Extinct animals in photographs

Chlidonias

Chlidonias

Moderator
Staff member
15+ year member
a new book due out later this year by Errol Fuller:
[ame="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lost-Animals-Errol-Fuller/dp/1408172151/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1370046343&sr=8-1&keywords=errol+fuller"]Lost Animals: Extinction and the Photographic Record: Amazon.co.uk: Errol Fuller: Books[/ame]
 
Thanks for spotting. That's this year's Christmas present to myself sorted:D.
 
A book with lots of pictures is right up my alley. I'm in too.

Do post a reminder when it is published.
 
This book is taylor made for ZooChatters. I can imagine many of the regulars on this site will order it as soon as it is available.
 
I finished reading this book last week - the font size is quite large, so it doesn't take long. A very interesting book, with plenty of photographs and stories which were new to me.
 
Lost Animals: Extinction and the Photographic Record

I purchased the book earlier today; I‘ve not had the opportunity to read it thoroughly yet but it is an attractive publication; it looks very interesting and is well illustrated with some fascinating pictures.

Inevitably some of the pictures are well known; I’m sure, for example, that most ZooChatters are already very familiar with the photographs of pink-headed duck (at Foxwarren Park), quagga (London Zoo), thylacine (various collections) etc - but there are plenty of photos I’ve never seen before too.

I’d certainly recommend this book (as I’d also recommend some of Errol Fuller’s other books such as “Extinct Birds”; “The Lost Birds of Paradise”; “The Great Auk”).
 
Last edited:
I got this as a Xmas present...;) Its main value I think is in the remarkable Photos, which is what the book is about really. The accompanying text is fairly simplified, though for some species the chapters are quite detailed and there is plenty of information which was new for me on several species.

I particularly enjoyed learning more about how the Paradise Parrot photos were taken, among others. I hadn't realised the Ivory-billed Woodpecker photos of the fledgling on a Man's arm and head were taken just while it was removed from the nest for ringing ('banding' as they say)- seeing some of them before I had presumed it was a handraised chick.

I rather agree with his comment about Thylacine extinction, that the last one probably died somewhere in the wild much later than the Hobart Zoo one, probably in the twenty years between 1940-60?

Good book for any Zoochatter's library though.
 
Pertinax said:
I rather agree with his comment about Thylacine extinction, that the last one probably died somewhere in the wild much later than the Hobart Zoo one, probably in the twenty years between 1940-60?
Click to expand...

This is my sentiment too - though I would not rule out an isolated individual or two lasting into the 1970's.
 
TeaLovingDave said:
This is my sentiment too - though I would not rule out an isolated individual or two lasting into the 1970's.
Click to expand...

Robert Paddle in his book 'The Last Tasmanian Tiger' is emphatic that the 'extinction event' took place on 7th September 1936 when the Thylacine in the Zoo died. This on the basis of the fact there has been no further concrete or indisputable evidence of its survival since that date. I don't quite understand how he can be so pedantic on that. Mind you, he was totally wrong about the last animal's sex, also!

Certainly Eric Guiler interviewed several of the old bushmen who were familiar with the species at firsthand, and one casually told how he 'put up(disturbed) a slut(female Thylacine) and her pups from a patch of Man-fern' sometime in the 1940's. He dodged the issue of the outcome but Guiler believed that he killed them. I have absolutely no reason to doubt this bushman's statement.
 
Pertinax said:
Robert Paddle in his book 'The Last Tasmanian Tiger' is emphatic that the 'extinction event' took place on 7th September 1936 when the Thylacine in the Zoo died. This on the basis of the fact there has been no further concrete or indisputable evidence of its survival since that date. I don't quite understand how he can be so pedantic on that. Mind you, he was totally wrong about the last animal's sex, also!

Certainly Eric Guiler interviewed several of the old bushmen who were familiar with the species at firsthand, and one casually told how he 'put up(disturbed) a slut(female Thylacine) and her pups from a patch of Man-fern' sometime in the 1940's. He dodged the issue of the outcome but Guiler believed that he killed them. I have absolutely no reason to doubt this bushman's statement.
Click to expand...


Anyway such a statement on extinction is very dangerous. Putting the exact date that a species is gone is impossible for most species. In the case of the thylacine it is basically ignoring some additional information. Most likely the species indeed hang on for a couple of decades before dissappearing completely.
 
The government expeditions of 37 and 38 found evidence for a small and possibly still breeding thylacine population in the Derwent Valley.

Personally I think they were extinct by the 1950s.

Recently an eye witness who as a child spent his weekends etc working at the zoo stated that a second thylacine was brought to there in the mid thirties, but that it was 'taken to the zoo at Westbury'. Honestly we can't be 100% certain that the 1936 animal was the last in captivity.

It almost certainly was, but given that the first time any public mention was made of its death it was only in passing and almost a year later, there's no way to be completely sure another equally overlooked example tottered on a bit later somewhere else.
 
Pertinax said:
Robert Paddle in his book 'The Last Tasmanian Tiger' is emphatic that the 'extinction event' took place on 7th September 1936 when the Thylacine in the Zoo died. This on the basis of the fact there has been no further concrete or indisputable evidence of its survival since that date. .
Click to expand...

I was lucky enough to meet Robert Paddle at London Zoo in 2000, and he made a point that sadly stuck with me: if the animal is extant, then it is worthy of comment that no roadkill specimens have ever been described.

My Mum would have made her first childhood visits to London Zoo in the late 1920s/early 1930s. Every now and then I wonder if she ever saw London's last Thylacine, quite probably fast asleep, and doubtless walked right past it.
 
IanRRobinson said:
I was lucky enough to meet Robert Paddle at London Zoo in 2000, and he made a point that sadly stuck with me: if the animal is extant, then it is worthy of comment that no roadkill specimens have ever been described.
Click to expand...

This is one of the strongest arguments against its continued existence- no roadkill evidence- which there surely would be in this day and age if there was still a surviving population. Also, if it had not become extinct, protection and cessation(or virtually) of persecution would have resulted in an increasing population which would presumably become increasingly evident and therefore eventually provide some sort of indisputable proof, which there has not been.

Paddle also makes a good point that the Devil population soared from around the time of the Thylacine's supposed extinction, which he says would indicate the removal of the top predator.

But I still disagree with his hypothesis that the last Hobart zoo animal was the very last one of all.
 
oldrover said:
The government expeditions of 37 and 38 found evidence for a small and possibly still breeding thylacine population in the Derwent Valley.


Recently an eye witness who as a child spent his weekends etc working at the zoo stated that a second thylacine was brought to there in the mid thirties, but that it was 'taken to the zoo at Westbury'.
Click to expand...

I think the government expeditions found the usual 'sub-evidence'- footprints, droppings etc leading them to claim its continued existence, but of course there was nothing tangible or irrefutible though it could well have still been there then.. Similarly with David Fleay's expedition from the same era. I believe hairs from a trap in which he 'nearly' caught a Thylacine were very recently DNA identified as being Wombat or some other endemic species. In the same vein, scats collected by Eric Guiler in the early 1960's, also purported to be Thylacine, have since been proved by DNA testing not to be.

I have seen mention of the 'Westbury' thylacine too but it seems vaguely anecdotal with nothing to substantiate a date for this.

I would also suspect the 1950's might have been the real cut-off time.
 
As subjective as it is I tend to accept the findings of the late 30s expeditions, largely because they were undertaken by people who'd really caught them in the past, at a time I'm convinced they were still extant.

Fleay on the other hand was post war almost ten years later. It's hard to say.

As for the Westbury animal it is anecdotal, and I'm not really making a case for it. The reason the idea appeals to me though is that it illustrates the fact that our current concept about the last days of the tiger is, as you'll know, a largely a modern interpretation pieced together from sparse and mostly contradictory sources.

For me the point isn't so much whether there was another animal in the final days, but that the holes in the evidence are so big you can't rule it out.
 
Last edited:
oldrover said:
For me the point isn't so much whether there was another animal in the final days, but that the holes in the evidence are so big you can't rule it out.
Click to expand...

Certainly. There was and still is plenty of conflicting evidence around about the number of Thylacine captures, where they came from and where they went to. There has also been considerable debate about the source of the last one at Hobart Zoo though nowadays its widely accepted it was the male snared by Elias Churchill in the Florentine Valley in 1933, and not one of the earlier 'Mullins cubs' which were caught(as pouch young?)in 1925 with their mother, and grew to maturity in the Zoo.

Even as recently as 1980 it was widely accepted that the last one in the Zoo died in 1933. While I was there Stephen Smith told me they had only just discovered from the old records that it was in fact three years later, in 1936, on what is now the accepted date.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top