Thylacines in the DC Zoo, about 1906.
September 7, 1933, "Benjamin", the last Tasmanian tiger, died in the Hobart Zoo (Beaumaris Zoo) in Tasmania, Australia. A carnivorous marsupial, it was a relatively shy, nocturnal creature that resembled a medium-to-large sized dog. The Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine, was native to Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea, but had come almost extinct on Australia when the British began colonizing the continent.
It was rarely sighted on Tasmania but were blamed for numerous attacks on sheep. Bounties were introduced on the thylacine as early as the 1830s, with the Tasmanian government paying for dead thylacines, whether adults or pups. It is thought that many more thylacines were killed than claimed. The Tasmanian tiger's extinction is attributed to bounty hunters and farmers who blamed them for attacks on their livestock. Their extinction could also have been accelerated by wild dogs introduced by European settlers, erosion of its habitat and disease. By the 1920s, it had become very rare. Too little too late, the Tasmanian Advisory Committee for Native Fauna recommended protecting the thylacine. The last known thylacine was killed in 1930 by Wilf Batty, a farmer from Mawbanna.
Although it is officially extinct, people still claim to see them in the wild but none of these have been verified.
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