Not Sweating the Small Stuff

The Last Tasmanian Tigers (Thylacinus Cynocephalus)

The very last Thylacine or marsupial Tasmanian Tiger died in Hobart Zoo in 1936.

Hobart Zoo in the 1930s

And what makes this even more galling is the fact that there's the fair amount of film footage of this now extinct large mammal - taken between 1912 and 1932. Mainly at Beaumaris Zoo (later Hobart Zoo) and at London Zoo.

Animals caught in the wild were usually sold to zoos, like this mother and her three pups who were trapped by Walter Jack Mullins at Tyenna in the Florentine Valley in southern Tasmania in February 1924 ...

Mother and her three pups, trapped by Walter Jack Mullins at Tyenna in the Florentine Valley in southern Tasmania in February 1924

... and then sold to Hobart Zoo. It's very probable that the very last thylacine was one of the pups in this litter.

The earliest tiger footage is from 1912 and shows a thylacine being fed through a wire fence, while the owner of the Beaumaris Zoo, Mary Grant Roberts, stands by. Her long black dress is just visible to the right of the keeper at the beginning.

The next clip was taken in early 1928 and firstly shows a man teasing two tigers with his hat, and then the animals going into their wooden enclosure shed where perhaps they sleep.

This footage below was taken in late 1928 and shows a tiger interacting with a man through a wire fence. What's revealing here is the way the animal moves : rising up easily and steadily on its hind legs a bit like a kangaroo.

This last clip is from 1933 and shows the last thylacine prowling its cage ... and also demonstrating its enormous jaw extension.

There have been countless searches over the decades in more and more remote places for any last surviving tigers - to assuage our collective guilt in this extinction. But of course, nada!

In a further and latter day guilt-reduction exercise, there's a pretty big effort on at the moment to extract DNA from a female infant preserved in alcohol in 1866 ...

Infant female thylacine preserved in alcohol in 1866, Australian Museum, Sydney

... to implant it in the egg of (perhaps) a Tasmanian Devil host and ... well, you know the rest.

Hopefully people have learned the lesson ... what do you reckon?