Is the Tasmanian Tiger Alive?

Two bike-riding brothers noticed something odd near a creek in northern Tasmania about a week ago. Levi and Jarom Triffitt, members of a stunt trail bike team, found what seemed to be a strange skull and jawbone. They claimed to have found the skull of a strange animal called a thylacine, which looks something like a striped dog.

Why was this such an exciting find? Because the last known thylacine is believed to have died in a zoo in the Tasmanian capital of Hobart on September 7, 1936.

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Finding an intact, recent thylacine skull three-quarters of a century later -- especially out in the open -- would indicate that the animals are indeed still alive and roaming the rural areas of this small island south of Australia.

Some people are convinced that the thylacines still exist, almost like a Tasmanian version of Bigfoot (unlike Bigfoot, of course, there’s hard evidence that thylacines were real). According to thylacine expert Andrew Pask, an Australian zoologist at the University of Melbourne, the fact that the animals no longer exist hasn’t stopped people from seeing them.

In an interview on the MonsterTalk podcast, Pask said that “Since it was named extinct, every year people come forth and say there’s been sightings of the thylacine. But there’s been no evidence ever brought forward for it. A few years ago in Australia there was a magazine that offered a million dollar reward for actual proof of a living thylacine in the wild. So people set off in droves trying to find the thylacine, but nobody was ever able to. Tasmania’s not that big, and even its most inaccessible parts are not that inaccessible... I think if these were out there in the wild they would have been discovered by now.”

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Scientists at Tasmania’s Queen Victoria Museum examined the new skull and identified it as from the canid family -- specifically, a dog. The similarity was not all in the Triffitt brothers’ imaginations; the skulls of the dog-sized marsupial do resemble skulls of domestic dogs. The general public would be unfamiliar with a thylacine skull, and not know, for example, that the thylacine has two more front teeth in the upper jaw than a dog.

The brothers were not completely convinced by the zoologists, insisting that there may have been a mistake and vowing to do their own research. Until they are proven right, it seems that thylacines, like dodos and dinosaurs, are lost to time.

PHOTO: The Thylacine, called the Tasmanian Tiger or Tasmanian Wolf, was a large marsupial. The female pictured here in 1934 was the last one to be captured and died in the old Hobart Zoo, now closed, on September 7th, 1936. Credit: Corbis

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Invasive, Tasty Tiger Prawns Prowl Gulf Waters

Bring out the melted butter and cocktail sauce. There's an invasive species to eat.

Nearly 100 sightings of the giant tiger prawn (Penaeus monodon) have been reported in Louisiana waters in 2011, according to Houma Today, a big jump from the 25 to 30 reported in past years. Considering that some of the sightings numbered close to 100 individuals, there seems to be a growing population of the nonnative shrimp prowling Gulf waters.

This year, the U.S. Geological Survey received increasing reports of the species in Mississippi, Florida, Louisiana and Texas, marking the Lone Star State's first taste of the tiger prawn, reported the Houston Chronicle.

The invasive crustaceans can offer up to 13 inches and 11 ounces of deliciousness, which is why U.. farmers brought the prawns here from their home waters on the coasts of Australia, South East Asia, South Asia and East Africa.

The black and yellow striped prawns may have started their invasion after escaping from a aquaculture operation in South Carolina in 1988, noted the Houston Chronicle. Or they could have made their break after hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005.

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“There’s a certain unknown about what ecological impacts that something nonindigenous like this can have on the local environment,” said Marty Bourgeois, a biologist with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, in Houma Today.

Tiger prawn are voracious predators and are known to harbor numerous diseases that could spread to white and brown shrimp, oysters, and crabs in the Gulf.

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There may be one way to lick this problem, literally. The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries has advised fisherman that the prawns should not be thrown back into any waters other than a boiling soup pot.

“I haven’t had them myself, but I’ve been told they have a sweet flavor,” Bourgeois said.

Tiger prawns could join the list of invasive species humans seek to control by eating, like wild pigs, lionfish and nutria, noted Mother Nature Network.

The tiger prawn also fetches a higher price than many other shrimp. But Leslie Hartman, of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, is skeptical the economic value will outweigh the damage to the native shrimp population.

"It could be another crop, but at the expense of our native crop," Hartman said in the Houston Chronicle.

For right now, researchers are trying to track down the source of the prawns using genetic evidence.

“We’re collecting them, and we’ve got some researchers looking at the genetics,” Bourgeois said. “It may help explain if they’re spawning here or if they’re riding the current into the area somehow.”

Only adults have been found in Louisiana waters, so researchers hope they may be breeding farther south and migrating north.

IMAGES:

Penaeus monodon. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons).

Tiger prawns on sale at Borough Market. (Credit: Rudolph Furtado, Wikimedia Commons).

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