A woman claims to have seen a mysterious animal resembling the long-extinct Tasmanian tiger on a forest walk with her son and sister.
Jessie Milde was hiking in Belair National Park in the Adelaide Hills, South Australia, when her family spotted a strange animal hanging out.
Mrs. Milde at first thought the creature was either a ‘weird looking kangaroo’ or a ‘very skinny looking dog’, but her sister was convinced it was a Tasmanian tiger.
The last known sighting of the creature was in 1936, with the mammal long believed to be extinct.
Jessie Milde was hiking in Belair National Park in the Adelaide Hills, South Australia, when they spotted a Tasmanian tiger-like animal (pictured)
‘It had a very strange walk, a kind of lolling almost movement,’ said Ms Milde . ABC news.
“It was bigger than a fox, but not as big as a huge dog, but it definitely didn’t look like a fox.
‘The tail was very different, the back was really slanted down and the head was a very different shape.
‘That is’ [Tasmanian tiger] the closest we can compare it to.’
Ms Milde said her sister had read reports of strange animal sightings in the national park on the Blackwood Community Facebook page.
Animal experts, however, claimed it’s “virtually impossible” that the creature is a Tasmanian tiger, also known as a thylacine, with the last confirmed sighting almost 90 years ago.
Tasmanian wildlife biologist Nick Mooney said Ms Milde almost certainly saw a fox with mange. He said that the animal moved exactly like a small dog and not like a thylacine (pictured)
Tasmanian wildlife biologist and honorary curator of vertebrate zoology at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery Nick Mooney said Ms Milde has almost certainly seen a fox with mange.
“As far as we can tell, thylacines went extinct on the mainland 2,000 to 4,000 years ago, way back,” Mooney said.
‘It has all the marks of a fox with mange; I think he lost a lot of hair from his tail [and] it has very big ears like a fox.’
Mr Mooney said the animal’s movements were exactly like small canines and cats and unlike the gait of a thylacine.
In 2021, Mr Mooney exposed video footage of three animals in Tasmania submitted by Tasmanian tiger hunter Neil Waters.
The animals were most likely Tasmanian pademelons – a type of wallaby believed to have been part of the diet of Tasmanian tigers.
“Nick Mooney has concluded that based on the physical features seen in Mr Waters’ photographs, it is highly unlikely that they are thylacines, and most likely Tasmanian pademelons,” a statement to the Daily Mail Australia said.
“But unfortunately there have been no confirmed sightings of the thylacine since 1936.”
Experts claimed that thylacines went extinct on the mainland 2,000 to 4,000 years ago, while the last known thylacine died at the Hobart Zoo in 1936.
Thylacines were officially declared extinct in Tasmania in 1986.
The last verified thylacine, ‘Benjamin’, died from exposure at Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart on September 7, 1936, just two months after the species was granted protected status.
Since then, there have been regular cases of people claiming to have seen or pictured one of the animals.
On August 17, scientists unveiled plans to save the Tasmanian tiger from extinction.
Colossal Biosciences, a startup based in Dallas Texas, partnered with Melbourne University and announced plans to make the species go extinct using stem cell technology.
Bringing back the thylacine will not only bring the iconic species back to the world, but has the potential to rejuvenate the Tasmanian and wider Australian ecosystems, which have suffered from biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation since the predator’s loss earlier this century. rebalancing,” Colossal Biosciences explained.
The company, which previously promised to bring the woolly mammoth back to the Arctic, is backed by Hollywood A-listers Chris Hemsworth and his brothers Luke and Liam.
