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day mate, and welcome to Mysteries of

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Science. My name's Dan and I'm the

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editor of The Week Junior, Science and

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Nature, which is the monthly magazine from

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the team behind The Week Junior. And

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I'm Michael, the acting deputy editor. On

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this podcast we investigate weird events, strange

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creatures and mysterious places. Today

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we're off to the sun and

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heat of Australia. In

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fact, the island off Australia called

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Tasmania, and we're going to find

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out what happened to a strange

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mystery creature called the

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thylacine. Yes, the thylacine, also

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known as the Tasmanian tiger,

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went extinct in 1936. However,

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there have been sightings reported

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of it in modern day

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Australia. So could the Tasmanian

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tiger still be alive? Amazing.

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Let's go on an adventure down

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under and get some answers. This

1:21

is Mysteries of Science. So

1:26

Michael, what we have here is a kind of

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monster mystery. We have a

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creature, a creature feature you might say. We have

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a creature that was alive once upon a time,

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a real one, but

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who's extinct. And we're going to find

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out whether or

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not it's actually alive or not,

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whether it's extinct. But before we

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do this, I think we need

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to have some idea of what

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the beast looked like. If we're going to

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spot it, we need to know what we're

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searching for. So you said

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it's also known as the

1:58

Tasmanian tiger. So, I

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mean, does it look like this? Does it look like

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a tiger? Yeah, the tiger on the cover of the

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latest issue of the Witcher in South nature. It doesn't

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look quite like that. It does

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have some stripes. Some people also called it the

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Tasmanian wolf because they said it looked at a

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bit of a dog-like head. So

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it's kind of like a dog-wolf-tiger

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mashup. Right, yeah, yeah, I used to draw

2:23

those when I was a kid. Yeah. You

2:25

just sort of do the head of a

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wolf and the back end of a tiger.

2:30

It's a wiger, a dog, a

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dolphin. There's some word

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for it, probably. Thylacine is what it's

2:36

called. Anyway. Yes. But instead

2:39

of us trying to explain what it

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looks like, why don't we get an

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expert to tell us and even show

2:45

us? Because I went on a little

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field trip to the Grant Museum of

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Zoology at UCL in London and spoke

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to curator Tannis Davidson, who showed us

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some incredible thylacine specimens. All

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right, so we're standing in front of

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one of our cases, which is highlighting

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extinct and endangered species. So we've got

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most of our thylacines on display here

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in this case. We

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have some very rare and all very

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special specimens here. The specimen

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at the back is a mounted

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specimen, mounted skeleton of a thylacine.

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And this is one of the

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oldest specimens we have in the

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Grant Museum. Over

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here, we have a beautiful thylacine

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skull. Now,

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amongst zoology collections, there's a bit

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of friendly rivalry about who's

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got the largest Irish elk

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skulls, horns, whatever.

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But we believe this one is probably

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one of the largest thylacine skulls in

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existence. We have a display of a

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bisected thylacine skull. One of the things

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about thylacines is that they have quite

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a large ability to kind of open

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their mouth quite wide. And

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so that display kind of reflects

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that. And we have a little

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thylacine model here, again, to kind of show what's in

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there. the animal would have looked like. Oh,

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wow. How incredible was that? I love

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it. And if you'd

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like to see the specimens that Tannis was

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talking about, then you can

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by watching this episode on our

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YouTube channel. You just need

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to head to youtube.com forward

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slash at mysteries of science.

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And if you do that, you'll also be

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able to see the little souvenir that I

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bought while I was at the museum. This

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is a third scale 3D

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print from the scan of

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the thylacine skull. I like

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that you've brought something in for a little bit

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of show and tell today. A little bit of

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show and tell. So obviously anybody watching on YouTube

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will see the show, but we should probably do

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some tell for the people listening on the podcast.

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It has some two quite prominent, would

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you say fangs at the front? Yeah,

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the technical term there. The technical scientific

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term. Yeah, so this is a scale

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model. So it's actually two

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thirds bigger than the thing that you're holding

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in your hand. Exactly. So

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it's not something that you'd want to... The

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real thylacine skull is a lot bigger than this. And

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yeah, absolutely. You wouldn't want to... You'd

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want to be in its good books, let's say, I

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think. Yeah, and then those T.T.s look pretty scary. And

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it does have a long dog-like

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snout. You can

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see the wolf's comparisons. Definitely. And

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looks like some pretty sort

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of substantial attachments for some

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strong jaw muscles there. So it's probably

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got a heck of a bite. Brilliant.

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Well, thanks for bringing that in. That was really nice

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to see. And

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I think we learned a lot about what

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it looks like. I'd

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also like to find out what happened

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to it and why

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it went extinct, why it didn't die out.

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So let's bring in our next expert who

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wrote a book all about the last bite

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of the scene, fantastic. Okay,

5:54

hi, I'm Elisa Dallison and I'm an

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author of children's books. I've

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published over 65... books now. I

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write picture books, chapter books, novels and

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series and I love writing

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books about animals and stories that empower children.

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Welcome to the show Elisa. So

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I understand that you've written a

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book called Stripes in the Forest,

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the story of the last wild

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thylacine. So could you tell us

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a little bit more about that? It

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is about a thylacine. They're also

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called Tasmanian tigers, they've had other

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names as well and

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thylacines are a type of

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marsupial, they're also a mammal

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and they were only found in

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Australia and Papua New Guinea and

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they're considered extinct now. So

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how did they go extinct? What happened

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to them? And they think when

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indigenous Australians brought dingoes into Australia

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about 10,000 years ago, that's when

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they started to compete for

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food. And they were hunted

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as well on the mainland

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and so they weren't as good

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a predator as dingoes. They

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used to be really good predators but dingoes were even

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better. Dingoes weren't on Tasmania so

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they remained there. So we

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had to have a quick look

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up of what a dingo was. So

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it's the wild dog of Australia apparently

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descended from a domesticated

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breed. Okay

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so if dingoes weren't on the island

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of Tasmania then what happened

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to thylacines there on the

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island to make them go extinct? But

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then the Europeans came to Tasmania and

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they cleared a lot of land. This

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was in the 1800s they first came

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there and they brought convicts there but

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they also had settlers,

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farmers. So they cleared a

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lot of land and chopped

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down trees, chopped down habitats, chopped

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down forests where thylacines food

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was and they also

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started hunting the thylacines because the

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sheep farmers thought that the thylacines

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were killing their flocks of

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sheep, but they now believe

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it was wild dogs. Thylacines

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often, you

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know, they only hunt to eat, whereas

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some of the other sheep were being, these

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sheep were being hunted just to be killed,

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kind of thing. So

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there was a bounty put on thylacines

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head. And people were actually paid, people

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actually had jobs to go

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out and kill thylacines. And

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some farmers, you know, obviously they're trying to

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protect their flocks. They didn't know any better.

8:35

And they were also shooting the thylacines. So

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they believe, you know, the

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hunting by humans eradicated a lot of

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them. It was loss of habitat.

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And also some of the

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diseases that introduced dogs were

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brought into Tasmania, like Parvovirus,

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could have helped eradicate them

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too. Okay,

8:58

so that is

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what happened to the thylacine population in

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general. But your book, at

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least it was about the last thylacine. And I

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wonder, what can you tell us about the last

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known member of the species and what happened to

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them? So the

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last thylacine that was known

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of in captivity was in Australia.

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Although thylacines were taken all around

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the world, there was some in

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Bronx Zoo and other zoos as

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well. And samples, you

9:26

know, thylacines were taken to

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be preserved as museum exhibits

9:31

because they knew the thylacine was dying out.

9:34

But the last one was in Beaumara

9:36

Zoo in Hobart. And

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she was there for seven years in

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a small enclosure. And they

9:44

weren't looked after like they were nowadays. They're a bit

9:46

more of an oddity, like

9:48

a circus exhibit, rather than let's

9:50

try and preserve the species. And

9:54

even though she was there for seven years, she had

9:56

the name Benjamin because

9:58

they couldn't get close.