Here is a recently colourised film footage of the last surviving Tasmanian tiger taken in 1933 at Hobart’s Beaumaris Zoo.
The thylacine a.k.a. Tasmanian tiger is in the news in two ways: the experts have colourised an old film of the last Tasmanian tiger in captivity at a zoo in Hobart. It is the last known live animal of this species. They say that the animal died of neglect in 1936. You can see the video on this page. And secondly, the experts are going to try and recreate this extinct species. They feel that they have the technology to do it. Scientific American call it a process of “de-extinction”. It would have been a lot better if humans had not hunted the animal to extinction in the first place but they did because they believed that it was killing too many sheep and chickens.
The farmers were encouraged to kill them by receiving a bounty for the animal’s skin. The Tasmanian tiger is a marsupial not a mammal which was native to the Australian mainland and the islands of Tasmania and New Guinea.
It’s common name came about because of the tiger stripes on it back. The aboriginal people have several names for it such as coorinna and kanunnah.
They say that this animal was shy and nocturnal. The tail is unusual being somewhat like the tail of a kangaroo. The skull shape is similar to that of a dog and it was a formidable apex predator. Its closest relative is the Tasmanian devil. Its last stronghold before it became extinct was the island of Tasmania. There were other contributing factors to his extinction such as disease and competition from dingoes and also the usual human encroachment onto their habitat.
A laboratory called Colossal Biosciences based in Texas planned last year to bring back the woolly mammoth and now they have set a new target to resurrect the thylacine.
They think that bringing it back to life will help to restore Tasmania’s ecosystem because this was a top predator. They want to help control overabundant herbivores kangaroos and wallabies.
In the article that the following link takes you to, I discussed the cloning process and state that the animal can be cloned physically but not its behaviour.
RELATED: Tasmanian tiger can be cloned but not its behaviour
Previous DNA cloning of this animal failed after using museum specimens. They have sequenced most of the thylacine’s genome and they say that this is a perfect candidate for de-extinction. This is because it died out relatively recently and the DNA available is of good quality. Also, there’s enough habitat for the animal left together with prey animals.
They hope to create a new thylacine in 10 years. The first animal they create might be 90% thylacine but the ultimate goal is 99.9% thylacine. I wonder whether it is acceptable to produce an animal that is 90% of an extinct species? What’s the point? It seems like an immoral experiment to me.
The ultimate goal is to have 100 “proxy thylacines” in the wild in Tasmania and they will start by monitoring them in a large enclosed area.
