Thylacines in Cryptozoology

well, despite how cautious he is over thylacine claims, Mr. Waters has declared the video to be the best footage in existence to prove that thylacines are not extinct.

I like, too, how certain people can see details like "discolouration on its back" or the thickness of the tail from a silhouetted image in hazy conditions against the rising sun...

Is this a Tassie tiger in South Australia?

"One person who didn’t take much convincing was Thylacine Awareness Group of Australia founder and avid Tassie tiger hunter Neil Waters.

Mr Waters said that while he was “cautious” about thylacine videos and pictures, his “heart skipped a beat” when he saw Mr Day’s film.

“This animal has a tail with a thick base, just like a thylacine, and there appears to be some discolouration on its back.

“Then it has this gait that is so peculiar, but it’s just like people have described the thylacine movement.

“It has those two back legs pushing off together, and many people who say they’ve seen a thylacine described it as moving in the way.”

Mr Waters said the creature’s thick neck, “boofy” head and large back legs ruled out speculation that it could be an injured fox.

As soon as Mr Waters became aware of the video he drove from Adelaide to Yorke Peninsula to meet with Mr Day and look for prints or scat. Mr Waters said he believed this was the best evidence that the Tassie tiger was not extinct.

“Unless Mr X wants to come out of the closet and show us what he actually has then this is the best footage in existence,” he said, referring to an unidentified Tasmanian man who is claiming he has clear video of a thylacine but is refusing to release it.

However, one person who doesn’t share Mr Day’s and Mr Waters’ enthusiasm is world renowned zoologist and University of Adelaide academic Kristofer Helgen.

After watching the video Prof Helgen said the “image leaves a lot to be desired”, but that the creature depicted appeared to be “a fox that is probably lame or injured”."
 
Chlidonias said:
After watching the video Prof Helgen said the “image leaves a lot to be desired”, but that the creature depicted appeared to be “a fox that is probably lame or injured”."
Click to expand...
I listed to a radio interview with Helgen a couple of days ago, and he says he thinks it is probably a dog rather than a fox. And there is a blog somewhere which I read but can't be bothered finding again, which compares the gait with that of an alsation with hip dysplasia.
 
Chlidonias said:
I listed to a radio interview with Helgen a couple of days ago, and he says he thinks it is probably a dog rather than a fox. And there is a blog somewhere which I read but can't be bothered finding again, which compares the gait with that of an alsation with hip dysplasia.
Click to expand...

Yes - I've seen both of these (the footage and the audio of Helgen explaining)
 
PaulGDay has uploaded a couple more videos. He seems to legitimately believe his video is a thylacine rather than just milking the attention. But, on the other hand, his methods of presentation suggest the complete opposite. E.g. on the first video below there's a comment saying "If you have something important to share verbally, why have the silly music playing? Whats more important, that we get to see your investigation, or hear your music selection?" and PaulGDay's answer is "I can do whatever I please with my own productions. Yo can watch or not watch, comment or not comment. It's my channel."

So the first one is a very interesting video... wait, those aren't the right words - a deeply uninteresting video of himself and Neil Waters driving along a road through farmland and pointing at footprints, and then strolling through a bit of scrub by the farms. There's not much more to it than that.

The second video is one stating that the animal in his video is switching hind-legs so the gait can't be due to injury. My stance on that, is that the video is (as said before) a silhouetted animal against the sun, and further you can only "see" the "switching of the legs" if the footage is blown up and all grainy - seeing one leg or the other as being in front or behind is just an optical illusion based on what you want to see.


 
I've been ignoring the latest Paul G Day videos because he's really milking his five minutes. All the videos are pretty much just film of bush as he's driving along with obnoxious music playing loudly over top, and nobody's even bothering to comment on them any more. But I loved this bit of text he has on his latest video and couldn't resist sharing it.

"Police Sgt. W. Rollands ran my video through a video enhancement program similar to what the FBI use and whilst the results were inconclusive due mainly to backlighting from the sun, in his professional opinion he believes the animal is a Thylacine".

In his professional opinion ... as a policeman! :D


 
Chlidonias said:
I've been ignoring the latest Paul G Day videos because he's really milking his five minutes. All the videos are pretty much just film of bush as he's driving along with obnoxious music playing loudly over top, and nobody's even bothering to comment on them any more. But I loved this bit of text he has on his latest video and couldn't resist sharing it.

"Police Sgt. W. Rollands ran my video through a video enhancement program similar to what the FBI use and whilst the results were inconclusive due mainly to backlighting from the sun, in his professional opinion he believes the animal is a Thylacine".

In his professional opinion ... as a policeman! :D


Click to expand...

I saw this the other day, and it's just getting ridiculous. There is absolutely nothing new in this video whatsoever.... That's 5 minutes of my life that I will never get back.....

On another note, I hope that the fox in the video is getting royalties for this, so that he can upgrade his den, help his fox cubs with their education, and get his leg fixed....
 
Chlidonias said:
in his professional opinion he believes the animal is a Thylacine".

In his professional opinion ... as a policeman! :D
Click to expand...

Agree- absolutely riduculous. While his wife , a vetinarian, says it is '95% not a canid' -that is because its a Fox. It doesn't have to be a mangy one either- there are all sorts of stages of coat thickness/loss though Australian foxes look characteristically shorter haired anyway than ours in Europe- climate adaptation no doubt.

And like you I really don't like the hyped-up 'musical' presentation of these videos- it smacks of simple publicity seeking.
 
TeaLovingDave said:
You haven't seen the iconic photograph of a thylacine taken in an Indonesian zoo sometime in the 1970s then.....

indonesia-zoo-animal-jpg.4172
Click to expand...
False! That's the latest picture from sebbe67's private zoo.
 
Its odd thylacines disappear when dogs arrive in the mid Holocene, but people still see them on the mainland. ;)

Extinctions are not just events without contexts, they have causes. Cryptos tend to ignore them but so do "proper" paleontologists and archaeologists re: Pleistocene overkill hypothesis. But in the case of the thylacine on the mainland it is very well understood the dingo and associated Pama-Nyungan expansion (with a subsistence shift to smaller prey) did them in. Tasmanian devils and native hens were hit at the same time. On Tasmania there were no dogs and subsistence since the ice age constantly involved Bennett's wallaby.
 
This article is from a couple of days ago: No Cookies | The Mercury

It's sort of a mix of recent thylacine-related stories, but mainly influenced by the legitimate University expedition to Queensland mentioned a bit earlier in this thread (which is primarily for known extant marsupials and they just tagged thylacines onto it).

However one interesting bit is this:
"Mr Waters, who frequently visits Tasmania, took footage late last year of what appears to be a thylacine grooming itself in Tasmania’s North-East.
“I’ve been accused of faking and photo-shopping it, but I’m really not into faking anything,” he said.
“I know they exist in Tassie, because I’ve seen two of them.”"

Take from that what you will. I'd certainly be interested in seeing his footage.
 
Chlidonias said:
However one interesting bit is this:
"Mr Waters, who frequently visits Tasmania, took footage late last year of what appears to be a thylacine grooming itself in Tasmania’s North-East.
“I’ve been accused of faking and photo-shopping it, but I’m really not into faking anything,” he said.
“I know they exist in Tassie, because I’ve seen two of them.”"

Take from that what you will. I'd certainly be interested in seeing his footage.
Click to expand...
found this, from the day before the article I posted above:
No Cookies | The Mercury


RECENT footage of what appears to be a thylacine in Tasmania is proving as elusive as the mysterious marsupial itself.

A Tasmanian man is believed to have captured video footage that appears so real, it is being shrouded in secrecy — with whispers of legal contracts, TV deals and impending announcements.

Thylacine researcher and enthusiast Neil Waters, who runs the Thylacine Awareness Group of Australia, said the secret video was taken last November.

He said a few people had seen the video, but it was yet to be released to the public.

“The people allegedly in the loop say it’s in the hands of lawyers … apparently there’s going to be a TV deal,” Mr Waters said.

He said he believed in keeping all thylacine knowledge in the public domain, even though sightings sometimes attracted a lot of “negative Nancies”.

Tasmanian thylacine expert Col Bailey said he had seen a lot of footage of supposed thylacines lately, though none of it had convinced him.

He said one particular video, which seemed to be creating interest, appeared to show the correct sized animal but there were no stripes.

“What I’ve seen looks like a tiger quoll,” he said.

Mr Bailey, who last saw what he believes was a thylacine in 1995, believes there are definitely thylacines in Tasmania.
 
This video has been discussed a few months ago, abd again after this article came out. A few people have already seen it. Main thing to he aware of about it is that the subject is captured on a trail cam at a distsnce of roughly 150 feet. The people who took it seem to be considered trustworthy by those who've met them but as before, it's 150 feet or so on a trail cam. In any case, I'm not sure we'll ever see this one, and am more confident that if we do it's extremely unlikely that it'll show a tbylacine.
 
oldrover said:
This video has been discussed a few months ago, abd again after this article came out. A few people have already seen it. Main thing to he aware of about it is that the subject is captured on a trail cam at a distsnce of roughly 150 feet. The people who took it seem to be considered trustworthy by those who've met them but as before, it's 150 feet or so on a trail cam. In any case, I'm not sure we'll ever see this one, and am more confident that if we do it's extremely unlikely that it'll show a tbylacine.
Click to expand...
it hasn't been discussed on here before.

Looking again at the quote I took from the first article, I think the reporter or editor has garbled it. From that I had thought that Waters had taken the footage (in which case it would almost certainly be either fake or an idiotic misidentification) but from the second article it seems to be an unrelated person and Waters is somehow claiming it? And does the "seen two of them" last line refer to Col Bailey?
Mr Waters, who frequently visits Tasmania, took footage late last year of what appears to be a thylacine grooming itself in Tasmania’s North-East.
“I’ve been accused of faking and photo-shopping it, but I’m really not into faking anything,” he said.
“I know they exist in Tassie, because I’ve seen two of them.”
 
Chlidonias said:
it hasn't been discussed on here before.

Looking again at the quote I took from the first article, I think the reporter or editor has garbled it. From that I had thought that Waters had taken the footage (in which case it would almost certainly be either fake or an idiotic misidentification) but from the second article it seems to be an unrelated person and Waters is somehow claiming it? And does the "seen two of them" last line refer to Col Bailey?
Mr Waters, who frequently visits Tasmania, took footage late last year of what appears to be a thylacine grooming itself in Tasmania’s North-East.
“I’ve been accused of faking and photo-shopping it, but I’m really not into faking anything,” he said.
“I know they exist in Tassie, because I’ve seen two of them.”
Click to expand...

That's right, Waters appears to be trying to cash in on this one. But it has absolutely nothing to do with him, or anyone who's surfaced before either. Those involved are apparently very straight. But, as always in these situations, there seems to be someone, somewhere acting the goat, but that doesn't seem to reflect on the filmmakers.

And the number of tigers Bailey appears to have claimed to have seen has become a bit of a talking point recently. Some times it seems he's claiming two, but that'd make one of a dreaded 'mainland' sighting, but other times he seems to be distancing himself from being certain about that one. Leaving the one he claims from Tasmania, and frankly I'm not into that one.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top