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Facts About the Tasmanian Tiger
This dog-like marsupial went extinct in the 20th century
The Tasmanian Tiger is to Australia what Sasquatch is to North America—a creature that has often been sighted but never actually corralled, by deluded amateurs. The difference, of course, is that Sasquatch is entirely mythical, while the Tasmanian Tiger was a real marsupial that only went extinct about a hundred years ago.
01 It Wasn't Really a Tiger
The Tasmanian Tiger earned its name because of the distinctive tiger-like stripes along its lower back and tail, which were more reminiscent of a hyena than a big cat. Though this "tiger" was a marsupial, complete with a characteristic marsupial pouch in which the females gestated their young, and thus was more closely related to wombats, koala bears, and kangaroos. Another common nickname, the Tasmanian Wolf, is a bit more relevant, given this animal's resemblance to a large dog.
02 It's Also Known as the Thylacine
If "Tasmanian Tiger" is a deceptive name, where does that leave us? Well, the genus and species name of this extinct predator is Thylacinus cynocephalus (literally, Greek for "dog-headed pouched mammal"), but naturalists and paleontologists more commonly refer to it as the Thylacine. If that word sounds vaguely familiar, it's because it contains one of the roots of Thylacoleo, the "marsupial lion," a saber-toothed tiger-like predator that vanished from Australia about 40,000 years ago.
03 It Went Extinct in the Mid-20th Century
About 2,000 years ago, yielding to pressure from indigenous human settlers, Australia's Thylacine population dwindled rapidly. The last holdouts of the breed persisted on the island of Tasmania, off the Australian coast, until the late 19th century, when the Tasmanian government put a bounty on thylacines because of their predilection for eating sheep, the lifeblood of the local economy. The last Tasmanian Tiger died in captivity in 1936, but it may yet be possible to de-extinct the breed by recovering some fragments of its DNA.
04 Both Males and Females Had Pouches
In most marsupial species, only the females possess pouches, which they use to incubate and protect their prematurely born young (as opposed to placental mammals, which produce their fetuses in an internal womb). Oddly enough, Tasmanian Tiger males also had pouches, which covered their testicles when circumstances demanded--presumably when it was bitterly cold outside or when they were fighting with other Thylacine males for the right to mate with females.
05 They Sometimes Hopped Like Kangaroos
Although Tasmanian Tigers looked like dogs, they didn't walk or run like modern canines, and they certainly didn't lend themselves to domestication. When startled, Thylacines briefly and nervously hopped on their two hind legs, and eyewitnesses attest that they moved stiffly and clumsily at high speeds, unlike wolves or big cats. Presumably, this lack of coordination didn't help when Tasmanian farmers mercilessly hunted, or their imported dogs chased the Thylacines
And as always have a chilled day from the Viking
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