These Tasmanian Tiger Photos Were A Hoax

This is a follow-up to the video showing alleged Tasmanian Tiger photos. The photos are confirmed to be a hoax, thank you to @AGamingBeaver and @SkeptiCole for helping shed light on this.

You can watch the Cole's full breakdown on the photos here:

Forrest Galante is a world-renowned wildlife biologist and TV Host. His mission is to inspire and educate people about animals and adventure through the media, including hosting programs on Discovery Channel, on-camera expert interviews, and production of his own wildlife and natural history shows.

Join this channel to get access to perks:

Like and Subscribe!
Let me know what type of content you’d like to see next!

[AGamingBeaver]

This completely sidetracked everything and consumed me for a whole few days. I had no idea making a quick reaction to your video would have turned out the way it did but here we are. Wife is very happy that life is back to normal haha.

[DaisyLarson]

You could tell the gig was up when you asked him about the airport. He was just waiting to be told you didn't believe him.

[JakeSRT]

The fact that the dude said he flew directly to Hobart from Chicago immediately made me suspicious. There are no flights to Tasmania from anywhere in the US!

[davegink]

People that fake things like this just don’t understand the damage they do.

[gk]

The biggest giveaway, besides showing no face nor having his dad get interviewed, was when he said he flew direct to Tasmania from JFK

[zachmackay]

Someone from the Midwest being the one to see the Thylacine and take the best pics of it was an absolutely massive red flag

[shawnbowen]

That open jaw photo looked fake as hell. Some of the photos looked good but as soon as i saw that open mouth side profile picture i knew it was fake. Not to mention how sketchy that guy was and wanting to hide his face...

[MsMorri]

As someone who worked with digital art, I thought about reaching out to you, because as I was watching the video something about the photos struck me as off. If someone has already mentioned what I saw, forgive me for repeating some things, but I'm hoping this will help you catch some things early on about a fake photo in the future.

First things first, that one photo from the kids social media. It somewhat shocks me that they would go through all this effort to make so many of the photos look convincing, but then have one so badly cut and pasted, but that one was the one that looked the most cut and pasted one of them all. It was clear that they'd done a really bad job of cutting out that head so it didn't look like parts of it's body was cut off.

The biggest thing for me though was the inconsistency of the stripes on the supposed thylacine. It is true that when photos are blurred due to movement, some information is lost, but not that much. Especially if someone is shining direct light on an object. I even went to check some photos and videos of tigers to see if their stripes vanished during a blurry photo, and they didn't. Also, on that note, there were times that the ears looked floppy on the thylacine and as I'm sure you know, this isn't a feature that is usually seen in a wild animal, only domesticated animals.

I also looked at the only video we have of a thylacine and watched it's movement and compared it to the photos, and I noticed that the chest was too broad for a thylacine, and the movements were wrong for how narrow it's chest was/is.

Finally, it is completely possible to fake the night glow of animals eyes if you know how to do the lighting properly. It's not the easiest thing to do, but you can do that using the spray paint brush in photoshop or any digital art program. Some digital art programs even have tools that will mimic that kind of reflective lighting.

That's the main things I noticed. After that things like his unwillingness to show his face, and the time stamps of the photo made me more inclined to think they were faked. It kinda suck, but I'm hoping these are some things you can pick up on in the future.

[Nick]

The only thing worse than the photos was the story.

[AngusMurray]

My main point of scepticism was that he didn't take a video, the photos would suggest several attempts to get a clear shot, so why not take a video instead?

[jasonsnow]

Bro mentions the gaming beaver. Dude is literally a batman LVL detective lol

[mikafairystar]

My little spark of excitement died when he mentioned the flight and airport. Plus rarely does someone come all the way to Australia from America and just visit Tasmania.

[kerihinson]

Hey Forrest, TheGamingBeaver came up with a theory that Henry is actually Archesuchus because the profile pick of Henry is actually an image of Archesuchus’ dog. Also, no one would’ve had access to his images since none posted pre-dated the meta data, but Archesuchus would’ve had access if those were actually his pieces.

[wildcard]

Putting the entire process from tip to debunk out in the public eye was a great exercise. It’s important to show people how this stuff happens and allow them to engage in each step of the process. Hoax or not, you helped get some value out of those pictures.

[peterashby-saracen]

People who fake Thylacine sightings are, above all, an embarrassment. They think they are being "clever" when the opposite is true. They were astoundingly stupid right through the ridiculous performance including the idiot disguising his identity and actually having no idea how you get to Tasmania from the US.

[AOZORAHENNESSY]

I’ve lived in Australia. As soon as he couldn’t recall a legit flight path I knew it was BS 😂

[grond]

TLDR:

A guy on Twitter created the models and then took pictures creating the hoax. Afterwards he pretended someone else was taking the photos using his models to get traction and market penetration. But they figured out it had to be him based on the dates.

[KendrickMan]

Thanks for the followup! A lot of people would have swept this mistake under the rug. Happens to the best of us. Respect.

[paladinslender]

Archesuchus: Doesn't like Forrest

Forrest: Gives them a positive shout-out

[danwalker]

I don’t understand how he could put so much effort into the photos, yet so little into the backstory.