By the way, did you see Liz Doyle, who took South Australia's original fox film pop up on there the other day?
For those who like a quick peek under the bandage, the leader of the the Thylacine Awareness Group has now written an angry farewell to his followers and flounced off into the bush (at least three times a day!) to look for foxes.
Most likely survival theory is the dobsenga in NG. Though the situation with pariah dogs in NG was more complicated historically than it is today and might have confused sources. The disease theory of extinction on Tasmania makes sense, but can the cancer affecting Tasmanian devils even spread to other dasyurids? Thylacines shared a limb with numbats away from dasyurids. If it can't jump to quolls then... I guess at least what happens to Devils shows parallel situations can happen in any genetically undiverse population. It makes sense but how could it be proved? Whilst if the flesh eating disease could be identified in Thylacines, it would be a plausible smoking gun.
Seems very similar to America's Ivory Billed Woodpecker, whom I do not trust sightings for since everyone seems to have seen "the ivory billed woodpecker" in their yard.
The disease that affected the thylacine is also known to have hit bith the devil and quoll populations. Exactly what the disease was still isn't resolved though. 'A sort of mange', 'similar to distempa, 'pleural pneumonia', lots of suggestions but nothing definite. Another outbreak of something also hit the devil in 1950. So far thankfully DFTD is restricted to them.
Another article saying essentially the same as the one linked above. Tasmanian tiger: 'Sightings' of extinct animal spark hunt in Australia
It seems this is a genuine scientific Uni sponsored effort (for which I am glad and have a lot more confidence in than ye rogue yobbo going out and ...). Still, it is a long shot, but I am willing to go along with this one. Should be interesting what other carnivores and sundry marsupials come up in their camera trap surveys on Cape York Peninsula.
Also interesting that these sightings are on the mainland and not on Tasmania. Not that I think there is any hope of finding some, but interesting nonetheless.
The area where they are to look in NQ turned up some very rare Northern Bettong not to long ago I believe untill this finding only one small population was know. In regards to TT in Tasmania some believe the state government wants to play down any good sighting due to areas wanting to be logged/woodchipped, The current Federal government want to unlock large areas set aside for in world heritage protection for mining and logging so there could be more going on down there than meets the eye to outsiders.
Surely you jest - a group concerned with wildlife conservation would never place emphasis on more famous and popular species in the hopes of attracting attention and money towards more reasonable but less charismatic goals?
Sadly I suspect that thylacine sightings are up there with bigfoot. In a modern country its hard for larger mammals to hide these days. Very hard. Not impossible, but over 50 years without any credible sighting is a bad sign for any possible surviving population. Suggesting that if there are survivors they are down to critically low numbers that would make repopulation a massive challenge (both in the wild and even if brought into captivity) not least because of the limited genetic pool. Granted Cheetah have survived having gone through a catastrophic population decline in the past; but they likely had a very rough ride to get where they are today.
Carlos, Colin J., Bond, Alexander L. and Burgio, Kevin R. (Preprint, 2017). Estimating the extinction date of the thylacine accounting for unconfirmed sightings. bioRxiv 123331. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/123331
Possible Thylacine caught on a camera trap in Tasmania. Only a still frame has been released, apparently the moving video is in purchase negotiations with a documentary company Discussion and analysis of the released still-frame over at Where Light Meets Dark: Ellendale thylacine 2016
