I Feel Normal About Thylacines Why Do You Ask

Baby baby boy

benjamin, my love

images of the thylacine you have probably never seen before

A group of thylacines relaxing in the Hobart Zoo, c. 1920’s.

do you remember how we used to run

Footage of the last Living Thylacines (Thylacinus cynocephalus) (1936)

“The question is, are we happy to suppose that our grandchildren may never be able to see an elephant except in a picture book?” - Sir David Attenborough   

The tiny skull of a thylacine joey, part of the collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Prior to her premature death, this individual lived alongside her mother and two siblings at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park. [ x ]

some more images of the thylacine you have probably never seen before

Happy First Anniversary to @extinctionstories! When I set up this blog last May, I was mostly hoping for a way to organize my conservation-related work; if people happened to enjoy it, then that would just be a bonus. Instead, I've been blown away by the enthusiasm and interest that you guys have for my art and writing, and the love that we all share for these precious creatures. Thank you so much for listening to their stories; I have plenty more to come

As a birthday treat, here are a couple of quick thylacine studies that I haven't posted before. They are fountain pen and watercolor, on 18x24" paper.

Dobsegna: in some parts of Papua New Guinea

I've also heard moonlight wolf (hence the blog name lol) that's uncommonly used.

What’s in a name?

Just for fun, I thought I’d compile a list of names for the thylacine in various languages.

Scientific: Thylacinus cynocephalus (lit. ‘dog-headed pouched one’); formerly Didelphis cynocephala (lit. ‘dog-headed opossum’) [x]

English: Thylacine, Tasmanian tiger, Tasmanian wolf, zebra wolf, marsupial wolf - Uncommon/old names: Zebra opossum, dog-faced dasyurus, native hyena, native tyger

Aboriginal: Coorinna, loarinna, laoonana, lagunta [x]

Spanish: Tilacino

German: Beutelwolf (lit. ‘bag wolf’)

French: Loup marsupial (lit. ‘marsupial wolf’)

Japanese: フクロオオカミ (fukuro-ookami, lit. ‘bag wolf’)

Swedish: Pungvarg [thanks bigfishboss]

Finnish: Pussihukka

Do you know any others?

thylacines made good pets?? ;_; they do look like they'd feel soft and glossy to the touch. I'm obsessed with tassie devils, myself, but I'm resigned that they may go extinct before I can travel far enough to see them. I wish I could pet one.

They were obviously not domesticated to the level of having domestication syndrome features (not that I'm sure a marsupial animal *would*), but there are historical records of Tasmanians who kept them as pets, including both white settlers and indigenous people.

Thylacines were somewhat prone to capture myopathy (a stress reaction that causes some animals to die if trapped/captured) and sometimes died after capture, but many did not. If the animals were treated kindly they would generally respond well to attempts to tame them, and this was even more true of orphaned baby thylacines that were raised by humans. There are several stories of people who tamed thylacines very shortly after capture. One such thylacine was let go when she went into season and became restless, and she later introduced her pups to the man she had lived with.

Indigenous people were recorded as having kept them. One indigenous informant stated that they called them "stripey dogs" when they spoke English.

One of my favourite stories was of a white settler family had a large house and kept their thylacine on an extremely long chain in the front so that she could act as a sort of watchdog. This thylacine would watch over the children playing and did not react violently to them even if she was accidentally hit by a ball (she knew that this was an accident) and would give warning of anyone approaching.

The likely reason that thylacines did not become popular household companions was the hate campaign that sprung up around them, stating that they were sheep killers. Once that got to be a big issue and bounties were offered for killing them, people who were taming and raising the animals frequently found them killed, and they gave up on it.

Many of these stories are in Robert Paddle's book, which is an academic study but is extremely readable.