Cryptozoology

Thanks, NZ Jeremy, I'm also happy to meet You again...

I agree with patrick's point of view about the Thylacine in Tasmania; it's kind of an hype similar to the one about Yeti & Nessie, with equally non-existing hard evidence. There have indeed been some rumours about Thylacines still existing on Irian Jaya and mainland Australia-but I think that might also just be wishful thinking.
 
The prodigal "Sun" returns - ready to cross (verbal) swords with the master, patrick, once more!

Just on the thylacine, has anyone heard anything recently about the Australian Museum's attempt to clone them?
 
Hi Ara,

Thanks for the warm welcome...;) Haven't heard anything new about the 2nd project.

I added some pics of a very nice mount from the Dresden museum collection to the gallery.
 
patrick said:
and yet, like bigfoots and skunkapes, the camera always jammed, was out of batteries, clicked and scared the animal off etc..
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I absolutely agree. Same situation exactly here in the southern USA with the ivory-billed woodpecker. Grainy video footage (ultimately rejected by Sibley and other experts), no sharp clear photos, iffy sound recordings, desperate men spending years of their life and all of their money in search of the grail (to use a terribly hackneyed metaphor).

Tom Nelson, aka The Ivorybill Skeptic, has done a fantastic job of deconstructing all the ivorybill madness:

Tom Nelson: Ivory-bill skeptic home

You can apply his logic to just about any crypto claim and that claim will not stand...

The Magnificent Survivor story has so many holes in it. But I can hardly tear myself away from the guy's presentation, simply because he wants it to be there sooo bad that I am rooting for him. As I said in another thread, it is so easy to knock the grand gesture. I am always in Don Quixote's corner. I really get his passion. I only wish it weren't such a wasted effort-- too bad he isn't channeling all of that energy into helping a living species. Here in America, someone coined it " The Ivorybill Effect" -- living endangered species get shafted while the big bucks are spent chasing a phantom.
 
kifaru said:
I really get his passion. I only wish it weren't such a wasted effort
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There is(was?) a man named Dr Eric Guiler in Tasmania and probably the world's leading authority on the Thylacine. An (ex) University lecturer in Zoology he has devoted much of his life to unsuccessful searches, and has written at least one book on it yet he is(or was) convinced that it still exists in Tasmania, despite having no tangible evidence to prove it. I'm not sure if he is still alive as he must be a very advanced age now. If anyone was likely to be able to prove its existence, I believe it would have been him.
 
You gotta love people like that: the ultimate, incurable, die-hard romantics!

I think that perhaps they see the Thylacine as more than just a (once) living, breathing creature. In some ways, the creature so long pursued and desired becomes a symbol of themselves--of personal loss, perhaps, or of a deep desire to return to another, better time and place. I sincerely wish that old Dr. Guiler's favorite phantom could have materialized, both for him and for the world. I share that desire and can understand his passion, however misguided.
 
@kifaru: I somehow get the notion that the driving force of some people looking for "lazarus species" is to fight the odd feeling that they somehow missed something irrecoverable...
I doubt that, if alive and abundant today, Thylacines would most likely not have the popular "holy grail" status they have now. If You read old descriptions of, say late Ludwig Heck at Berlin Zoo (with everything about the species written in present tense..;)), You somehow get the impression that they were not real crowd-pleasers, and even for animal enthusiasts like Heck, pretty dull and boring. That changed when the rumours were leaking through that the species was on a final "farewell tour"-and due to that, the prices for specimen skyrocked. I can't find any evidence, though, that the majority of zoo visitors back then was highly impressed by the expensive & rare "legendary animal".
 
Sun Wukong said:
You somehow get the impression that they were not real crowd-pleasers, and even for animal enthusiasts like Heck, pretty dull and boring.
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That pretty much sums up a lot of the old European attitudes about the Australian fauna as backward, primitive, and somehow not up to snuff. I'd say the old films of the Thylacine reveal it to be a very beautiful and lively creature--exquisite, actually. Too bad those old Eurocentric attitudes resulted in so much devastation to the Australian fauna.
 
kifaru said:
I'd say the old films of the Thylacine reveal it to be a very beautiful and lively creature--exquisite, actually.
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i would agree. whilst to zoo audience it was probably about as exciting as a fossa or dhole or binturong - the thylacine was an absolute superb looking animal. and if a devine power gave me the ability to bring back one extinct species its name would blurt out of my mouth without hesitation. because the thylacine was without doubt the most superb example of a carnivorous marsupial alive, and thus that made it one of the greatest examples of mammalian evolution. fortunately, for now, the fascinating little hyena-equivalents are still alive in the tasmanian devil.

i fully supported cloning efforts for the thylacine. but last i heard the project was cancelled, picked up again, then dumped again. a case of a little too ambitious for the technology of our immediate time.

i do however believe, that if we ever do see a living thylacine, it will come from a lab and not the tasmanian wilderness. and for me, this is a small price to pay to restore our magnificent predator back into our ecosystems.
 
I used to be in the camp that hoped the thylacine still survived in Tasmania. But then I went there and saw just how small the island really is and how there really is nowhere that could realistically be called likely for their survival -- even the most remote areas always have hikers and conservation workers passing through. Now sadly I fall into the other camp, that doesn't believe them to still survive in Tasmania.

Now I hold out hope for New Guinea -- because I haven't been there yet :-)
 
Sun Wukong, I take it you are an avid reader of Shuker's works then?
 
Chlidonias said:
Now I hold out hope for New Guinea -- because I haven't been there yet :-)
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the problem with new guinea is that;

a) the island was also were subjected the introduction of the dingo thousands of years ago, the species blamed for the thylacines demise in australia.

b) most of the remote parts of new guinea are in the highlands, not the lowland savannahs that the thylacine that we know inhabited. so if your holding of for a thylacine in new guinea it would be a different species, a montane forest dwelling species... a type adapted to the same sorts of habitats we just argued against them being adapted to in in tasmania.

*sigh* such a pity...
 
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patrick said:
i fully supported cloning efforts for the thylacine. but last i heard the project was cancelled, picked up again, then dumped again. a case of a little too ambitious for the technology of our immediate time.
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Its most definitely off last I heard, the DNA they were trying to recover was from a 100 year old sample which had been preserved in alcohol... Without the genome you'd have better luck from amber (a'la David Attenborough or Jurassic Park)...
 
patrick said:
the problem with new guinea is that;

a) the island was also were subjected the introduction of the thousands of years ago dingo, the species blamed for the thylacines demise in australia.

b) most of the remote parts of new guinea are in the highlands, not the lowland savannahs that the thylacine that we know inhabited. so if your holding of for a thylacine in new guinea it would be a different species, a montane forest dwelling species... a type adapted to the same sorts of habitats we just argued against them being adapted to in in tasmania.

*sigh* such a pity...
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yeah I know.
 
@Chlidonias: Let's say I consider some of his theories, such as the mentioned Bennu Heron, as quite interesting.

That New Guinea Singing Dog is actually a very interesting animal in itself, if You think about. Too bad that European zoos seem to be no longer interested in it...
 
I like Shuker's books, but I get a bit irritated with his own opinion of himself (he's a bit far up his own posterior). I also don't think he really believes a lot of what he writes, its just stuff to fill his pages with.

The Bennu heron, like most other things he writes about, isn't really his theories, he's just repeating what others have written. His books certainly can be seen as valuable to cryptozoology, but only in that he gathers material into one place. He rarely brings anything brand new to the table.
 
patrick said:
i would agree. whilst to zoo audience it was probably about as exciting as a fossa or dhole or binturong

i do however believe, that if we ever do see a living thylacine, it will come from a lab and not the tasmanian wilderness. and for me, this is a small price to pay to restore our magnificent predator back into our ecosystems.
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Yes, the Thylacines kept at London Zoo back in the early 1900's probably elicited little or no interest among visitors, equivalent to the species you mention above. I imagine they were largely inactive during daylight (under zoo conditions at least) making them even less interesting.

Of course, even at Hobart Zoo they were rather taken for granted. Even when the last one was alive it wasn't widely regarded as 'near extinct' so people didn't flock to feast their eyes on it. When it died the zoo/council just presumed they would be able to aquire some new ones. It took a few years for the penny to drop and the realisation that ..ugh.. they don't seem to be available anymore....

I still hold out a faint hope for New Guinea- as you say the habitat and therefore the animal might be a little different from its Australian/Tasmanian counterpart, but that's not totally impossible. Incidentally I visited Mawbanna in Northern Tasmania where the last wild Thylacine was shot(1930)- it is just farmland nowadays but the Batty's farm where it happened is still there....
 
@Jurek7: Some sightings of large herons may esteem from Goliath or large Grey Herons; others, and especially older, quite uniform Egyptian paintings depict a different, huge heron, which might have been migrating relict specimen of the now extinct Ardea bennuides.
 
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