The Quest for Thylacoleo
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About the Thylacine?
Background ...The Thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) was - or possibly is? - the largest carnivorous marsupial. It was a native of prehistoric Sahul, the continent formed by the merger of present day Australia and the island of Papua as a result of lowered sea-levels during the Ice Age. Allegedly, the very last Thylacine died in 1936 and so the species is now regarded as extinct. Fossil evidence supports the contention that the Thylacine went extinct in mainland Australia between 6000 to 3000 years ago. However the animal lived on in Tasmania, the island that lies across stormy Bass Strait opposite Victoria, Australia's southernmost mainland state. Moreover it did not live on alone in the rainy forests of Tasmania: throughout its sojourn from the days of the Ice Age down to the present the Thylacine was accompanied by the Tasmanian Devil, a feisty little predator-scavenger whose forebears were likewise extirpated from the mainland. Why this came about is something we shall talk about. After Tasmania was colonised by Europeans, the Thylacine was persecuted on account of its alleged depredations upon farm animals. Whether this was true or not is disputed. Its final extinction in its Tasmanian refuge is usually ascribed to the dire effects of the bounty system that was intended to eradicate this pastoral "pest" animal. Such are the travesties brought about by small and greedy men in defense of their mean, selfish ends. On the other hand, it's held that disease transmitted from introduced animals may have decimated Thylacine numbers, along with other marsupials, in a great epidemic near the close of the 19th centrury. It's even argued that Thylacine population exploded after the 1830s to 1840s: the "Bloody Thirties" marked the start of the era when European colonists set forth to seize the entirety of the land of Australia. Including, of course, the wilds of Tasmania. But why should the colonisation drive have gotten seriously underway at that particular time? The 1830s are known to history as the "Hungry Thirties" in England. These were the years of Chartist agitation and there was the ominous whiff of Revolution in the air (Altick 1973):
Slowly comes a hungry people,
As a lion creeping nigher,
Glares at one that nods and winks
Behind a slowly dying fire.
Tennyson, "Locksley Hall"
Mass emigration to distant lands, along with concessions such as extension of the franchise and repeal of the hated Corn Laws, helped to defuse political tensions that were inflamed by food shortages and vast social inequity. But all that is another story. In order to proclaim total mastery over the recently acquired but feebly held Great South Land, it was first necessary to subdue the Aboriginal people: that invariably meant their slaughter by bullet or by disease or by starvation. We can see that the fate of the Aborigine in Tasmania presaged the fate of the Thylacine. It's argued that native Tasmanian people kept Thylacine numbers in check because the animal was itself a hunter and therefore a competitor with human hunter-gatherers. For thousands of years humans and Thylacines must therefore have maintained an uneasy truce. However, when the Tasmanian aboriginal people were themselves exterminated by the white conquerors, there was nothing at first to restrain Thylacine numbers. But when, after a few decades, Thylacines had multiplied and had become common enough to attract malevolent attention from white farmers, their fate may have been sealed. Read more?
Tasmania: to catch a ThylacineThe Thylacine is a fastidious diner and no scavenger. Fresh bait was therefore essential in its capture. Hunters found bacon to be the best lure: its saltiness is attractive to all carnivores and it is, more or less, resistant to spoilage by the noisome hordes of blowflies that plague Australia. Besides, old-time Thylacine-hands from the back blocks of "Tassie" told how Thylacines would steal into camps by night to lick clean greasy skillets and raid bacon left hanging for the morning's breakfast. In the last dark last days of its persecution, hunters like Roy Alderson trapped Thylacines in box-cages using bacon lure. The caught animal was then delivered to Thylacine dealer James Harrison of Wynard who would sell them to zoos around the world. The United States, England and Germany were favoured destinations. Once in captivity, Thylacines did not thrive, did not breed and did not live long. The cage was a Thylacine's death sentence. In 1945-1946 the late David Fleay led an expedition in quest of Thylacines in the rugged forests of west Tasmania. The goal was to capture a male and a female Thylacine. It was hoped that if a breeding pair could be secured, the species might be established in zoos and saved from extinction (Fleay 1946). Alas, they found that even in the remotest wilds, trappers had been at work and the native animal population was decimated. Up until 1938, not even pack horse tracks had been constructed in the the far west of Tasmania. Once that had happened, however, lethal "neck traps", deployed by the thousand, inflicted a holocaust upon wild animals. In 1946 David Fleay found that the forest was virtually devoid of large animals. Of the Thylacine there was no trace. Fleay suspected that, even after the official extinction of the Thylacine in 1936, persecution of skulking survivors continued because, as a carnivore, it would have taken animals caught in snare-traps. Damaged pelts and skins offered no monetary value to human hunters and we know what happens to any creature that threatens petty men's profits. Thus we may sadly deduce that by 1946, the Thylacine was no more in Tasmania. Is that the end of the Thylacine's story? The Thylacine on the Mainland?Holocene ExtinctionsBoth the Thylacine and the Tasmanian Devil occurred far and wide in mainland Australia throughout the late Pleistocene. Both disappeared from the mainland at about the same time in the early to mid Holocene: that is, sometime in the interval 6000 to 3000 years BP. At around this very same time the Dingo made its first appearance in Australia (Johnson 2006). Yet both Devils and Thylacines continued on in Tasmania, which island the Dingo never reached. Was this cause and effect or mere coincidence? Corbett (1995) cogently pressed the case that Dingos drove Thylacines to extinction. Dingos hunted cooperatively, Thylacines alone, Dingos were able to scavenge and utilise a wider range of food resources, Thylacines were exclusively eaters of meat, freshly killed. And so on. But is the case so clear cut? Note: there is a common misapprehension that Devils lingered upon the mainland until approximately 400 years BP. The belief is due to Archer's C14 results from Western Australia (Archer & Bayne 1972). These results are now known to be unreliable (Brown 2006, www.thylacoleo.com/tassie_devils/megafauna01.html): the most recent, and robust, dates for both Thylacine and Devils alive in mainland Australia cluster around 3400 years BP. This matter is dealt with in this web site's Tasmanian Devils section. Dingos?Johnson (2006) neatly summarises what are considered to be reliably dated mainland Thylacine sites from the Holocene :
Note that the sites congregate towards the south of the continent, towards the coast and the big rivers. Of interest also is that there are some Victorian Thylacine remains of apparently similar age, say about 3500 years old, although not firmly C14 dated (Wakefield 1963, 1967). There are similar, apparently mid-Holocene but uncertainly dated, remains from the Pilbarra and Kimberlies in WA (Kendrick & Porter 1973, O'Connor 1999). The dates are curious: they roughly correspond to the end of the Bronze Age, circa 1200BCE to 1600BCE. What was happening in the mid-East and other centres of civilisation at that time? We shall discuss this further.
Climate Change?The Great Dying
ENSO
Thylacines - released on the Mainland?A persistent theme in Thylacine 'lore' is that a few animals were somehow deliberately released into certain parts of Victoria in the early part of the 20th century. Before considering this legend, let us review the pattern of claimed sightings of living Thylacines on the mainland. The main areas in southern Australia that are most frequently mentioned are Victoria, the Koorong coast in South Australia, which in fact adjoins the Victorian border, and the south-western corner of Western Australia. Reports in fact come in from the entire length of the Great Dividing Range, from Victoria to Queensland, as well as from Papua-New Guinea and the Indonesian administered territory of West Papua. The "Wonthaggi Monster" ?
The 'Thylacine Preservation Society' ?
David Fleay & the Healesville Sanctuary
Thylacine Relocations - Maria IslandThere is no need to invoke conspiracy theories and secret societies when we speak of Thylacine preservation by means of relocation. By the 1920s it was patently evident that the Thylacine in Tasmania had become rare and endangered. Nothing, alas, was done to afford the animal any protection whatever until the the beginning of the 1930s. In 1930 it was prohibited to hunt Thylacines during December, which month was believed to be their breeding season. This was precious little: permits to capture Thylacines continued to be issued up until 1936. At last and probably too late, the Thylacine was declared a protected species on July 14, 1936 (Guiler 1985). Belatedly, suggestions were made that remaining Thylacines - if any! - should be rounded up and consigned to island refuges. This remedy sounds uncannily like the 'final solution' found for Tasmania's aboriginal problem: round'em up and confine them in euphemistically misnamed 'sanctuaries' on off shore islands, out of sight and out of mind. De Witt Island, a barren, windswept crag off Tasmania's south coast was suggested. In fact, as early as 1914 it was urged that Thylacines should be sent to a 'Noah's Ark' island refuge so as to ensure their survival (Flynn 1914). Summers (1937) and Sharland(1939) both of whom were associates of David Fleay and who had both themselves been members of expeditions in the 1930s suggested that thylacine reserves be established in central SW Tasmania: namely in the vicinity of the Arthur, Pieman and Jane Rivers (Guiler 1985). Such sanctuaries never eventuated but the fact that these individuals would urge the matter indicates that no former attempt to relocate Thylacines had heretofore been made. These men - Fleay, Summers and Sharland, as well as MacKenzie in Victoria - were or had been in touch with old-time 'tiger men'. They surely would have had word of an enterprise such as the 'Thylacine Protection Society' and its alleged mission to release Thylacines in Victoria. Thylacines were a high priced animal, difficult to come by after the early 1900s and well worth a trader's time and effort to track down. The numbers of animals mooted, say 6 for Wilson's Prom and possibly 4 earmarked for the Portland coast, could not have been gathered together as a single 'job lot'. Even if they were, they could not have failed to attract notice. Thus we may be certain that the story of the 'Thylacine Preservation Society' is a myth, doubtless invented for whatever purpose sometime in the years after the 1940s, the decade of Fleay's fruitless expedition (Fleay 1946). Thylacine survivors - Where?
Have YOU seen a Thylacine? Tell The Quest!If you have seen a Thylacine, either on the mainland or in Tasmania, or if indeed you have personally seen any unusual looking animal, we would very much like to hear from you! Further Reading
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In the course of our field researches, from time to time people ask about the Thylacine (
