Tasmanian wolf - mysterious predator of Australia

The Tasmanian wolf, also called tylacin or marsupial tiger, is one of the most mysterious animals that ever lived on our planet. Three and a half centuries ago the Dutch navigator Abel Tasman, near the south-western tip of the Australian continent, discovered a large island, later named after his discoverer. The sailors sent from the ship to investigate this piece of land talked about the traces they saw, similar to the prints of tiger's paws. So in the middle of the seventeenth century, the mystery of marsupial tigers was born, rumors of which stubbornly wandered for several centuries to come. Then, when Tasmania was already sufficiently settled by immigrants from Europe, eyewitness accounts began to appear.

The first more or less reliable message about the marsupial wolf was published in one of the English scientific journals in 1871. A well-known naturalist and naturalist D. Sharpe studied local birds in one of the river valleys of Queensland. One evening he noticed a strange animal of sand coloring with clearly discernible stripes. An unusual kind of beast managed to disappear before the natural scientist could do anything. Later, Sharpe learned that a similar animal was killed nearby. He immediately went to this place and carefully studied the skin. Its length was one and a half meters. Unfortunately, it was not possible to keep this skin for science.

The Tasmanian wolf (the photo confirms this) has some certain similarities to the representatives of the dog family, for which he received his name. Before the appearance on the Australian continent of white settlers, who brought their favorite sheep with them, tilatsin hunted small rodents, wallaby kangaroo, marsupial possums, badger bandits and other known exotic wildlife to the local aborigines. Most likely, the Tasmanian wolf preferred not the pursuit of game, but the use of ambush tactics, awaiting prey in a secluded place. Unfortunately, today science has too little information about the life of this predator in living nature.

Forty years ago, based on numerous expert reports, scientists announced the irretrievable disappearance of this animal. Indeed, one of the last representatives of the species was the Tasmanian marsupial wolf, who died of old age in 1936 at the zoo in Hobart, the administrative center of the island of Tasmania. But in the forties there were a few fairly reliable evidence of encounters with this predator. Consequently, in the natural habitat, it still existed.

True, after these documented evidence to see this beast could only be in the pictures. But even less than a hundred years ago the Tasmanian wolf was so widespread that the visiting farmers were obsessed with a genuine hatred for tilatsin, which earned them the fame of a sheep kidnapper. Even a considerable premium was assigned for his head. Over the past two decades, the authorities of the island of Tasmania have paid 2,268 such rewards. Thus, the thirst for easy profit generated a wave of real hunting for tilatsin. Soon it turned out that such zeal led to almost complete annihilation of this predator. Already at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Tasmanian wolf was threatened with extinction. The law on his protection came into force only when, in all probability, there was already no one to guard ...

But, apparently, the marsupial wolf still did not comprehend the fate of the wandering pigeon, tarpan and steller cow. In 1985, amateur naturalist Kevin Cameron from the town of Ghirravin, Western Australia, was suddenly presented to the public with sufficiently convincing evidence that tilatsin continues to exist. At about the same time, evidence of occasional fleeting encounters with this beast began to appear in New South Wales.

Witnesses noted a strange wobbly lynx of an animal with a throwing of the back of the trunk, which, according to experts involved in the study of skeletons of representatives of this species, fully corresponds to the morphological and anatomical structure of the marsupial wolf. And of all Australian animals only it is characterized by similar features. So is not it time to exclude the Tasmanian marsupial wolf from the "martyrology" of the animal world and to reintroduce it into the list of living, albeit not prosperous contemporaries?