The Last Tasmanian Tiger

First things first; I'm talking about Thylacine, the 'Tasmanian Tiger', NOT the Tasmanian Devil (although they are related). These little buggers (supposedly) went extinct with the death of "Benjamin" the tasmanian tiger, who I'll get to in a moment. These were all-around kickass animals. Both sexes were pouched (nice) a distinction they only shared with the water opposum. They were also known to perform a two-legged hop at times, similar to that of a kangaroo. Needless to say, humanity couldn't let such awesomeness go unkilled and so the Thylacine's numbers steadily declined until there was only one left, which brings me back to Benjamin.

She was captured in 1933. Oh wait, did I say 'she'? Yes, I did. That is because Benjamin was a female... and her name wasn't Benjamin. In fact, she probably didn't have a name at all but most of what has entered the public consiousness about the last Thylacine came from an interview with a certain Frank Darby, who claimed to have worked at the Hobart Zoo where the animal resided, though in fact he never did. Wow. Evidently journalistic standards could be a little higher in the land down under. And did I mention that it may not actually have been the last Tasmanian Tiger? Strong (though not conclusive) investigative evidence points to the survival of the species well into the 1960's.

So what became of Ms. Benjamin, one might ask? One might answer: she died of neglect only 59 days after the Tasmanian Tiger was declared a protective species. Since 1996, National Protected Species Day has been held on the anniversary of its death. I'm not anything approaching animal rights activist but there's some pretty deep lessons to be learned from this narrative and one can only hope that stories like these sink into the public mind before the cycle of unsustainable destruction and belated intervention plays out with our more "valuable" assets in nature.