Jangala Magazine - Número XIX Enero 2016

ever seems to observe and report on any of these manifestations. The only things people usually encounter are animals. Most can be instantly identified and some cannot.

Of the two methods of interpreting these reported observations, the second method is to accept these reported observations and to examine them to see if there are correlations with known facts about the thylacine. Ongoing sighting reports provide evidence that the thylacine has survived as viable populations in many parts of its original range in diverse habitats from arid lands to rainforest, particularly on the mainland where it has been reputedly encountered repeatedly in temperate, subtropical and tropical climatic zones. This is to be expected from a family that evolved in Australia and this last species of Thylacinidae has had a long history as a predator across the continent.

Ongoing sighting reports, if we believe them, provide evidence that the thylacine, particularly on the mainland, has a range of fur colours and degree of fur length, as perhaps would be expected for a species that is liable to have had isolated populations in different habitats and climate zones over millions of years. The reports contain information that both short-furred and long-furred populations occur. The range of fur colours includes the most common sightings of animals with short light brown fur with dark brown stripes across the back. However, thylacines have been observed on many occasions to have light brown stripes that merge with the background light brown fur so that no stripes are visible. Conversely, the species has been observed to have a dark colour phase in which the entire animal is covered in very dark brown fur and consequently no stripes are again visible.

The long-furred animals are covered in thicker fur. A detailed description of an animal shot in south-east Queensland by Carl Lentz was long ago published and ignored. The forehead and face is a light bronze colour.

It has 5 bright orange rings of very short hair around its eyes which are purplish-brown in colour. It has a short thick coat of light pale blue-grey and white stripes running downwards with bright, marble-sized orange to yellow spots along the flanks.

Above this short thick coat from the back of the head covering the body it has a dark thin coat of black hairs and this makes it appear to be a brindled colour when seen from a distance. Its tail also has the same white and blue-grey rings, each 20 mm wide, beneath the same outer covering of long black hair (Lentz 1967, Hall et al 1988). The long-furred animals always have a thickly furred tail, usually with distinct rings visible. However, like the short-furred thylacines, the fur colour can have the same range with the body covered in a light brown fur with dark stripes, dark brown fur with dark stripes or light brown fur with light brown stripes that blend with the background fur colour.

Ongoing sighting reports also provide evidence that the mainland and New Guinea populations were decimated by a distemper-like disease that spread from the introduction of the domestic Asian dog four thousand years ago. Competition with wild dogs and the episodic activities of the disease continues to keep thylacines at minimal numbers. With the introduction of dogs to Tasmania the disease decimated the Tasmanian population.

Because of their ability to travel long distances quietly hunting small prey across large foraging territories and their ancient genetic diversity, they are able to survive with minimal numbers of individuals very thinly spread across the countryside. This is the only reasonable explanation for the many sighting reports but complete lack of physical evidence.

In the Autumn 1991edition of the Australian Natural History magazine my question to the Australian Museum was published seeking an explanation as to why a one and a half metre long striped carnivorous marsupial, previously described in detail, had now disappeared from the popular scientific Australian mammal books (Opit, 1991). Descriptions of its morphology, behaviour, habitat and occurrence in northern Australia cover three and a half pages in The Wild Animals of Australasia, published in 1925 and written by Australian Museum zoologist Ellis Troughton, Harry Burrell and A.S. Le Souef, curator of Taronga Zoological Park.

Australian museum zoologist Tim Flannery replied to my question stating “The reference to the ‘striped marsupial cat’ is not a mistake, but a case where modern science has caught up with an old mystery. The 49