|
by Loren
Coleman
While most scientists solemnly declare that the Queensland Tiger and the
Tasmanian Tiger—marsupial predators which survived into recent times
in Australia, to be extinct—each year, members of the public report
seeing the creature in remote areas of Tasmania and mainland Australia.
Although Thylacines, or Tasmanian Tigers, supposedly died
out in New Guinea 10,000 years ago, and on the Australian mainland as
recently as 3,000 years ago, the animal lived on into the 20th century
in Tasmania, the last one dying in captivity in 1936. However, ever since
then, people have continued to report encounters with Thylacines, including
a sighting in 1995 by a Parks and Wildlife Service officer in the Pyengana
region of eastern Tasmania.
Although the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service, World Wildlife
Fund, and even the Walt Disney Film Company have been monitoring and investigating
recent reports of sightings, various search parties have thus far failed
either to capture or film a living Thylacine.
Evidence
for the Queensland Tiger
In the 19th century, there were several livestock killings associated
with Queensland Tiger of Australia’s far northern tropical rain forests.
So in the 1940s and 1950s, when a wave of sightings of a striped, tigerlike
beast erupted to the south of North Queensland’s tropical rain forests,
the tigers were killed to extinction… or so it was believed.
Like the Thylacine, the Queensland Tiger has been seen numerous
times since the 1950s, although no specimen has yet been captured or photographed.
Some think these animals may be a surviving remnant of Thylacoleo
carnifex, the fearsome “Marsupial Lion,” a creature that stalked
the forests of Ice Age Australia. Farmers in the mountains of Victoria
refer to the creature as the “Big Cats,” although some insist
that what they are seeing are actually North American mountain lions.
Many, however, say that while the creature looks superficially like a
puma or a panther, on close inspection, it most definitely is no cat.
The Queensland Tiger is usually described as a heavy-set animal
about the size of a large dog, with stripes across its back. It has a
feline head and is said to be able to disembowel dogs with one swipe of
its claws. Its peculiar hopping gate, great leaps, and pouches in females,
indicate that it is a marsupial.
However, nearly all the tigers seen in Victoria are black
or dark chocolate brown. A few reports from New South Wales, the state
immediately north of Victoria, describe the creature as having black stripes
on its rump and tail, which are hard to see from afar on its dark brown
fur.
The creature is said to have a large, round head with small,
pointed, or triangular ears. The head is often described as disproportionately
large in relation to the body and is supported by a thick neck. Their
eyes are large and positioned towards the front of the head, giving the
creature binocular vision.
These beasts are superb climbers, literally able to run up
the trunks of gum trees and sheer rock faces with ease. They generally
keep to thick eucalyptus forests but are sometimes, especially in winter,
seen in bracken scrub, which is plentiful in the lowland forest that abuts
their main habitat.
They can supposedly spring up to 30 feet from a standing start.
In flight, their motion is one of leaping or bounding, with all four legs
involved in the action and the tail beating up and down in rhythm. Since
they move with an awkward, shuffling gait at slow speed, some believe
that this is because, as marsupials, they are unable to move their hind
legs independently.
These Australian “lions” may primarily be tree-lovers,
but reports of them come in even from the remotest corners of the Australian
desert. There, the creature is frequently reported as tan colored and
sporting either prominent stripes or spots.
One thing is certain, Australia is not short on animal mysteries
that claim the interest of many researchers.
A
Young Woman’s Search for the Queensland Tiger
In 2002-2003, Debbie Hynes, a high school student from Victoria, Australia,
led several expeditions in search of the supposedly extinct Thylacoleo.
Hynes first heard the tale of the Queensland Tiger several years ago when
on vacation in the Victorian mountains. The yarn fascinated her and since
then, she has endeavored to track and photograph one, mainly on expeditions
into the wilderness during term breaks. The result? She has found some
tracks and evidence of it killing many farm animals, but she has yet to
capture one on film.
“The creature’s seasonal movements are easy to track,
says Hynes. “When it is a lean winter, it comes down from the mountains
and leaves dead bodies wherever it goes.”
For more information about her research, visit www.Thylacoleo.com
from
issue #5
|
|
