This wolf is an extinct mammal. The Tasmanian wolf is a mysterious predator of Australia. Beginning of mass extermination

The marsupial wolf, or thylacine, is simply an amazing animal, which, with great regret, we have to talk about in the past tense. Indeed, according to official data, the last marsupial wolf died in the Hobart Zoo in 1936, and in natural conditions the last thylacine was shot even earlier - in 1930. After that, reports of the existence of this species often began to appear. Many are still looking for this animal to this day, trying to find traces or at least something to confirm that this species miraculously escaped extermination, but so far no one has been able to present weighty arguments about this. It's a pity. After all, one would like to hope that this amazing species of animals managed to survive in remote areas of Tasmania.
About 3000 years ago, thylacine was also found in Australia, but from there it was forced out by dogs (dingoes) brought there by settlers. The marsupial wolf is a rather strong animal and one dingo cannot cope with it. But the fact is that dingoes are pack animals, and thylacine is a loner. In addition, I think that dingoes were intellectually superior to the thylacine, because they are representatives of the canine family, which are among the most intelligent animals, after the higher primates.
The marsupial wolf, as the name implies, is a marsupial mammal (Marsupiala, or Metatheria) of the order of carnivorous marsupials (Dasyuromorphia), which includes many other marsupial predators along with the Tasmanian devil - the largest predatory marsupial today, after the extermination of the marsupial wolf. Despite the fact that both of these animals, as mentioned above, are predators and belong to the corresponding order, they belong to different families. The marsupial devil belongs to a fairly large family of Dasyuridae, which is conventionally called predatory marsupials, since all of its representatives are carnivores. And the marsupial wolf is a separate family of marsupial wolves, or thylacines - Thylacinidae. The following is the taxonomic data of this animal:

Kingdom: Animalia (animals)
A type: Chordata (chordates)
Class: Mammalia (mammals or beasts)
Subclass: Theria (viviparous mammals, or true beasts)
Infraclass: Metatheria, or Marsupialia (marsupials)
Squad: Dasyuromorphia (predatory marsupials)
Family: Thylacinidae (thylacines, or marsupials)
Genus: Thylacinus (thylacines)
View: Thylacininus cynocephalus (thylacine, marsupial wolf, Tasmanian wolf, marsupial tiger, Tasmanian tiger)

Now that we have more or less figured out the classification of this amazing animal, let's move on to describing its physical features and behavior. The marsupial wolf really resembles a representative of the canine family (wolves, dogs, and others) in its appearance, but if you look closely at the appearance and movements of this predator, it becomes clear that the thylacine has nothing to do with dogs (except that both animals are mammals). The front part of the body of the thylacine is similar in structure to that of a dog, but the back part is typical of a marsupial animal. Let's start from the beginning, that is, from the head. The skull of a marsupial wolf is about 22 cm long. And it really looks like a wolf. However, the thylacine has 46 teeth, while most canids have only 42. In general, the thylacine is almost the champion in the number of teeth among land mammals. Of these, only the big-eared fox surpasses it in this respect. This small animal has as many as 48 teeth! But back to the marsupial wolf. If we continue to conduct a comparative analysis of the skulls of the thylacine and the wolf, we can see that the sagittal crest of the wolf is more developed than that of its namesake. But the most surprising difference lies in the amazing ability of thylacine to open its mouth very wide. The jaws of this marsupial predator are designed so that it can open its mouth wider than any other mammal! When a marsupial wolf opens its jaws, it is an impressive and rather unexpected sight. A similar structure of the jaws made it possible for the thylacine to make a deep capture of the victim. However, despite this advantage of his jaws over the wolf's, the force of their compression was hardly greater than that of the wolf and, I think, even less. This is evidenced by the sagittal crest already mentioned above, which is more clearly developed in the wolf.
The marsupial wolf has five toes on its front paws, and four on its hind paws. At the same time, unlike dogs, he rests on all five fingers with his front paws, since they are all located in a row. He puts his hind limbs at a greater inclination than canines, so his hind paw print is longer. The back of its spine is not as flexible as that of placental carnivores, it is more reminiscent of the structure of the spine of a kangaroo. Due to this, it is easier for the thylacine to stand on its hind legs than for dogs, and moreover, according to some sources, the thylacine can only move on its hind legs, jumping in the manner of a kangaroo. Unfortunately, the marsupial wolf didn’t catch me anymore and I didn’t have a chance to watch it live, so I can’t say whether the marsupial wolf jumped on its hind legs or not. However, if we take into account the specific structure of his skeleton, then there is nothing surprising in this.
The tail of the thylacine is long and thick, especially at the base, and looks more like a kangaroo tail than a wolf or dog tail. It is not as mobile and flexible as the representatives of the canine family and is more resilient.
Marsupial wolves lived alone, in pairs, or formed family groups. Initially, they preferred open spaces, but later, under the onslaught of humans and dingoes, who hunted in packs, they began to move further and further into the forest, to more impregnable places.
Wallabies (small kangaroos) and other small animals served as natural prey for this predator. Less often, he attacked large kangaroos. All his prey was very fast, and the thylacine could not develop such high speed as dogs, however, it was a very hardy animal and could run without stopping for at least a whole day, literally exhausting its victims with a long chase.

Photos:

Skeletons:

Marsupial wolf, or thylacine (lat. Thylacinus cynocephalus) is an extinct marsupial mammal and the only member of the thylacine family. This animal is also known under the name "marsupial tiger" and "Tasmanian wolf".

At the beginning of the Holocene and the end of the Pleistocene, the marsupial wolf was found on the Australian mainland and the island of New Guinea. About 3,000 years ago, aboriginal settlers brought the wild dog dingo to the island, as a result of which the marsupial wolf disappeared from the area.

In the XVIII-XIX centuries. Tasmania was considered the main habitat of the marsupial wolf, but in the thirties of the XIX century, the mass extermination of the animal began, which was mistakenly considered the destroyer of domestic sheep. In addition, the thylacine was credited with hunting poultry and exterminating game caught in traps. Most of these legends turned out to be false.

By 1863, the number of thylacines had declined significantly; it was possible to meet a marsupial wolf only in the mountainous and forest regions of Tasmania, which were almost inaccessible to humans. A further reduction in the number of animals was probably facilitated by the dog plague that broke out at the beginning of the 20th century not without the help of imported dogs. This led to the fact that in 1914 the number of animals was calculated in units.

In 1928, a law was passed to protect the fauna of Tasmania, but the marsupial wolf was not on the list of protected animals. On May 13, 1930, the last marsupial wolf was killed, and in 1936 the last thylacine, kept in captivity in one of the private zoos, died of old age. Only in 1938 did a ban on hunting the marsupial wolf appear, and in 1966 a reserve was organized near Lake St. Clair with an area of ​​​​647,000 hectares.

Further searches for the marsupial wolf were unsuccessful, and all the stories about the meeting with this animal were not documented.

In appearance, the marsupial wolf looked like a dog, the shape of the skull was also similar to that of a dog, and exceeded the dog's skull in size. The tail had a structure similar to marsupial representatives. The mouth of the thylacine opened 120 degrees, which, when yawning, allowed the animal's jaws to form an almost straight line. The curvature of the hind legs gave the thylacine's gait a kind of jumping, jumping, similar to the movement of a kangaroo.

Thylacine was characterized by a nocturnal solitary lifestyle. The diet of the marsupial wolf included medium and large terrestrial vertebrates, small marsupials, birds, echidnas and various animals caught in traps. During the hunt, the thylacine made a coughing bark, piercing, guttural and deaf.

In 1999, the cloning of the marsupial wolf was announced, for which DNA samples of animals preserved in the museum in an alcohol solution were used. However, the DNA turned out to be damaged and unsuitable for the experiment. On February 15, 2005, the project was closed. In May 2008, one of the thylacine genes was introduced into a mouse, where it functioned successfully.

Today there is an assumption that, despite all the facts known about the disappearance of the marsupial wolf, he still managed to survive. Perhaps the habitat of the wolf is the deaf and unexplored forests of Tasmania. Sometimes there are reports of a meeting with this animal, but so far there is no confirmation of this in the form of photographs or video filming.

And this, it seems, is the last video recording of the Tasmanian tigers ... 1936 ...

Before the advent of immigrants, the marsupial wolf lived not only on the mainland, but also on the nearby islands: in Tasmania and New Guinea.

The natural habitat of wolves was open plains and not very dense forests, but the Europeans who arrived in Australia forced the animals to move into the rainforests and climb the mountains. There they settled in burrows, hollows of fallen trees and caves.

Thylacinus kinocephalus, which in translation sounds like "a striped dog with a wolf's head." This is what the amateur naturalist Harris called the marsupial wolf, publishing data on this animal in 1808.

Apparently, the Tasmanian wolf got its name because of its resemblance to a dog, the structural features of the skull and the dark transverse stripes that adorn the back and hind legs of the animal. The body, covered with thick wool of a grayish-yellow hue, had a length with a tail of about 180 centimeters, the height of the animal at the shoulders was 60 centimeters, and the weight of the wolf ranged from 20-25 kilograms.

The elongated mouth made it possible for the thylacine to open it to 120 o, and the long hind legs made it possible to take a vertical position and gave the gait an abrupt character.

The female thylacine fattened her tiny cubs in a pouch where they stayed for three months. The mother left the grown-up wolf cubs in the shelter and left in search of prey. After the hunt, the she-wolf taught the cubs how to handle the prey.

Wolves led a solitary life, and hunted in pairs or small groups for small marsupials, lizards and birds, exhausting their prey with a grueling long chase. Occasionally, animals feasted on the domestic animals of the colonists, which caused the dislike of the settlers. Trying to get rid of wolves, people scattered poisoned meat, but these wolves never ate half-eaten prey, so it was not possible to exterminate them in this way.

The mass extermination of the thylacine began when Australian farmers unfairly took up arms against the wolf, although the sheep were hunted not by marsupial wolves, but by wild dingoes and feral domestic dogs brought by the colonists. As a result, the wolves remained on the island of Tasmania, where they simply could not be reached. At the beginning of the 20th century, the number of these animals decreased sharply due to an epidemic of canine distemper. In 1928, the Tasmanian Animal Protection Act was passed, but the Tasmanian wolf was not taken under protection and, as a species, disappeared forever. In 1930, one of the marsupial wolves was killed by a "valiant" hunter, and in 1936 the last representative of the species died of old age in the zoo.

With the development of genetic engineering, there have been attempts to clone thylacine using genetic material taken from an alcoholized marsupial wolf cub from the Sydney Museum and successfully transplanted into a mouse embryo. However, it has not yet been possible to clone the animal itself.

Ecology

Not far from the mouth of a river in the north of Tasmania, two brothers, riding motorcycles, recently found something strange. Levy and Jerome Triffitt, members of a team of athletes riding small motorcycles off-road, found a strange skull and jawbones. They claim the skull belongs to tasmanian wolf , which looks like a striped dog.

Why might this find be so unique? The thing is that the animal known as the Tasmanian or marsupial wolf died out long ago. The last representative of this species died in the zoo of the Tasmanian capital, the city of Hobard, on September 7, 1936.

Finding a virtually intact skull of this wolf three-quarters of a century after the animal disappeared, and especially in a fairly open area, may indicate that the animals actually still exist and roam somewhere in remote areas of the southern Australian island, inaccessible for human eyes.

Some people are convinced that the Tasmanian wolf is still alive, perhaps in the same way that others are convinced that Bigfoot exists. According to marsupial wolf specialist Andrew Pask, an Australian zoologist from University of Melbourne, the fact that science confirms that these animals no longer exist in nature does not prevent people from seeing them.

In an interview, Pask said: “Since the wolf was declared extinct, every year there are people who claim to have seen it. However, none of them could provide evidence of this. A few years ago in Australia, one of the magazines offered a million dollars to anyone who would present real evidence the existence of a living Tasmanian wolf in the wild. A huge number of people go in search of an animal, but so far no one has been able to find it. The island of Tasmania is relatively small and even the most inaccessible parts of it are not, in fact, so inaccessible. I believe that if the wolf existed , it would be easy to find.

Scientists from Tasmanian Museum of Queen Victoria studied the found skull and confirmed that it belongs to an animal of the canine family, in particular, to an ordinary dog. The resemblance of this skull to the skull of the Tasmanian wolf is really obvious, therefore, it was not just a wild fantasy of the brothers. People just don't know that the Tasmanian wolf has a peculiarity: it has more front teeth in its upper jaw than dogs.

Zoologists were unable to conclusively convince the brothers, who insisted that this could have been a mistake. They are going to continue searching for the wolf. Until they prove its existence, marsupial wolves, like dodos and dinosaurs, can be considered extinct.

The marsupial wolf (Tasmanian wolf, thylacine) (Thylacinus cynocephalus) is an extinct mammal, the only representative of the thylacine family.

Before their extinction, the Tasmanian wolves were the largest of the modern marsupial predators. At the end of the Pleistocene and the beginning of the Holocene, thylacines were widespread in Australia and New Guinea, but in historical times these animals were found only in Tasmania.

Outwardly, the marsupial wolf looks like a large dog with stripes on its back. The height at the withers of this animal was about 60 cm, it weighed 15-35 kg. It had an elongated body, a dog-like head, a short neck, a sloping back, and relatively short legs. The thylacine differed from the dog in its long (up to 50 cm) straight tail, thick at the base, and in the coloration of black or brown stripes on a sandy-yellow back. It is noteworthy that the Tasmanian wolf was able to yawn like a crocodile, opening its mouth almost 120 degrees.

Marsupial wolves were active in the dark. During the day they rested in the hilly area in the forest, and at night they went hunting in the meadows and copses. In general, most of the information about the behavior of thylacines is in the nature of tales. They ran at an amble, could sit on their hind limbs and tail like a kangaroo, easily jumped 2-3 meters forward. Tasmanian wolves hunted alone or in pairs, and before the settlement of Tasmania by Europeans, they fed on possums, wallabies, bandicoots, rodents, birds and insects. If the marsupial wolf was very hungry, it could even attack an echidna, not being afraid of its sharp needles.

In Tasmania, marsupial wolves were widespread and numerous in places where settlements adjoined dense forest. However, in the 30s of the XIX century, the mass extermination of this beast began. From the very first days of European settlement, thylacine gained a reputation as a sheep killer; he was considered an incredibly ferocious and bloodthirsty beast. He caused a lot of trouble and loss to farmers, because he constantly visited herds and ruined poultry houses. A hunt began for him, encouraged by the local authorities: in 1830, a premium was established for the killed animal. As a result of uncontrolled shooting, by the beginning of the 70s of the 19th century, marsupial wolves were preserved only in the remote mountainous and forest regions of Tasmania. Despite this, in 1888 the local government introduced its own system of bonuses, and in 21 years 2268 animals were officially killed. In the end, the thylacine disappeared, along with the hunt for it, led to an epidemic of canine distemper brought by imported dogs.

The last marsupial was captured in western Tasmania in 1933 and died at Hobart Zoo in 1936.

In 1999, the Australian Museum in Sydney made an attempt to clone the Tasmanian wolf using the DNA of a puppy alcoholized in 1866. But it turned out that significant advances in biotechnology were needed to successfully implement this project.

Although the marsupial wolves have long been thought to be extinct, there are occasional reports of individuals in remote areas of Tasmania.

In contact with