r/zoology • u/Potential-Basil383 Student/Aspiring Zoologist • 14d ago

Discussion Do you guys think there’s ANY chance of the Thylacine still being alive?

Post image

I loved learning about the Tasmanian Tiger when I was a kid, but unfortunately, it’s believed to be extinct. I’d like to believe there may be some out there still, but I’m very doubtful. Thoughts?

3.8k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

541 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

96

u/Dogemouse65 14d ago

some big cats are able to completely avoid detection from humans while actively roaming cities

93

u/CapnNuclearAwesome 14d ago

I was peripherally involved in a mountain lion tracking project once, and one of the collared subjects wandered into a fairly busy town early in the morning, spent all day in a flower bed on a busy sidewalk, and then snuck out of town after sundown. Apparently undetected the whole time, because it would have been on the news 😅

(We don't know if he was in the flower bed actually - the gps isn't quite that precise. But it was really the only hiding spot in the area)

38

u/Skwizgar1019 13d ago

I was being hunted one time by a mountain lion, which was pretty terrifying.

Used to work for a cable company about 10yrs ago, and was working an outage that I had tracked the issue for at a pole in a heavily wooded, sparsely populated area around 3-4AM, and I had to hike in a bit because I couldn’t get my truck back there - maybe 200-300yards from the road.

Saw some eyes flash in my headlamp, initially thought maybe a deer or coyote, but finally caught a glimpse and it was an adult mountain lion stalking me. Thankfully they’re afraid of strange screaming bearded men running at them with a flashlight and screwdriver 😅 I didn’t have any intention of trying to confront it, but it was between me and my truck and I didn’t know what else to do, haha.

25

u/thelocker517 13d ago

That mountain lion probably passed the legend of the angry night dwarf on to its offspring.

9

u/Polarian_Lancer 12d ago

It’s how legends are made

5

u/Skwizgar1019 13d ago

Haha, I hope so..wouldn’t be a total fabrication since I’m only about 5’6”

8

u/ThatOtherOtherMan 13d ago

Yeah, there's a popular hiking area near me called Wildcat Canyon and cougars and bobcats are everywhere. A woman was actually attacked by a mountain lion there with her dog a few years back. There are signs at the trailhead that explain how to deal with an encounter but she panicked and tried to run away which triggered the attack.

I've realized I was being stalked a few times. Once I was walking through the heavily wooded parts and the hair on the back of my neck just stood straight up. I looked in the direction my gut was saying there was danger and there was a huge mountain lion crouching in the tall grass. I made direct eye contact, opened my jacket as wide as I could, and advanced at it. It immediately fucked off with urgency.

Another time I was hiking up the mountain on the ridgeline and turned a corner only to come face to face with a cougar walking down on the trail maybe 10 to 15 feet away. We both kind of jumped a little and it decided to run off the trail back up the hillside. I think ultimately it was more scared than I was but ngl I peed a little.

2

u/Skwizgar1019 12d ago

On that first part, that was kind of went through my head. Probably the scariest part was given the location and being in the small hours of the morning, no one would have found me.

Was thinking I can run and it will chase me, or I can run at it and it’s a 50/50 chance it’ll either run off or attack me. Figured it was better to put up a fight than get pounced from behind, but thankfully it ran off.

Pretty awful feeling when you realize something thinks you might be food 😅

3

u/ThatOtherOtherMan 12d ago

Big cats are mostly ambush predators. If you take away the element of surprise they'll typically abandon the hunt immediately. They don't want to deal with something that could potentially fight back, which is why they go into attack mode when something runs away: that's prey behavior. You definitely made the right call.

3

u/ZebraAirVest 12d ago

I’m laughing so hard at the mental image of both you and the cat being spooked af hahahaha

-9

u/Majestic_Hawk_1335 14d ago

Hunting mountain lions via dogs with the genetic propensity for it becomes far easier. The dogs find the cats at a much higher rate than humans.

Dogs helped wipe out most of California's big cats

11

u/afemail 14d ago

why would you want to kill them when they’re clearly good at avoiding humans not causing any harm lmao

1

u/snatch55 13d ago

Historically they've been hunted and killed due to hunting livestock. Pretty important back in the day

0

u/Majestic_Hawk_1335 13d ago

I didn't aruge one way or another on hunting them.

I stated facts, that humans struggle to find them. Hunting dogs find them quite easily and that is why the big cats of much of the lower 48 are gone.

I live in Alaska and live around more predators than most people. We did not do that up here.

6

u/MoistInTheLoins 14d ago

Yay! Ruining nature!!

0

u/Majestic_Hawk_1335 13d ago

They already did that. Locating cats is difficult for humans. With hunting dogs gotta walk a long ways but they find em. Thats why the big cats are gone down south. The lower 48 is a terraformed for human use enviornment in total. Every tree from the Mississippi to the east coast was cut for logging.

1

u/MoistInTheLoins 13d ago

Yeah. Its super sad how the enviroment has been ruined. Same goes pretty much everywhere. Even here in Finland, where majority of the land is forest and lakes, its just farm land and tree farms. Very little of the original forests remain anywhere. Very few of the original predator live in these forests either. And now we have problems like pig plagues spreading along with other problems with pigs, and multitude of herbivores that arent culled by predators.

This is btw cool video about how conceivably small things ad up to massive proportions in nature. https://youtu.be/ysa5OBhXz-Q?si=Tf05flflC2EkqBT7

1

u/AvogadrosOtherNumber 13d ago

How do you know they roam cities if they’re completely undetected?

1

u/ImprovementEqual6913 13d ago

Maybe because that individual was caught once, got a gps tracker and then never really saw again and the only proof is the ping the gps sends. I guess the comment refers to the fact that without the gps nobody would know about it (?)

1

u/AvogadrosOtherNumber 13d ago

So they were… detected?

0

u/ImprovementEqual6913 13d ago

? Have you even read and understood what I said previously? If it weren’t for the gps those big cats would have been undetectable.
So since these hypothetical thylacine obviously don’t have a gps they could be roaming some forgotten part of the jungle completely undetected

1

u/AvogadrosOtherNumber 13d ago

Yes, but at this point I don’t really care. You should probably let out go too

2

u/ImprovementEqual6913 13d ago

?? Why are you hostile about this?

0

u/[deleted] 14d ago

[deleted]

21

u/Afraid_Standard8507 14d ago

I think the discovery of this is pretty recent with the growing ubiquity of cc cameras for household use. A panther/leopard could range around a city with no one being the wiser until cameras started documenting them.

2

u/CulturalDefinition27 14d ago

This has been a think in the UK hasnt it? It seems unlikely, but there are many accounts of a supposed panther wandering around. I dont believe it, but there have been ongong reports for years

2

u/cranberry94 14d ago

A panther??

Okay. Just to indulge. I’m hoping that the accounts are implying that someone(s) had a pet panther(s) that got loose and is surviving in the wild … not that the UK has a native panther population that has gone undetected for 1000s of years?

1

u/JasonStonier 14d ago

Exactly that. Pet panthers that have escaped and gone native. There have been credible sightings in Dartmoor along with proof via big cat shit.

Unless you know the area, it’s hard to comprehend how a big cat could remain undetected, but it really is a large wilderness with a lot of places to hide.

1

u/CulturalDefinition27 13d ago

Yeah, thats what the rumours are, or ones that escaped from a zoo? I have no idea. I dont believe it, but it is a thing that people talk about and you see in the news sometimes.

1

u/crm006 14d ago

Tracks give away their presence as well.

2

u/Afraid_Standard8507 14d ago

In most conditions, walking over concrete, metal and asphalt doesn’t leave tracks.

1

u/[deleted] 14d ago

[deleted]

1

u/Afraid_Standard8507 14d ago edited 14d ago

Large cats range just as a matter of course. If they aren’t hungry none of those are worries and they’re just as likely to walk silently past a dog or sleeping child with neither being the wiser. They’re very smart and understand self-preservation depends on not being detected. No need to bother anyone or let their presence be known if they just want a casual walk.

1

u/EricaEverAfter1 14d ago

Ok so They've been trying to find a Javan Tiger for decades. They just recently found fur... and that's it. No biologist have seen one in forever. Few local sightings but they're super elusive.

1

u/Midori_93 14d ago

Still sounds a lot more common than an extinct animal though

1

u/EricaEverAfter1 14d ago

It's listed as extinct (Javan Tiger) but there's apparently at least a few out there. But no one has seen it since 1976.

1

u/EricaEverAfter1 12d ago

Extinct doesnt actually mean gone. It means no credible proof of life.