The Tasmanian wolf is Australia's mysterious predator

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:43

The Tasmanian wolf, also called thylacine or marsupial tiger, is one of the most mysterious animals that has ever lived on our planet. Three and a half centuries ago, the Dutch navigator Abel Tasman discovered a large island off the southwestern tip of the Australian continent, which later received the name of its discoverer. Sailors sent from the ship to explore this piece of land told about footprints they saw that looked like tiger paw prints. Thus, in the middle of the seventeenth century, the mystery of marsupial tigers was born, rumors about which stubbornly wandered over the next several centuries. Then, when Tasmania was already settled enough by immigrants from Europe, eyewitness accounts began to appear.

The first more or less reliable report about the marsupial wolf was published in one of the English scientific publications in 1871. The famous naturalist and naturalist D. Sharp studied local birds in one of the river valleys of Queensland. One evening he noticed a strange animal of sandy coloring with clearly visible stripes. An unusual-looking animal managed to disappear even before the naturalist could do anything. Sharp later learned thatthe same animal was killed nearby. He immediately went to this place and carefully examined the skin. Its length was one and a half meters. Unfortunately, it was not possible to save this skin for science.

The Tasmanian wolf (the photo confirms this) has, in some respects, a certain resemblance to representatives of the canine family, for which it got its name. Before the arrival of white settlers on the Australian continent, who brought their beloved sheep with them, the thylacine hunted small rodents, wallabies, marsupial opossums, bandicoot badgers and other exotic animals then known only to local aborigines. Most likely, the Tasmanian wolf preferred not to pursue game, but to use ambush tactics, lying in wait for prey in a secluded place. Unfortunately, today science has too little information about the life of this predator in wildlife.

Forty years ago, based on numerous expert reports, scientists announced the irretrievable extinction of this animal. Indeed, one of the last representatives of the species was the Tasmanian marsupial wolf, who died of old age in 1936 in the zoo of Hobart, the administrative center of the island of Tasmania. But in the forties, several fairly reliable evidence of meetings with this predator was recorded. Therefore, in its natural habitat, it still continued to exist.

True, after these documented evidence to see this beastcould only be in pictures. But even less than a hundred years ago, the Tasmanian wolf was so widespread that visiting farmers were obsessed with genuine hatred for the thylacine, which gained among them the notoriety of a sheep thief. There was even a large bounty on his head. Over the last twenty years of the century before last, the authorities of the island of Tasmania paid 2268 such rewards. Thus, the thirst for easy money gave rise to a wave of real hunting for thylacine. It soon turned out that such zeal led to the almost complete extermination of this predator. Already at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Tasmanian wolf was endangered. The law to protect him came into force only when, in all likelihood, there was no longer anyone to protect…

But, apparently, the marsupial wolf still did not suffer the fate of the passenger pigeon, tarpan and Steller's cow. In 1985, Kevin Cameron, an amateur naturalist from the town of Girravin, Western Australia, was suddenly presented to the world community with fairly convincing evidence that the thylacine continued to exist. Around the same time, evidence began to emerge of occasional fleeting encounters with this beast in New South Wales.

Eyewitnesses noted a strange wagging lynx of the animal with a tossing back of the body, which, according to experts who studied the skeletons of representatives of this species, is consistent with the morphological and anatomical structure of the marsupial wolf. Moreover, of all Australian animals, only he is characterized by similar features. So isn't it time to eliminateTasmanian marsupial wolf from the "martyrology" of the animal world and re-introduce it to the list of living, albeit not prosperous contemporaries?