ZSL London Zoo Clore Pavillion for Small Mammals article

[Onychorhynchus coronatus]

Don't believe everything in this article though as it is taken from Paddle's book. Much of his information on this is taken from an interview with Alison Reid, so admittedly it is firsthand, but even so, there are innacurracies over his description of the last Thylacine's death- no proof it was left outside to die in the cold, Alison Reid has said that the carnivores were sometimes shut out like that, due to slack management, but not specifically the Thylacine on the day it died..

It is an evocative short story based on the case surrounding the last thylacine but is a lot more about the people involved really and a sort of an imagining of their inner lives rather than about the animal itself.

Kind of historical fiction, very good actually.

 

[Onychorhynchus coronatus]

In a nutshell; she became the curator de facto but her sex meant she wasn't given the title, and she was also denied keys to access to the zoo out of hours even though she lived adjacent to it, so could not go in and attend to animals that had been left shut out at night etc. This is frequently extended to explain the circumstances of the last Thylacine's death, but even she didn't state that was the reason, though there was undoubtedly serious general negligence before the Zoo finally closed.

It sounds like we will never get to the bottom of what the causes of the last captive thylacines death were and I suppose enough time has now passed for all of the details to be lost.

As with most historic events a lot of the story has now entered into the realm of myth.