is.

[aquakirby]

Humans hope that they aren't extinct so that we can possibly make up for our mistakes. Unfortunately we can't.

[thriddoctor]

Hi, i'm the author of In Search of Real Monsters. My expeditions were in the north and north west of Tasmania. I'm convinced it is still in Tasmania and P.N.G

[grantgussie]

The one thing that is not mentioned is thylacines were NOT forest animals, but instead they were predators of open country and their population was concentrated around the savanna-like (but now-agricultural) central valley of Tasmania. The farms of central Tasmania most certainly do not have thylacines any more, and any population in the forests to the west and east would be living in very marginal habitat.

I do hope there are still some out there, and got very excited in the early 1990s when there was a credible sighting while I was at the University of Tasmania. But in the 30 years since, nothing has been found. So like you I am not particularly optimistic about extant Tasmanian thylacines. If the 1990s sightings were real, then the animals were almost certainly of a highly inbred remnant population, that have now all perished.

I am even less optimistic about Australian mainland thylacines, but the possibility of a New Guinea population is intriguing. If it exists it would most likely be a closely-related forest-adapted species, genetically separated from the Tasmanian animal for quite some time.

But great video. Devoid of the sensationalism so common in presentations about the thylacine. Well done.

[LoreCraft]

I was fascinated and heartbroken about the thylacine ever since I first learned of it and saw those black and white videos some 20 years ago. Thanks for the update. I hope they can bring it back.

[jevinday]

I had a game on my computer when I was a kid (this was the 90s). It was all about animals. There was a part where it talked about the Tasmanian Tiger, it showed that video of the last one in the cage. It always made me so sad...it was one of the first times that I remember starting to feel sympathy and compassion for an animal.

[martinsell]

My wife's grandfather tells a story about seeing a thyacine up in the Beaconsfield area (NE Tas) in the early 1940's. He was walking home along a logging road in the early evening and saw a thyayine cross the road in front of him and disappear into bush.