Thylacine
Thylacinus cynocephalus (Harris, 1808)
The thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, was a striped carnivorous marsupial that went extinct in 1936 when the last known animal died in Hobart Zoo; a Tasmanian government bounty that paid out on 2,184 thylacines between 1888 and 1909 was the decisive cause.
Updated 25 July 2026
- Closest living relatives
- Tasmanian devil and quolls (family Dasyuridae)
- Body length
- About 100–130 cm plus a 50–65 cm tail
- Weight
- Roughly 15–30 kg
- Jaw gape
- Around 80 degrees — among the widest of any mammal
- Bounties paid
- 2,184 between 1888 and 1909
- Legal protection granted
- 10 July 1936 — 59 days before the last one died
The thylacine was the largest carnivorous marsupial of modern times — a dog-shaped predator with a stiff tail, a jaw that opened to roughly 80 degrees, and dark stripes across its lower back. It was not a tiger and not a wolf; its closest living relatives are quolls and the Tasmanian devil. Australia's mainland population disappeared thousands of years ago, but Tasmania held a viable population until European settlers arrived. It was deliberately, systematically destroyed by a government policy, and the protection order that might have saved it was granted 59 days before the last one died.
Key facts at a glance
- The thylacine was a marsupial, not a canid. Its dog-like shape is one of the most striking cases of convergent evolution known — two unrelated lineages arriving at the same body plan for the same job.
- Both males and females had pouches. The male pouch was a backward-facing protective sheath, an unusual arrangement among marsupials.
- The Tasmanian government paid a bounty of £1 per adult and 10 shillings per pup from 1888 to 1909, with 2,184 claims recorded. Private and company bounties ran alongside it.
- The last known thylacine — often called Benjamin, though the name is not contemporaneous — died on 7 September 1936, reportedly from exposure after being locked out of its shelter.
- Australia now marks 7 September as National Threatened Species Day, named for that death.
- The species was declared extinct by the IUCN in 1982, 46 years after the last confirmed animal, because unverified sightings kept the case open.
Why did the thylacine go extinct?
The thylacine was hunted to extinction as a matter of policy. Tasmania's sheep industry blamed the animal for stock losses, and in 1888 the colonial government introduced a bounty of £1 for each adult killed and 10 shillings for each pup. Between 1888 and 1909 the scheme paid out on 2,184 thylacines, and private landholders and the Van Diemen's Land Company ran their own bounties before and alongside it. Later analysis suggests the thylacine was responsible for far fewer sheep deaths than claimed — feral dogs and poor husbandry accounted for much of the loss — but the policy had already done its work. Habitat clearance for grazing, competition from introduced dogs and an apparent disease outbreak in the early twentieth century finished a population that bounty hunting had already reduced past the point of recovery.
The 59 days that define the story
The Tasmanian government granted the thylacine legal protection on 10 July 1936. The last known individual died in captivity at Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart on 7 September 1936 — 59 days later. Accounts indicate the animal died of exposure after being shut out of its sheltered sleeping quarters overnight. It is the detail that makes the thylacine the standard reference case in conservation policy: protection that arrives after a population has already collapsed is a gesture, not a rescue. Every functioning early-warning system in modern conservation — the IUCN Red List assessments, CITES appendices, national threatened species legislation — exists because of extinctions that followed this exact shape.
Do thylacines still exist?
Almost certainly not. Thousands of sightings have been reported across Tasmania and mainland Australia since 1936, and a small number came from experienced bushmen and wildlife officers, but none has produced verifiable evidence. Extensive searches — including government-funded expeditions in the 1930s and 1980s, and decades of camera-trap deployment — have found nothing. A 2021 analysis by Barry Brook and colleagues modelled the sighting record and concluded extinction most likely occurred in the 1940s to 1950s, somewhat later than 1936 but well inside the twentieth century. Persistent sighting reports after extinction are a well-documented psychological pattern rather than evidence of survival; the same phenomenon surrounds the ivory-billed woodpecker and the baiji.
Can the thylacine be de-extincted?
This is the most actively funded de-extinction project in the world, and the thylacine is a better candidate than most. Preserved specimens include ethanol-stored pups that have yielded a nearly complete genome, and the fat-tailed dunnart has been proposed as a genetic template and surrogate. Serious obstacles remain: the size difference between a dunnart and a thylacine is enormous, marsupial reproductive technology is far less developed than the equivalent for placental mammals, and no marsupial has yet been cloned. Even a technical success would produce an edited dunnart genome expressing thylacine traits rather than a resurrected species, and it would emerge into a Tasmania whose ecology has moved on by ninety years. The argument for the work is largely that the techniques developed may help living marsupials, including the Tasmanian devil, which is currently being pushed toward extinction by a transmissible facial cancer.
Where it lived
Tasmania; formerly mainland Australia and New Guinea
The last one
The last known thylacine died at Hobart's Beaumaris Zoo on 7 September 1936
What caused it
- 1 Government-funded bounty scheme — £1 per adult, paid on 2,184 animals
- 2 Habitat loss to sheep farming
- 3 Disease in the remaining population
- 4 Competition and predation pressure from introduced dogs
What this extinction teaches
A government can legislate a species out of existence and grant it protection in the same lifetime. The thylacine bounty ran for 21 years on an evidence base that later analysis showed was wrong — which is why conservation policy now demands population data before predator-control decisions, not after.
Still here — for now
Still facing the same pressure: Tasmanian devil
The thylacine's closest surviving relative, on the same island, now facing a transmissible facial cancer that has cut wild numbers by more than 80% since 1996. Insurance populations and disease-resistant breeding are the only things standing between it and the same ending.
IUCN status: Endangered
Did you know
The thylacine could open its jaws to roughly 80 degrees — wide enough that early film footage of a captive animal yawning was long mistaken for aggression. It is one of the widest gapes recorded in any mammal.