These creatures are dog like animals but they have pouch like a kangaroo does. They have stripes going down their back a bit like a tiger.
They are native to Australia and Tasmania.
They are said to have been very shy creatures that were nocturnal. This means they were active at night time.
Tasmanian Tigers had become extinct in most of Australia before Europeans arrived. But they lived in Tasmania for quite a lot longer. They are thought to have become extinct because of the arrival of dogs and because of diseases that they caught. Humans also began to live where they did and this was bad for them too.
The Tasmanian Tiger was interesting because it could open it’s jaws really wide!
They had a really good sense of smell but mostly used the sense of sound and sight when they were hunting. They had a funny walk and they were not that good at running fast.
Tasmanian Tigers made some interesting noises. They made a bark like noise that went ‘yip-yap’. They could also make long whining howl noises or snuffling sounds.
They liked to eat things like kangaroos, wombats, wallabies and possums. They also liked to eat a bird called a Tasmanian Emu but that bird is now extinct.
People consider the Tasmanian Tiger to be extinct because the last known animal died in 1936. They may have become extinct for many reasons. They had to compete with Dingos for food and this may have meant their numbers got less. When lots of people came to Australia, they built farms where the Tasmanian Tigers liked to live. And of course, there were the diseases that killed lots of them.
Farmers did not like the Tasmanian Tigers because sometimes they would attack their sheep. So farmers started to shoot and kill them if they saw them.
The last Tasmanian Tiger was called Benjamin. He was kept at the Hobart Zoo in Tasmania. But he died. People think he died because he wasn’t being well looked after and he was left out on hot days and really cold nights.
But then what happened to the species is a mystery. Some people think that they were still around for many years even after Benjamin died. People sometimes heard mysterious sounds out the bush that sounded just like a Tasmanian Tiger. And their footprints were found in the bush too.
In 1970, two men called Jeremy Griffith and James Malley had a really big search for the Tasmanian Tiger. They spent years in the bush looking for them and they even used special cameras to try and photograph them. They looked all over the place but they never found any Tasmanian Tigers.
People are still hunting for them today. Lots of people find footprints that they think might be those of the Tasmanian Tiger. But they are never proven to actually be true. There was even a TV show called ‘Hunt for the Tasmanian Tiger’. They found some evidence on that show that the Tasmanian Tiger may well have been alive as recently as the 1980s.
In 1973, Gary and Liz Doyle filmed a mysterious looking animal running across a road in Tasmania. The film was not very clear and it was hard to tell exactly what animal it was. But it could have been a Tasmanian Tiger.
A tramper said he saw a Tasmanian Tiger in the bush in 1982. A lot of people went looking for it but they found nothing. In 1985 an Aboriginal man took a photo that looks like a Tasmanian Tiger digging.
There have been sightings of Tasmanian Tigers all over Tasmania like this map shows.
They were sighted again in 1995, 1997 and even in 2005 where a tourist took a photo of one near a lake. The photo shows the back of an animal and it is really hard to tell what sort of animal it is. But It does look a bit like a Tasmanian Tiger.
Many people think the Tasmanian Tiger is still alive today and hiding out in the bush. Apparently you would get nearly $2 million if you could successfully catch a Tasmanian Tiger in the wild!
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