Tasmanian Tiger

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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GAAAAH!!!
I had a hunch the ol’ C64 & 1541 DD SDMB server was having problems so I did a copy of it before I hit submit, so I’ll just paste it here…

Just saw this on Yahoo earlier. Thought it may interest people here.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=585&ncid=753&e=1&u=/nm/20020528/sc_nm/science_australia_cloning_dc

Looks like they’re agressively looking at cloning a Thylacine. As a side, I wonder if they are seriously looking in the wild for exisiting ones as last I heard there were several rumours of them still running around…

Anyhow, another interesting link I found on the subject:

http://www.austmus.gov.au/thylacine/

Does anyone know what the closest relative of one is? A devil possibly?

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I read this with keen interest. I might be one of the few, but I don’t have issues with cloning, although I did see this documentary once, Jurasic Park, and things got nutso there

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SO COOL!

Yeah, there were lots of rumours, and sightings from what I heard, but never by anyone official enough to make it no extinct. They probably weren’t real sightings anyway.

I like thylacines. I like genetics. I like this plan.

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yay!

Best hope for cloning is recently extinct mammals, after all.

Anyone know of work done cloning avians, yet?

(whole different ballpark seeing as they normally develop in an egg, as opposed to a host)

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Yup. The Tasmanian Devil to be precise.

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Most zoologists seem to be classifying the Thylacine (which I’ve usually seen called the Tasmanian wolf, not tiger) as the only known species in family Thylacynidae, but with the Dasyuridae (the other Australian carnivorous marsupials) as the closest family), so anything from that family, including the T. Devil (the black marsupial wolverine, not the Warner Brothers character), would qualify as “closest known relative.”

Any Oz posters know anything more about the search for living Thylacines? There used to be a thread here that had a link to movies of caged living Thylacines from back in the 20s – really wonderful to see actual video footage of a probably-extinct animal!

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Also known as the Tasmanian Pouched Wolf, Kangaroo Wolf, Zebra Wolf, or the Hyena Opossum!

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I find this extremely cool. I hope they manage to have one running one in my lifetime, which seems pretty likely (assuming I live another ten years or so, at least).

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I think this is great! But hopefully this doesn’t lead to more screenings of The Howling III

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Though the other names given in this thread are also used, “Tasmanian Tiger” is the most commonly used name in Australia for Thylacinus cynocephalus.

Polycarp, I suspect the view of the academic community is that the animal is, in fact, extinct, and I am unaware of the existence of any organised programme trying to locate thylacines in the wild. That said, there is the occasional, undocumented sighting reported by hikers and the like. Tasmania is home to some very rugged wilderness country, so it is possible that a small colony of thylacines could exist without human knowledge, but I wouldn’t be putting money on it.

On the TV news yesterday, I saw the 1920s-30s footage of the Tasmanian Tiger. I’ve been moved by it every time I’ve seen it. It’s a very handsome animal, and I can only wish the cloning programme every success.

Sydney Morning Herald report

Photo Gallery of the Tasmanian Tiger, also from the Herald

To put this in perspective though, the white settlers in Tasmania did pretty much the same thing to the human population there as well, but that’s gonna get me into GD or Pit territory if I start ranting about it.

From the linked article: Truganini died in Hobart in 1876, aged about 73. She was described as the last Tasmanian Aborigine to succumb to generations of colonial illness, persecution, murder and dispossession.

[sub]If reading this post at a later date, and the links don’t work, please change the “www” to “old” in your browser, and they will probably be ok.[/sub]

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You’re all going to hate me for saying this, but one problem with the cloning programme is what we’re going to do with these critters when we clone them. Our current eco-system isn’t set up to support them and it would seem a shame to recreate a species who destined to live its life in captivity as a tourist attraction (although I guess we could use them for dingo control…).

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If you have QuickTime installed, you can get the thylacine movie at this site. They used to have it at the Thylacine Museum website, but that unfortunately seems to be closed now.

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[hijack]Agreed, but it’s a story that needs to be told. For those who are interested, there’s an excellent recent piece of historical fiction called English Passengerswhich weaves the Tasmanian genocide into the story. My (white) great-great grandmother was born there in the 1820’s (apparently of free settlers), and it’s a struggle to come to terms with having ancestors who could have participated in this monstrous deed. Of course, we Americans had plenty of ethnic cleansings of our own.[/hijack]

I’m not sure I agree, if only because so much of Tasmania is locked away in public lands. If parts of Tasmania are large and wild enough that we don’t know if there are any Thylacine left, then surely there must be room for a few to live in the wild.

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The Tasmanian Tiger is on the label of Cascade beer, which hales from Tasmania and is quite tasty. Here is a not so great link to the label http://tolsun.oulu.fi/kbs-bin/directbeer?Nr=1388 and another one http://www.brewing.co.nz/20000719cascade.htm

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While much of Tasmania is - indeed - WH listed, Tasmania is stilltiny, and the amount of “reserved land” tinier still when you are talking about a predatory animal. Apart from what’s happened to the dingo, we haven’t even yet really considered which other natural prey of the Thylacine have disappeared or become all but extinct over the past 50 years.

We could probably clone the woolly mammoth; we could probably clone dinosaur - that we “could” doesn’t mean that we “should”, especially if we have destroyed the habitats they once occcupied.

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I’m not sure about that. I suspect that if this thing actually works, and in, say, a hundred years from now, we have considerable numbers of thylacines in the wild in Tasmania, their absence for two hundred years or so may not even register as a blip on the ecological timeline. I’d wager it’s a better option for the Tasmanian ecosystem than extinction.

As a layman, I’d be interested to know how long a species must be absent from an ecosystem before it could be classified an introduced species upon its return. It’s not like we’re talking about the introduction of (and subsequent damage done by) cats, rabbits, canetoads, or foxes.

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I’m not sure about that. I suspect that if this thing actually works, and in, say, a hundred years from now, we have considerable numbers of thylacines in the wild in Tasmania, their absence for two hundred years or so may not even register as a blip on the ecological timeline. I’d wager it’s a better option for the Tasmanian ecosystem than extinction.

As a layman, I’d be interested to know how long a species must be absent from an ecosystem before it could be classified an introduced species upon its return. It’s not like we’re talking about the introduction of (and subsequent damage done by) cats, rabbits, canetoads, or foxes.

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Great thread! Anybody know if the Japanese have gotton along with their plans to clone the ancient mammoths? I’d love to see these back in the wild!
Seriously, I don’t see a problem with re-introducing these ancient species-the more diversity, the better!

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Well, I think the whole cloning idea sucks! From what I have read about the creature (and I’ve read a fair bit 'cos I did an HPS assignment on this very subject last year), the thylacine was ALREADY in a precarious position BEFORE the advent of the white-man.
While their demise was certainly hastened by culling and habitat-loss, there is evidence to suggest that they would have become extinct anyway…their presence on the island of Tas. was never widespread, and they had previously lost their foothold in Vic and SA PRIOR to white settlement. Like many other species before it (and many more in the future, including possibly ourselves) it could no longer maintain a livelihood in an environment that favoured others. That’s Darwinian evolution. That’s the way it works, even without the interference of meddlesome humans.

Re-introducing a creature that has no place in the current ecosystem is plainly stoooopid. It might be cute, it certainly attracts the media attention and therefore the funding possibilities, it might help science understand the mechanics of cloning better, but I do not believe it is the wise thing to do.

That’s my two-bob’s worth

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So this is what it’s boiling down too…

Kinda interesting, too. We have an animal which made extinct by humans, yet it was also one which had already been in evolutionary doubt. We have an ecosystem which may have suffered as a result of one of its top-level predators being removed, yet which also may have already adapted to its absence in such a way that the return of that predator could prove damaging.

The thylacine looks cool though. Is that too shallow an argument? :wink: