Thylacine

Made for the Extinction Creatures Contest at nationalyarnographic.deviantar…

The Thylacine is one of my favorite animals. Often called a Tasmanian Tiger or Tasmanian Wolf, it's actually a marsupial, not a wolf or a tiger. The Thylacine resembled a large, short-haired dog with a stiff tail similar to a kangaroo. Unlike the kangaroo, it's pouch faced the opposite way. It had anywhere between 13 to 21 stripes from its back to the base of the tail, often why its called a Tiger. Most of the artistic renditions of this animal had cream colored bellies and a large white patch under the stripes. Its hard to tell from the few black and white photos the exact colorings. There are a few taxidermy examples, and they seem not to have those colorings. So that's why I decided to make it this way.

Drawing: www.culpeo-fox.deviantart.com/…
Taxidermy: imageshack.us/photo/my-images/…

Blamed for a large number of sheep killings, the government placed a bounty on them in order to control the population. However more were killed then were claimed. That isn't the only thing that was believed to lead to their extinction. The extinction of its prey, disease, and competition from wild dogs introduced by Settlers were also factors. Many sightings have been reported, but no proof has been found that they still exist.

Here is one of the few photos taken of the real thing: images.nationalgeographic.com/… Here is a link to the wikipedia page where you can find out more: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thylacin…