The shy, semi-nocturnal thylacines were hunted to the point of extinction. The last thylacine to live in captivity, called Benjanmin, died on display in 1936 at the Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart, Tasmania. This was shortly after thylacines had gained protection status, but it was too late to save what researchers call an “icon of Australian biodiversity”.
Researchers used advances in 3D scanning and analysis to study 93 specimens of thylacine museum from six countries. The scientists discovered that males averaged around 42 pounds and females reached 30 pounds, which shifted the notion of their role in the Australian ecosystem.
This misconception about their large song farmers believe that thylacines can be dangerous to livestock. But an analysis of thylacine skeletons revealed that their smaller bodies were not adapted to handle the stress of hunting larger prey.
Predators that are more likely to take large prey, such as wolves, are typically 46 pounds or larger. Instead, thylacines probably hunt small prey and probably do not hunt in packs to take prey much larger than themselves.
“Discovering that they were smaller than previously thought really changes our perceptions about the predatory behavior of thylacine,” Douglass Rovinsky, author of lead study and postdoctoral student at Monash University in Australia, said via email.
Farmers were wrong in assuming that thylacines could kill their livestock. “It was probably a medium-sized predator, which did what medium-sized predators do best: hunting and feeding small animals,” Rovinsky said. “And it also moves the thylacine further away from the idea that it is a ‘slaughter wolf’, because wolves are large, highly specialized predators of large, dangerous prey.”
Instead, thylacines probably hunt anything under 18 to 22 pounds, as do small marsupials, including bandicoots, pademelons, bettongs, and small wallabies.
The mysterious life of thylacines
Although the last of the thylacines died in captivity in the 1930s and there are real video footage of them, thylacines present a mystery to researchers because there are no direct observations to suggest information about their behavior and biology. .
As victims, both men and women had bags, but they served different purposes, Rovinsky said. Mrs. thylacines carried her boy in her pouches. The men had scrotal pouches in which they could withdraw their scrotum, but it is not yet known why.
A very similar yapok, like water opossum, used it to isolate and protect the scrotum while swimming, but thylacines were unlikely to run, he said.
Thylacines had more feline forelegs and feet that could rotate, spread and even grip, unlike dogs. Their hind feet also included a bare path along the entire floor surface from toe to heel, and they ran on the entire surface of their hind feet, which is also what dogs do not do.
The thylacine family dates back more than 35 million years, so these were the last members of the family, Rovinsky said.
“It’s really interesting to think about the older members of the thylacine family – some of whom were probably only the size of a cat, and others (related family members) would have been larger than the thylacine , “he said. “Did they have streaks, like scrotal pouches? How similar (or different) were they to thylacine? We do not know, but wish we could!”
Rovinsky and his fellow researchers want to establish a much clearer picture of how thylacines fit into their ecosystem and “what it was that we lost when we became extinct.”
“I think at the end of the day, that’s where I would end my research on thylacine: treat thylacine as its own animal, and try to understand it as it really was – not as a foreign marsupial. reflection of the European wolf, ‘he said.
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