The Tasmanian wolf, also called tilacin or marsupial tiger, is one of the most mysterious animals that have ever lived on our planet. Three and a half centuries ago, a large island was discovered by the Dutch navigator Abel Tasman at the southwestern tip of the Australian continent, which later received the name of its discoverer. The sailors sent from the ship to explore this piece of land talked about the traces they saw, similar to the prints of tiger paws. So in the middle of the seventeenth century the riddle of marsupial tigers was born, rumors of which stubbornly wandered over the next several centuries. Then, when Tasmania was already quite settled by immigrants from Europe, eyewitness accounts began to appear.
The first more or less reliable report of the marsupial wolf was published in one of the English scientific journals in 1871. Well-known naturalist and natural scientist D. Sharp studied local birds in one of the Queensland river valleys. One evening, he noticed a strange sand-colored animal with distinct bands. An unusual species, the beast managed to disappear even before the natural scientist was able to do something. Sharpe later found out that the same animal was killed nearby. He immediately went to this place and carefully studied 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, according to some signs, a certain similarity with representatives of the canine family, for which it got its name. Before the appearance of white immigrants on the Australian continent who brought their beloved sheep with them, tilacin hunted small rodents, wallaby kangaroos, marsupial possums, badicoot badgers and other exotic animals known only to local Aborigines. Most likely, the Tasmanian wolf preferred not to pursue game, but to use ambush tactics, waiting 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 irrevocable disappearance of this animal. Indeed, one of the last representatives of the species was the Tasmanian marsupial wolf, who died of old age in 1936 at the zoo in the city 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. Consequently, in its natural habitat, it still continued to exist.
True, after these documented evidence, this beast could only be seen in the pictures. But even less than a hundred years ago, the Tasmanian wolf was so widespread that the visiting farmers were obsessed with genuine hatred for tilacin, which earned among them the unkind fame of the sheep thief. A considerable prize was even appointed for his head. Over the last twenty years of the century before last, the authorities of the island of Tasmania paid 2, 268 such rewards. Thus, the thirst for easy profit generated a wave of real hunting for tilacin. 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 in danger of extinction. The law on its protection came into force only when, in all likelihood, there was already nobody to protect …
But, apparently, the marsupial wolf still did not suffer the fate of a wandering dove, tarpan and Steller's cow. In 1985, amateur naturalist Kevin Cameron from the town of Girrawin, Western Australia, suddenly presented to the world public quite compelling evidence that tilacin continues to exist. Around the same time, evidence began to appear of occasional fleeting encounters with this beast in New South Wales.
Eyewitnesses noted a strange wagging lynx of an animal with a back part of the body thrown, 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 is it time to exclude the Tasmanian marsupial wolf from the “martyrology” of the animal world and re-add it to the list of living, though not prosperous contemporaries?
