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2.0 out of 5 stars
Dull book on an interesting creature, January 15, 2005
The last known living thylacine - the proper name for what is often popularly (and mistakenly) called the Tasmanian tiger - died in a Hobart city zoo in 1936. It was already an old beast, and the Great Depression had worsened its condition through neglectful care. Two months before it died, the Tasmanian parliament gave the species full protection - a delayed counter-response to earlier Tasmanian and Australian policies that for decades put a bounty on its head. But the change in policy came too late. In all the years since 1936, there has not been a single piece of solid evidence the species still exists.
Most experts guess that a few thylacines lived on in the wild for some years after the mid-30s before succumbing to the problems of low population numbers. But many Tasmanians, and a few experts, continue to believe the animal still survives in the wilds of Tasmania. There are a number of reasons for this. Thirty percent of the island is a wildlife preserve. There have been over a hundred reliable sightings of the animal in recent years. And the creatures were nocturnal and shy, even when populations were abundant.
If the thylacine does survive, it would be a remarkable story, for it was a remarkable beast. The largest marsupial predator in modern times, the thylacine took its popular name from the stripes that covered the back half of its elongated frame. Without those stripes, a thylacine would have had some resemblance to a long, skinny dog or wolf, except for two obvious features: its enormous jaw, which the thylacine was able to open to an angle of nearly ninety degrees, and its sloping back, which was somewhat similar to a hyena's (another dog-like creature that is not related to the canines). But whatever resemblance existed between thylacines and the family of canines was superficial -- a matter of convergent evolution, not relatedness. The thylacine was a marsupial, with its pups born and partially raised in a poach.
Most eyewitness accounts said thylacines were neither fast nor ambush predators. The creature's sloping gait, that so resembled a hyena's, was built for endurance not speed. A thylacine would give chase to its prey over long distances, tiring it out, before catching up with it and pinning it down with the enormous jaw and sharp teeth. The preferred prey seems to have been kangaroos, wallabies, wombats, and, a few years after the arrival of white settlers in 1803, sheep. The thylacine's taste for sheep, however, would end up spelling its doom as settlers - many of whom went to Tasmania to raise sheep - grew to hate the beast.
David Owen, a Tasmanian novelist, and the author of "Tasmanian Tiger", argues that the thylacine's reputation for eating sheep was probably undeserved or at least exaggerated. Feral dogs also inhabited Tasmania, and in some cases were known to attack and eat sheep. But whoever the culprit, the "tiger" - as the thylacine was known locally - was blamed by most Tasmanians and bounties were put on its head. As a result, by the early twentieth century, the writing was on the wall for the beast. From 1878 to 1896, more than 3,400 tiger skins were tanned and made into waistcoats. In 1902, 119 thylacines were presented for the bounty. In 1906, just 58. In 1909, the last year any tigers were presented for bounty, only two were given up. The population had been decimated. It was now only a matter of time.
Owen's book is fairly dry, considering the rich nature of the subject matter. David Quammen, in his "The Song of the Dodo", has a far more interesting section on the thylacine, filled with fascinating facts and a strong narrative, covering almost all the ground Owen does in much less space. Perhaps because he is a novelist, Owen has little new to add. He has read the necessary books and source material, but unlike Quammen, and many others who have studied thylacines, he has no scientific background or interest. Quammen put the extinction of the thylacine in perspective by showing its similarities to other extinctions elsewhere in the world; Owen simply portrays it as a sad story in the history of Tasmania.
Owen does add one interesting twist to the story by telling of the project to reconstruct a thylacine using the DNA from a dead fetus preserved in alcohol for several decades. Most scientists think it's an impossible scientific feat to pull off, but Owen interviews a couple of bright-eyed, true believers who think otherwise. The project has found sponsors and some small progress has been made. But with Australia still losing species, counter-arguments have been voiced that the money - which will run into the millions of dollars per thylacine, assuming they are ever successfully cloned - could be better spent saving creatures that still exist.
The same general argument can be made for the money spent on this book. "Tasmanian Tiger" is a dull study on an interesting subject. Owen is an experienced novelist, but you wouldn't know it from reading this book. The narrative never gets going. For a much better book, one with a superb section on thylacines, read David Quammen's "The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions."
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