The thylacine, more commonly known as the Tasmanian Tiger, was a unique predator distinguished by its blend of features. It possessed a dog-like body, a stiff, tapering tail, and a yellowish-brown coat marked by 15 to 20 dark stripes extending across its back. Though nicknamed the Tasmanian Tiger, it was the world’s largest carnivorous marsupial, not a canine or feline. Its scientific name, Thylacinus cynocephalus, literally translates to “dog-headed pouched one.” The extinction of this apex predator represents a profound loss of biodiversity, leaving a gap in the Tasmanian ecosystem.
Defining the Extinction Timeline
The species’ decline began long before European settlement, disappearing from mainland Australia and New Guinea roughly 2,000 to 3,000 years ago, likely due to competition with the introduced dingo. The population that survived in isolation on Tasmania numbered around 5,000 individuals at the time of colonial arrival in the early 1800s. A rapid decline followed due to intense human pressure, with the last known wild animal captured in 1933. The final chapter closed with the death of the last known captive individual on September 7, 1936, at the Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart. This animal, often called “Benjamin,” perished from suspected neglect or exposure shortly after the species was granted legal protection. The thylacine was not officially declared extinct by international bodies until 1982, or 1986 by the Tasmanian government, marking a significant delay between its physical disappearance and formal designation.
Primary Drivers of Decline
The most immediate factor driving the thylacine to extinction was the government-sponsored eradication program, fueled by settler fear and economic concerns over livestock. Beginning in 1830 with the Van Diemen’s Land Company, a private bounty was placed on the animals after farmers falsely blamed them for substantial sheep losses. This sentiment was codified in 1888 when the Tasmanian Parliament established a public bounty scheme, offering £1 for every adult carcass and ten shillings for a juvenile. The scheme ran until 1909 and resulted in the documented killing of over 2,180 thylacines.
Concurrent with the hunting pressure, expansive human settlement and agricultural practices led to significant habitat loss and fragmentation across the thylacine’s range. As forests were cleared for grazing land, the animals were pushed into less productive, more remote areas. This reduced the available prey base and increased the likelihood of conflict with settlers, intensifying the bounty hunting.
Though human activities were sufficient to cause the species’ disappearance, some scientists hypothesize that a disease may have played a supplementary role in the final decline. Reports from the early 1900s suggest that a distemper-like illness may have swept through the remaining fragmented populations. This disease would have compounded the mortality rate in an already genetically compromised and geographically isolated population, accelerating its slide toward extinction.
Ongoing Search and De-Extinction Science
The thylacine persists in the public imagination, generating hundreds of unconfirmed sightings in Tasmania and on the Australian mainland, classifying it as a modern cryptid. Though no credible evidence has been produced to confirm its continued existence, these reports spur periodic scientific investigations. Modern search efforts employ sophisticated technology like remote camera traps and acoustic monitoring in remote areas of the island to definitively rule out the species’ survival.
The enduring fascination has translated into ambitious de-extinction science, which aims to resurrect the thylacine using genetic engineering. High-profile projects are leveraging preserved specimens to sequence the thylacine’s genome, which provides a genetic blueprint for the animal. Scientists plan to use the fat-tailed dunnart, the thylacine’s closest living relative, as a template for this process.
The strategy involves editing the dunnart’s stem cells with thylacine DNA to create a functional embryo. The primary hurdles remain enormous, including the complexity of accurately editing the necessary genetic differences and developing the marsupial assisted reproductive technology to bring the embryo to term using a surrogate mother. While the successful birth of a thylacine remains a distant possibility, the research is yielding valuable tools for the conservation of other threatened marsupial species.