Darren Naish is a science writer, technical editor and palaeozoologist (affiliated with the University of Portsmouth, UK) who mostly works on Cretaceous dinosaurs and pterosaurs. He also messes around with swimming giraffes, fossil marine reptiles, British big cats and stuff like that. An avid interest in modern wildlife and conservation has resulted in many adventures in lizard-chasing, bird-watching and litter-collecting. He can be contacted intermittently at eotyrannus (at) gmail dot com. For more biographical info go 
Photos purported to show 'mystery animals' are always great fun. One of the most perplexing and curious of the lot was taken on a box Brownie camera near Goroke, western Victoria, Australia, in 1964. I'm referring, of course, to Rilla Martin's photo of a strange, striped, running mammal.
This photo has generally become known as 'the Ozenkadnook tiger photo'; in fact, the term 'Ozenkadnook tiger' was and is used for a supposed mystery beast (suspected by witnesses and locals to be a mainland Thylacine Thylacinus cynocephalus) seen since the 1880s across southwestern Victoria and southeastern South Australia (Healy & Cropper 1994). The specific photo is, therefore, better known as 'the Rilla Martin photo'.
Martin reported that, while on holiday one day in 1964, she was driving along between Goroke and Apsley. With time to spare, she chose to drive along the dirt track near Ozenkadnook. She'd been photographing relatives while at Goroke (where her cousin lived) and had the camera next to her, on the front seat. In the woods close to the road, she caught sight of an unusual animal, standing at the edge of the scrub. She stopped the car and snapped one photo, just as the animal began to run away [a close-up of its head is shown below].
Martin later returned home to Melbourne, and there then seem to be two versions of what happened next. Some sources state that she mailed the photo to her relatives (saying in a letter "Here is the photograph of the animal that I told you about"), who then took it to the local newspaper office (Chapple 2000). Others imply that she handed the photo herself to The Wimmera Mail-Times (Williams & Lang 2010). It then appeared in the Syndney Morning Herald and became a national sensation. Unable to identify the animal, "wildlife experts were quick to denounce it as a fraud" (Williams & Lang 2010, p. 202). A claim from 1969 that her cousin developed the film for her, and inserted a photo he had taken of a "dummy tiger", is inconsistent with both stories and seems to be an invention.
Martin's photo has been much reproduced and is highly familiar to people who know the cryptozoological literature: it shows what looks like a large, quadrupedal predator with a long tail, deep chest, tall shoulders, and a rather deep head. The photo really isn't that bad, but foliage that overlaps the head makes it difficult to work out what the head's shape really was. Incidentally, the original photograph has been lost by the offices of The Wimmera Mail-Times, so all the versions you see here and elsewhere are scans of copies published by newspapers (and I've no idea where the negatives are).
What looks like an upper outline to the snout and forehead is, I currently think, actually an illusion resulting from fortuitously arranged twigs and leaves. There might be an ear visible at top right, but again I think this might be an illusion. An imaginative reconstruction of the animal is shown above in a cartoon I produced many years ago (Martin's beast is shown alongside a few other Australian creatures of cryptozoological interest).
Martin reported that the animal had a pig-like snout and she compared the creature with a labrador in size. Its 'striping' is perhaps its most vexing feature: it really looks like the animal has pale striping across its shoulders and the back of its neck, with a darker ground colour surrounding these stripes and much of the rest of the forequarters. The hindquarters appear slender compared to the deep chest and the tail looks long and slim. The hindquarters are also very light in tone, almost certainly as a result of bright sunlight falling on this part of the animal. Indeed, it's very hard to know where light and shadow end and where pigmentation begin on the animal, and Martin herself said that she didn't much notice the stripes when taking the photograph. This might mean that the 'stripes' are dappling formed by sunlight. It's not really possible to know.
One minor point worth noting is that, like so many 'famous', oft-reproduced photos, the version you see in many books is cropped and the original was somewhat larger [as an example, the adjacent cropped version is from Michell & Rickard (1982). Compare it with the uncropped version used above]. Uncropped versions show more forest litter in the foreground, and more trees in the background.
So... what is it? I don't know, and I'd welcome your thoughts. It doesn't look to me like a big cat or a domestic or feral dog: the shape is just wrong. And nothing else matches either: it's clearly not a kangaroo, horse, or anything else that might be expected to be wandering around the scrub in Victoria. A popular suggestion in the cryptozoological literature has been that the creature was perhaps either a Thylacine or a thylacoleonid (= marsupial lion). Thylacines officially became extinct on the Australian mainland about 3000 years ago (and the last verified individual - Benjamin, of Hobart Zoo - died of neglect in 1936), but it's well known that many people claim to have seen them on the mainland in recent years. Of course, one could embark at this point on a lengthy discussion of Thylacine survival... I'll leave that for another time.
Does the animal in Martin's photo look like a Thylacine anyway? Actually, its shape and the positions of its legs are vaguely Thylacine-like: the high shoulders, the apparently long, slim tail, and the stiff look to the forelimbs all remind me (and others: Healy & Cropper 1994) of a running Thylacine. But things aren't quite right: the shoulders look too high for a Thylacine and the proportions are off. And what the hell is going on with the striping? If the head really is deep and blunt-snouted, this also counts against a Thylacine identity [the adjacent staged Thylacine photo - by H. Burrell, taken in 1921 - is one of several argued by Freeman (2005) to be of a posed taxiderm specimen. I'm not sure I agree that the specimen was a stuffed one, but there's no doubt that the photos were staged].
The thylacoleonid idea (mooted by those who have proposed that the big, striped predators seen in the Australian bush might, just might, be living marsupial lions) is even more fanciful than the Thylacine one.
Could it have been a hoax? The object in the photo looks like a real, three-dimensional animal with muscles. An attempt by the ABC TV company to put a hand-painted wooden cut-out near the location of the sighting and photograph it reportedly resulted in photos that look like those of a cut-out (Healy & Cropper 1994). John Martin, Rilla's brother, stated as recently as 1999 that the photo was no hoax and, responding to suggestions that photo manipulation of some sort might have been involved, stated that "we country kids hardly knew how to take a photo, let alon[e] fiddle with it" (Williams & Lang 2010, p. 202). I don't think it's a hoax: I think it's a photo of a real animal. And that's basically all I have to say. I long to know what the creature is, but I can't work it out. Let me know what you think.
The story of Rilla Martin's 1964 photo has been told many times in the mystery animal literature. This article was mostly inspired by its discussion in Michael Williams and Rebecca Lang's new book Australian Big Cats: An Unnatural History of Panthers [shown in adjacent image], which I'm currently reading and will be reviewing here at some stage.
UPDATE (added 20th August 2010): while looking at the photo again today, I noticed something I haven't seen before (but possibly alluded to in comment # 6 below): beneath the left hindlimb is what looks like a curved supporting structure, clearly demarcated from the surroundings and with alternating dark and light bands. A close-up of the relevant part of the photo, and a very schematic attempt to depict it, is shown here. Now that I've noticed this, it's difficult not to interpret it as an artificial supporting structure.
For previous Tet Zoo articles on photos or films of mystery animals, see...
- Really: photos of the Loch Ness monster
- Best lake monster image ever: the Mansi photo
- The amazing Hook Island sea monster photos
- Santa Cruz's duck-billed elephant monster
- Professor Sharpe's mysterious sea-serpent photo
- Where are all the dead sea monsters?
- Filming Migo, the monster of Lake Dakataua
- A 'lake monster' caught on film at Lake Champlain
And for more on Australian mystery animals see...
- Australia's new feral mega-cats
- Lithgow mega-cat footage goes live
- What was the animal in the 'Jaws' photo?
- Identifying that 'Jaws' carcass
- The 2006 Night parrot: dead, decapitated, evidence for collision with a fence... but otherwise the news is good
- What to make of the Yowie?
Refs - -
Chapple, P. 2000. Mystery animals of Australia: a brief overview. Unpublished report of Rare Fauna Research Association (Monbulk, Victoria).
Freeman, C. 2005. Is this picture worth a thousand words? An analysis of Henry Burrell's photograph of a thylacine with a chicken. Australian Zoologist 33, 1-16.
Healy, T. & Cropper, P. 1994. Out of the Shadows: Mystery Animals of Australia. Ironbark (Chippendale, Australia).
Michell, J. & Rickard, R. J. M. 1982. Living Wonders: Mysteries and Curiosities of the Animal World. Thames & Hudson (London).
Williams, M. & Lang, R. 2010. Australian Big Cats: An Unnatural History of Panthers. Strange Nation (Hazelbrook, Australia).
Life Science
Environment
Comments
...you know what's weird? I'm actually starting to see hints of a dikdik-like creature in that photo, mainly in the head. It's probably an illusion, but there seem to be 2 horn-like projections just over the eye.
In fact, couple that with the stripes, and it looks vaguely like a squat okapi.
Posted by: Practically Uninformed | August 18, 2010 10:15 PM
To me it looks like it's been painted on a photograph (or a horrible stuffed animal); if you look at the close up of the eye, I don't know about you, but it looks like an anime eye (or rather painted and too fake) and the legs are disportional or rather the legs are awkward (the chest looks rather "out of place" with the front legs). So to me it's a fake.
On the sidenote can you or someone here help me out. I remember seeing a photograph somewhere on the net, and it's pretty interesting. It's an black and white photo taken in a South African bush and the animal in the photo was black, with the body of a antelope with the head of a hoopoe. Can someone find the site please, it's driving me mad.
Posted by: Riggy | August 18, 2010 10:22 PM
It is interesting certainly. I grew up in that area, and certainly it would be plausible for a large predator to exist in 1964. At the time there were significant undeveloped stretches of bush allowing corridors from the Grampians (a large national park just to he south of Goroke) extending in most directions for hundreds of kilometres.
All that has now been cleared. :(
Pity that the mainland thylacine found so far all look pretty much identical to the Tasmanian population. This beastie certainly looks and is described quite different.
Posted by: Veltyen | August 18, 2010 10:23 PM
I wonder if a low-angle on the shot, coupled with foreshortening (say the animal is oriented sub-parallel to the frame) and perhaps a partly turned head might reconcile the overall body shape with that of a thylacine? I realize that's grasping at straws a bit, but it looks awfully thylacine-like to me, for the same reasons that Darren articulates.
Obviously that still leaves the coat discrepancy, but do we actually know anything about the coat pattern of mainland thylacines?
Posted by: neil | August 18, 2010 10:51 PM
Further to Riggy's observation, it looks to me like there was some contrast work and retouching of the photograph to prepare it for halftone printing. That would have been par for the course for printing snapshots in a newspaper. The "stripes" may be an artifact of that.
Here's my guess: Tiger Quoll with forced perspective, sun dapples, and halftone artifacts.
Posted by: HP | August 18, 2010 11:10 PM
It's a scam photo and a piss-poor amateur job at that. By deliberately under-lighting and shifting focus, the object - a partially decomposed carcass with broad stripes painted at the wrong end - the photographer produced a vague image that can't be readily scrutinized. She trotted it into the local news rag, who paid her for the photo and then it was shopped around as 'evidence' of the famed Tasmanian tiger.
You mention a 'long slim tail'. Where would that be??
It's one of hundreds of attempts to produce 'photographic evidence' of a large cat in Australia. Many photos taken since show large feral cats roaming in the bush, mistaken as 'long lost Pleistocene big cats'. At least the objects in question looked alive and cat-like, and had intact limbs and heads.
This one looks like a poorly made replica. A brownie hawkeye box camera (which I happened to own as a kid) would give you a blurred image of a running animal. The brush in the midsection covers the support used to prop it up, which isn't quite covered. Ooops.
Posted by: Passerby | August 18, 2010 11:16 PM
I think it's just some sticks and some pareidolia. Especially since the supposed creature clearly has no head.
Posted by: Judith | August 19, 2010 12:08 AM
@neil(#4) Obviously that still leaves the coat discrepancy, but do we actually know anything about the coat pattern of mainland thylacines?
Yes. Some fully mummified specimens have been recovered. With partial coat and details intact. Cave paintings (mainland thylacine co-existed with the local populace for 30,000+ years) also indicate similar patterning.
Posted by: Veltyen | August 19, 2010 12:14 AM
"....This might mean that the 'stripes' are dappling formed by sunlight. It's not really possible to know."
I think not. If the sunlight/shadow contrast was that strong, you would expect to see some similar striped shadows on the ground. Nothing about the lighting of the scene is right for those to be dappling.
IMHO a striped animal is there. I don't know if it is painted, live or stuffed.
Posted by: jwbjerk | August 19, 2010 12:27 AM
I'm surprised by the criticism of this one. I'm no artist of photo trickery but I'm not getting 'partially decomposed carcass'. Don't really see that this looks like an animal running particularly fast either. But I do wonder what's going on with the hind leg.
Still, if this is a piss-poor amateur scam photo, then I think your standards are higher than is normal in this field; look at some of the lake monster ones on this site!
Posted by: farandfew | August 19, 2010 12:52 AM
It looks like a late-surviving Thylacinus potens, the Powerful thylacine, or it may just be an hoax as well.
Posted by: Anonymous | August 19, 2010 4:07 AM
Darren:
There is no evidence that the last captive thylacine's name was Benjamin; that oft-repeated piece of information is just a popular misconception. (Also, that last captive thylacine was probably a female rather than a male.) See Robert Paddle's book The Last Tasmanian Tiger: The History and Extinction of the Thylacine (2000) for further details about the story of 'Benjamin'.
As for the mystery animal - if indeed it's an animal at all - in that photograph; it certainly doesn't seem to be 'running'. It looks like it's either standing or walking, and its stance looks awkward and unnatural to me.
The animal's reported behaviour also raises red flags. Why isn't it actually moving away from the human observer, rather than standing/walking parallel to her? Why isn't it looking in the direction of a potential threat/strange object (i.e., the human being and her car)? That's what a real animal would most likely be doing the moment before it bolts away.
Why did they only try to replicate the photo by using a two-dimensional model? What if the original object was a three-dimensional dummy (made of wood or plastic or whatever was available to a prankster)? Sounds like a rather lackluster debunking attempt to me. Where are MythBusters when you need them?
Sorry, but I vote for 'It's probably not real'.
Posted by: Dartian | August 19, 2010 6:01 AM
I do love the way that 'mystery animal' photos enable some people to develop super powers and see beyond the limits of normal human perspective. The idea that the object is a carcass, painted with stripes, and propped up in the bush by a support [comment 6], is an interesting one - but how would you demonstrate this to someone who is sceptical of your bold (and unique) interpretation? Granted, I can see a dark smudge under the 'belly' that could be interpreted as a support, but equally it could just as likely be interpreted as a bit of crap on the ground, behind the animal. What I interpret as a long, slim tail is obvious at the far right of the animal. As for the assertion that Martin was paid for the production of this photo, you should make clear whether there is any evidence for this assertion, or whether it's just an opinion or speculation.
Moving on, any suggestion that the animal 'is not doing what an animal would' (viz, it seems to be moving parallel to the viewer, rather than away from them) [comment 12] doesn't count for much, in my opinion. Animals frequently do illogical, stupid or unpredictable things, and are sometimes unable to charge through/leap over adjacent obstacles. One random example: the Fennec fox I saw in Morocco. At one point it ran parallel to our vehicle while fleeing, so our photos show the animal in profile.
The idea that the photo was retouched or modified by the newspaper is a good one - note that Martin said that she didn't much notice the stripes at the time (this might explain why they look so weird). It might also explain why the newspaper 'lost' the photo. But, whatever the object is, I hope you agree that it's right to be sceptical of bold claims that a hoax is immediately apparent. It isn't to me.
Oh, and I didn't know that Benjamin wasn't called Benjamin :)
Posted by: Darren Naish | August 19, 2010 6:25 AM
The biggest problem is that the print you scanned has such low resolution that I can't even tell if it's a photo or a painting. The white stripes, especially, look like they were painted on the photo during retouching.
Posted by: David Marjanović | August 19, 2010 6:27 AM
Sorry, I don't have a hi-res version. And see comment 13 regarding retouching.
Posted by: Darren Naish | August 19, 2010 6:30 AM
Darren:
That's certainly true. But my point was that it doesn't exactly boost the credibility of this particular report if the animal allegedly displayed such unexpected behaviour.
It's not known with certainty if the poor beast had any name at all. The story of the last captive thylacines' final years is a sad and infuriating tale of neglect and mismanagement. (The Hobart Zoo lost many other animals due to poor husbandry in the nineteen thirties; the thylacines weren't the only ones that suffered.)
Posted by: Dartian | August 19, 2010 7:41 AM
This may seem extraordinarily stupid, but the first thing I saw in looking at the image, before I read a word, was an Okapi...
Anyway, hopefully Darren has seen the "Ratzilla" reports and is on his way to Bradford to investigate! The Sun has a photo, but there's a lot there to cast doubt on almost every aspect of the reported story.
Posted by: David Craven | August 19, 2010 8:43 AM
Thats might be Quinkana. Or a dog. Or a dog carcass propped up. But it also looks a bit okapi-sh. Sivatherium?
I would be more interested in what came out supposed thylacine search in Irian Jaya?
Posted by: Jerzy | August 19, 2010 8:53 AM
The Thylacine book (by Paddle) is REALLY good, and very informative, just finished reading it last week.
The photo does look odd, but then again so do a lot of photos of very commonplace things that are taken in a hurry, with poor lighting, without time to focus. My own albums are full of headless relatives, blurry dogs and the usual "What the hell is that?" photos when they come back from being developed. That being said, the thing that always bothered me about the picture is the fact that it looks like the front half of the animal is dark with light stripes and (depending on the resolution) the back half looks light with dark stripes, especially on the tail and the back of the thigh. Like two animals pieced together. Although given the fact that all known copies of the photo are scans of ones that had been printed in the news (and possibly retouched) I guess we'll never know.
Posted by: Shawn | August 19, 2010 10:00 AM
Well, you know what I think....
Posted by: Jeff Johnson | August 19, 2010 10:09 AM
That outline is awfully sharp for an animal with any sort of cryptic coloring, as the stripes would seem to indicate. Breaking up the outline is the first purpose of cryptic coloring.
It looks like a Cottingley Fairies picture to me.
Posted by: Greg Morrow | August 19, 2010 10:17 AM
Farandfew:
It's only tangentially related to photographing cryptids, but try to find that paper by Carol Freeman (2005) that Darren refers to in the main post. Read it, and you'll be surprised by the lengths people will go to in order to get the kinds of pictures they wish, as well as by the technical skill that such photographers may possess.
Posted by: Dartian | August 19, 2010 10:51 AM
If it is a thylacine where the hindquarters stripes are not visible because of sunlight, what are we to make of the stripes that are apparently visible on the tail? Thyacines had non-striped tails. Or if the back half of the animal is overexposed by the sun, does that mean that the tail stripes are shadows? Even if we explain the strange front-half stripes as a problem with the developing-and-printing processes, it seems unlikely that that'd put stripes on the front and tail but not the rear. I don't know what animal that is, but I just don't buy the thylacine explanation.
Posted by: Onychomys | August 19, 2010 12:01 PM
A badly stuffed Red Fox with stripes painted on it?
I can't see any shadows on the surrounding which could make those shapes be shadows of leaves - whether of bamboo, palm or whatever. Notice the thickish white branch at upper left which has no shadows cast on it.
Posted by: Don Cox | August 19, 2010 12:21 PM
I recently read an article on the large cats in Great Briton. These seem to be cats that have escaped or been released from private owners. Would it be possible that this a crossbred large cat, such as a liger or tigon, from a private collection?
Or perhaps an escapee from the Island of Dr. Moreau?
Posted by: Canadian Curmudgeon | August 19, 2010 12:30 PM
I just realized that my last comment just solved the entirety of cryptozoology.
Posted by: Canadian Curmudgeon | August 19, 2010 12:33 PM
Why the hell can't anyone take a GOOD picture of a cryptid?
Posted by: Zach Miller | August 19, 2010 1:47 PM
Re: comment 22 (Dartian's reference to Carol Freeman's paper)... I'll have to read it again, but my recollection is that Freeman's argument was quite unconvincing. The photos in question (I know some of them well, having spent ages staring at them in old books: e.g., McMichael's 1968 A Treasury of Australian Wildlife) clearly show the thylacine in numerous different postures: bending its body to the left of the photo, looking upward, etc., and I just don't see the evidence for photo trickery that she does. In some photos, the legs are in different positions (difficult to get this to happen with a taxiderm mount), the mouth is open, feathers and chicken bones are visible in the mouth, the eye is closed etc. She argues that various kinds of trickery (superimposing etc.) explain how these differences exist. I don't see the need for any of this: it looks like a live thylacine, and the evidence she puts forward for it being a stuffed specimen doesn't stand up: 'wasted' limb muscles and stiff legs, for example, are readily seen in other photographed thylacines. In fact, I often think that live thylacines looked a bit 'wooden' in some poses... they look 'stiffer', and with straighter lines and less flexible limbs and bodies, than more familiar mammalian carnivores.
Having said all that, there's no doubt that the chicken-killing scene was staged.
Posted by: Darren Naish | August 19, 2010 1:48 PM
I'm with Anonymous in post #11. A Thylacinus potens or some other robust thylacinid unknown from the fossil record. Probably completely extinct by now.
Posted by: darwinsdog | August 19, 2010 1:53 PM
I have examined this photo for years, and have decided that the pixilation and the sharpening (?) done for newspaper reproduction make it difficult to come to firm conclusions. It looks to me (a) real -- not a faked model or a pre-PhotoShop creation; (b) the head, especially the snout, does not look like a Thylacine (though its odd look may be cause by the way it is turned or by bits added by the newspaper for "clarity"); (c) the general appearance is that of a deep-chested dog; (d) and if "c" is true, the stripes are shadows.
There were some interesting photos taken a few years ago in Tasmania by German tourists; they do show a Thylacine -- or a fake that looks like said Thylacine. They were briefly on the web but then removed. The website Whenlightmeetsdark discusses these pictures and seems to think them genuine evidence of surviving Thylacines.
Posted by: Douglas Greene | August 19, 2010 3:21 PM
. . . and, as others have pointed out, the stripes are entirely wrong for a Thylacine.
Posted by: Douglas Greene | August 19, 2010 4:09 PM
Very interesting! The front end looks very much painted in. This is especially noticeable on the head, where the tree branches "overlap" it (in a very intentional looking manner). The head ends abruptly, no traces of it visible between the leaves. There's an unnatural shadow being cast there also.
The back end looks real, like a wallaby bent over. But the front half looks blatantly painted.
Posted by: Kay | August 19, 2010 4:28 PM
I don't know what to make of this photography. I just have a bad feeling about it. To me the transition between the animal's thorax and the surrounding bush looks like a straight papercut. The left foreleg appears to be too thin to bear the weight of an animal with such strongly developed shoulder girdle and head. My suspicion is that this is a cut & paste work similar to the "Cottingley Fairies" - photographies mentioned above by Greg Morrow.
My idea is, that this fake animal is composed of two silhouettes meeting behind the bush in the middle, thus the apparent differences between the two halves of the animal.
Of course this is not overtly substantiated, just my spontaneous thoughts on this subject.
However, any large unknown carnivore appearing on photographies in the Australian State of Victoria must bring the "Yarri" to one's mind.
So my question is, what's the opinion of an experienced and variously interested zoologist with some expertise in cryptozoological matters, on the riddle of the "Yarri" destined by Bernard Heuvelmans to be the cryptic animal closest to scientific acknowledgement.
I would very appreciate your point of view, Darren.
Posted by: Nicholas Miotk | August 19, 2010 4:46 PM
The thing that always strikes me about this photo is the weirdly "cut-off" head - it appears to be a dead straight line, not a blurry line as would be expected if it was "partially obscured by foliage". (I can't see an "upper part of the head" at all, despite many here and elsewhere claiming to see it.*) The only thing that could explain that straight line cutting off the snout/head from the background for me would be that the photo is a collage (like the infamous "Kasai Rex" photo), with the "animal" cut out and placed on a background - but there are also 2 major problems with this explanation, namely a) why would someone cut out an animal with only half of its head? and b) the vegetation in front of the animal (in particular the one diagonal tree branch that looks to be clearly part of the same image as the background).
*OK, i can see shapes that look very superficially like an "eye" and an "ear", but to me they look like nothing more than pareidolia...
So... this one seems frustratingly hard to prove either real or fake. If it's a fake, it has a rather inexplicable obvious big mistake in it, and if it's real, then the same part of the image is still rather inexplicable...
As to the animal it appears to depict: I see a thick, distinctly marsupial tail (with the left hind leg overlapping and visually "merging" with it, but the tail carrying on for at least 3/4 the length of the animal's torso), which rules out known carnivorans and ungulates. It's more robust than any known thylacine, but with similar skinny, stiff-looking front legs (which are probably what gives the artiodactyl-like impression). Sort of looks like something that is to T. cynocephalus as something like a bull-terrier is to wild Canis. (I could write some dreadful Chrichtonesque fiction about an extinct civilisation's domesticated guard-thylacines here... ;) )
Hmmm, maybe it could be a fortuitously-shaped piece of dead wood, painted and stuck in the ground? That's about all i can think of for plausible fakery options...
Posted by: shiva | August 19, 2010 5:21 PM
This famous photo has been discussed on various forums over the years. I take the view that this photo depicts an animal belonging to the Thylacoleo family, not carnifex necessarily, but perhaps a related animal. Sightings of a large marsupial predator not fitting the description of the thylacine, date back to the days of the early colonists and continue to present times.
Cheers
Posted by: Richard Ashworth | August 19, 2010 5:23 PM
The striped pattern looks like painted, at least partially, or a bit modified.
Posted by: J.S. Lopes | August 19, 2010 5:35 PM
There's no reason to suspect a hoax unless some evidence suggests it. I've seen no substantial evidence of this photograph being a hoax presented by any of the posters. Jumping to the conclusion that it must be a hoax just because one can't identify the animal doesn't cut it.
The animal looks nothing like a thylacoleonid, which belonged to an entirely different order than thylacinids belong(ed?) to. No way this animal could climb trees and at the size of a labrador dog it isn't big enough to be Thylacoleo carnifex which was nearly the size of a lion. The coat pattern is wrong for it to be Thylacinus cynocephalus and the head appears to be too robust. It definitely resembles a thylacinid of some sort, however. My hypothesis is that the animal in the photograph represents a species of thylacinid similar to Thylacinus potens although it is more likely to be an unknown species of this, or of a closely related genus. It was likely an individual of a cryptic and relic population of thylacinid that may survive to this day but is probably extinct.
Posted by: darwinsdog | August 19, 2010 5:51 PM
All of you photo "hoax" proponents must not remember what Kodak Brownie cameras were like in 1964. They used big 126 black-and-white film that came on rolls with 12 exposures. The lens was fixed and the focus not adjustable. It would be difficult to perpetrate a hoax with equipment this rudimentary. How would you know you got a good shot, especially if you were a tourist on vacation when you took it?
In 2010 with a fancy fast digital camera, pictures of ordinary animals among vegetation by the roadside can be cryptic. The photographer must hurry to take a picture before the animal disappears. I agree that this is an unknown animal photographed forty-six years ago by an amateur using a very simple camera. The only way to get a more definitive answer would be to locate the negative, which was probably long since destroyed.
Posted by: leecris | August 19, 2010 6:40 PM
A few words from my two fields of expertise -- small-town newspapers, and purebred dogs.
First, if Rilla was paid for this photo, it wouldn't have been much. Small town papers (and big ones too, often) don't pay the general public for photos. The fact that they lost her negative doesn't surprise me at all.Don't ever send a publication your original, it is almost certain you'll never see it again.
Secondly, this photo could be a "crossbred" fake -- partly true (Rilla's photo) and partly false (the stripes on the forequarters.) Those stripes just look wrong, above and beyond not matching the usual thylacine pattern. I would guess they were added rather than just emphasized, in the newspaper's darkroom.
Now on to whether this is a dog, whether dead, live or stuffed..
The forequarters, looking so queerly stiff and upright, is not a problem in considering a dog as candidate here. Many dogs, purebred or mongrel, have what are called "straight shoulders" -- that is, the first shoulder joint is not bent enough. In most breeds this is a fault. But it's hardly uncommon.
The heavy deep chested body isn't a problem either. Maybe this is a myostatin mutant like the double-muscled bully whippets you get now and then. (Info and some weird pictures here: http://blog.cobankopegi.com/2007/06/bully-whippets-genetics.html)
So then -- is it some sort of dog? Heck no. The tail is the giveaway. There is no member of Canis with a tail like that, not even among the purebred oddities we raise as pets. The low on-set, the thick base narrowing smoothly like a dog's best try at a kangaroo tail, and the length of it guarantee it's no dog.
I'd love to know about these critters too. Hey! Let's set up cryptid-cams in remote but likely places, and watch for the weird critters in real time, while drinking cocoa and lounging on the sofa.
Posted by: Noni Mausa | August 19, 2010 7:16 PM
What if it's a thylacine, but a very badly stuffed one? Maybe something mounted decades ago, when they were still around, left mouldering somewhere, then someone decided to "touch it up" with stripes (getting the wrong end) etc.
It would take care of the "proportions" issue - I've seen taxidermies that make wolves look like iguanas they're so bad.
Posted by: Mokele | August 19, 2010 8:21 PM
The more I look at the creature's "tail" the less I see a tail and the more it looks like simply a part of the very unnatural looking back leg. Which makes me think the whole back leg might not be a part of the figure at all, but simply detritus on the ground serendipitously positioned.
The stripes don't look right to be sun dappling. The foliage around the creature is full of small twigs and brush, whereas the stripes would suggest long thick branches with few twiggy bits or leaves in between. I agree that it could have been done in the darkroom by the newspaper. Even for stripes on an animal's coat, they look just a little too "perfect".
Posted by: Tenebras | August 19, 2010 8:37 PM
Great write-up, Darren.
The other common name for this animal is "Rilla's Critter".
The first time I saw this photo the forequarters seemed to me to be very horse-like. I agree most striping is likely caused by light/shadow.
I have heard, though don't have references to hand, that features of the head were added by a newspaper editor to the original negative before printing - this includes the apparent eyelashes. At the same time I was told that at least one print had been made prior to the negatives being modified, but that print has been lost.
Another part of the story, which you alluded to, was that she had been talking about this animal (or type of animal) either the same day or just prior - hence her words "here's the animal I was talking about" - that is, literally just talking about within the past few days.
Although you note that mainland survival of the thylacine is another discussion altogether, given the various dates and years quoted throughout the article it might have been good to balance the 3,000 year view (of extinction) with Robert Paddle's case for survival through to the 1800s. The evidence he discovered included a South Australian bounty for thylacines, an Aboriginal eye-witness account in South Australia, and two freshly-killed specimens being examined by a European naturalist - in the Blue Mountains near Sydney, and most likely the Flinders Ranges, South Australia
Chris.
www.wherelightmeetsdark.com
On Facebook: http://bit.ly/fb-wlmd
Posted by: Chris Rehberg | August 19, 2010 11:47 PM
Oh - and one last detail I forgot: some say the animal moved its head during the taking of the photograph, producing something of a "double exposure" in that region - it was a box brownie camera, so theoretically the exposure time may have been long, though other elements in the photo do not appear to show camera-shake.
Someone asked why the animal is side-on instead of reacting to the human visitor who arrived by car. If the animal was familiar with humans it might not have cared - think farm animals.
Chris.
www.wherelightmeetsdark.com
On Facebook: http://bit.ly/fb-wlmd
Posted by: Chris Rehberg | August 19, 2010 11:51 PM
The second photo is a lot more convincing than the first one...Even if the first one is real, the retouching gives it a pretty fake look.
Posted by: Moro Rogers | August 20, 2010 1:31 AM
I get a general sense that the photo has at least been touched up.
However, I "see" it as a uniformly light animal with dark stripes on the forequarters and tail rather than a dark animal with white stripes.
Posted by: CP | August 20, 2010 2:19 AM
If only the photo was in color.
Posted by: Alan Kellogg | August 20, 2010 4:38 AM
I wrote comment 14 when 13 wasn't up yet.
Posted by: David Marjanović | August 20, 2010 5:06 AM
I get the impression it could be 2 animals, one standing with the side at the photographer and one in front of it facing the photographer.
In other words... 2 Thylacines ? ;o)
Jan
Posted by: Jan Ritzau | August 20, 2010 5:20 AM
and
How can you be so confident about what Thylacinus potens looked like? That species is only known from a single, incomplete upper jaw, and we have thus far discovered no remains of its postcranial skeleton.
The only "evidence" we have is that photograph; everything else surrounding this incident is unverified (and unverifiable?) hearsay. And the most generous thing that can be said about that photograph is that by its own it is inconclusive.
The body form doesn't match that of the Recent thylacine. T. cynocephalus does not have that kind of a massive bull neck, nor is it that front-heavy. The photo and Darren's reconstruction suggest that that's an animal with a sloping back. That is not the case with the thylacine; it has more massive hind quarters, relatively speaking, as well as slightly longer hind- than forelimbs (noticeable in this picture, for example).
Posted by: Dartian | August 20, 2010 6:12 AM
49 comments and no-one's suggested it's a gorgonopsian yet? I'm disappointed, people.
Posted by: Andreas Johansson | August 20, 2010 6:26 AM
Not a cryptozoologist here, or zoologist at all really. Still, some observations:
My first impression was of an animal (real or stuffed) half-facing me, with both eyes (potentially at least) visible, its front leg raised stiffly. The head seemed quite small for the front-body of the animal, which may be an effect of the head's angle toward the photographer. Lower jaw / chin rounded, mouth closed. The first dark stripe perhaps part of a mane, or jowl, hence the head seems smaller? Ears tipped but rounded, the animal's left ear at the upper end of the first stripe; the right one not clearly discernible but probably the triangular dark spot, probably seeing the inside. Dark grey (not black) spot is the end of the snout, which comes across as broad, indeed a bit pig-like.
In my second inspection I'm seeing the animal in near-profile, the left eye visible as a dark spot, my earlier right ear. There are some weird light reflexes on the snout. The black spot to the left is now the end of a narrower, fox- or jackal-like snout. My prior foreshortened snout is now the left lower jaw, and the ears the three lighter grey smudges above the former ears. The head seems indeed "decayed" or weirdly obscured by shadows.
The hind legs are also weird. I see an elongate black spot which amy be either the left leg or the sole of the right foot.
My guess, photo of a real animal. My "first head" would fit the idea that the animal is turning towards the photographer even as it is moving preparing to run away. (The left haunch seems to ready for a jump?) The right foreleg seems caught frozen in some activity (pawing around the log?). Once the photo got to the newspaper, it was enhaced (?), and perhaps the head made more like a dingo's, turning it to face the left side of the picture and narrowing the snout.
My 0.02!
Posted by: Ben Breuer | August 20, 2010 6:28 AM
Dartian :
How can you be so confident about what Thylacinus potens looked like? That species is only known from a single, incomplete upper jaw, and we have thus far discovered no remains of its postcranial skeleton.
I have seen this picture on wikipedia :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thylacinus_potens
I think it pretty matches with the photography, it is the closest thing I found to compare with this cryptid. And to me the drawing doesn't show the sloping back and neither does the photo.
Posted by: Anonymous | August 20, 2010 7:13 AM
"I have seen this picture on wikipedia :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thylacinus_potens
I think it pretty matches with the photography, it is the closest thing I found to compare with this cryptid. And to me the drawing doesn't show the sloping back and neither does the photo."
But that drawing is just an anonymous artist's half-baked notion of what T. potens looked like. It has no scientific validity whatsoever. As Dartian says, all we have is an incomplete jaw, which makes all such "reconstructions" merely exercises in speculation. Popular books and websites on paleontology are full of pictures like this, many of them of equally dubious value.
I love these "what's in this photo?" challenges as much as anybody. They're great fun. But on further reflection what they bring home is the utter futility of this aspect of crptozoology. We have one fuzzy, indistinct image of something that may or may not be a real animal, on a photo that may or may not have been tampered with, and some people are earnestly debating whether it could show a Miocene thylacinid, whose body proportions and fur colouration we have absolutely no knowledge of. If this is all the "evidence" there is, we could discuss the photo till doomsday and not move any futher forward. It's a fun parlour game, but let's not mistake it for science.
Posted by: Dave Hughes | August 20, 2010 7:41 AM
I believe that nothing about the lighting of the scene is right for those to be dappling.
Posted by: Mandy | August 20, 2010 8:43 AM
I, for one, have always preferred this T. potens reconstruction.
http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b101/perfusionman/st2.jpg
But that might just be me.
Posted by: Onychomys | August 20, 2010 8:49 AM
Nice work, Onychomys :) Thanks to all for continuing comments.
I've just 'discovered' something I hadn't noticed before: what looks like a (?metallic) 'support' that appears to be propping up the rear part of the animal. Needless to say, if this interpretation is correct, hoaxing is definitely on the cards. And appropriate credit (and apology) is due to Passerby (comment 6) who might have been referring to the same structure. OR - - is this just more pareidolia? An update has been added to the bottom of the article, please have a look.
Posted by: Darren Naish | August 20, 2010 9:46 AM
Now with this update, I am siding more towards the hoax theory. But I not entirely sure. It also looks like this cryptid is stepping over a small trunk alternatively shady.
Posted by: Anonymous | August 20, 2010 10:17 AM
I had, without thinking too much about it, interpreted that "structure" as the left hind leg (and the rear part of you identify as the leg as part of the tail).
Posted by: Andreas Johansson | August 20, 2010 10:22 AM
Dartian:
I don't know what Thylacinus potens looked like. All I know is that it was a more robust thylacinid than T. cynocephalus. You yourself say "T. cynocephalus does not have that kind of a massive bull neck, nor is it that front-heavy." I agree. Nor does the coat pattern of T. cynocephalus resemble that of the animal in the photograph. I don't know what the coat patten of T. potens looked like but it likely differed from that of T. cynocephalus. I don't think it likely that the animal in the photo is the Miocene T. potens. I said "My hypothesis is that the animal in the photograph represents a species of thylacinid similar to Thylacinus potens although it is more likely to be an unknown species of this, or of a closely related genus," and I stand by that hypothesis until it is refuted by evidence, such as the negatives being found and demonstrating definitive signs of having been tampered with.
Posted by: darwinsdog | August 20, 2010 10:24 AM
I would say so. It doesn't look any different from other pieces of woody debris lying about. Looks to me like a piece of wood in front of the animal's left hind leg. The close-up of the back half of the animal is revealing in one aspect: the stripes on the tail now appear to be stick shadows, unlike the broader stripes on the neck & thorax.
Posted by: darwinsdog | August 20, 2010 11:25 AM
Finally I side with Darwinsdog, the supporting structure idea doesn't convince me.
Posted by: Anonymous | August 20, 2010 11:40 AM
Could the "support" not be the hind limb on the body's far side?
Posted by: bigcitylib | August 20, 2010 12:21 PM
While I first thought "Okapi front with tiger backend, seam hidden by bush", the set-up doesn't look right for a hoax. It seems a lot of work (especially in the boonies of 1964 Australia) for not a lot to show for. The posture doesn't look right for a "modified stuffed animal", and if the strange looking pieces are supports, someone went through all that to get a at least reasonable looking creature but made such obvious blunders? But then, people tended to get really bored before the invention of satellite tv and the internet, so who knows.
Posted by: Mu | August 20, 2010 12:39 PM
I told myself I would stay out of this, looks like I can't. Researched this photo for over a decade and a half, even talked to someone very close to the photographer. Contacted the Wimmera-Mail Times editor to see if I could buy the rights to this photo, and anything they still had around. They didn't know who owned the rights, and had nothing left. Paul Cropper has the original print, though.
Rilla told her relatives she had photographed a strange animal on the way home from the reunion. When she got it developed, that's when she said "here is the animal I was talking about".
The original print was only 2 x 3 inches, so the negative was tiny also. In order to "tamper" with it, they would have had to blow it up and re-shoot it. A small amount of re-touching was done around the head, no mucking with the stripes. The support structure is wishful thinking. Looks natural to me, as the right side edge of it is actually the rock just forward of the animal.
It worries me that this photo is so easily dismissed by many as a hoax. If real(and I think it is)it is a very important document of a marsupial seen by many, yet has eluded science. It's just easier to write it off than solve the problem.
Sure, the animal has a strange pose, but you have to remember, it is a snapshot of a moment of movement. The animal didn't walk around this way or keep this pose all of the time, to be sure. I have talked to a number of people that have seen this same type of animal. They say it drags the tail along as it runs, like a rudder, and has an almost comical gait, bobbing back and forth as it moves. A naturalist that saw it up close told me it looked and moved like a arboreal animal on the ground.
I would dive on a thylacine if I saw it up close, to try to capture it. I would not do so with the Rilla critter. With that front end, which was obviously used to grapple with prey(why have such a huge neck and muscular arms?)this thing could inflict serious damge.
The muzzle is way too short to be any sort of thylacine. I have done photographic overlays placing skulls of a couple of possible contenders over the head, lining up the eye and the back of skull. The skull of the thylacine is too long, as it extends beyond the end of the nose of the Rilla subject, even without being fleshed out. Not surprising, considering the nose-to-eye measurements on a thylacine skull is greater than the eye-to-back of the skull. On the Rilla subject, this formula is reversed. It has a shorter. deeper nose, and frankly, the end of it looks like the end of a mail box.
In order to have that odd-ball snout, something has to be going on inside to cause the development of that pig-like nose structure. Really large incisors, perhaps? It does seem that teeth are protruding from the front of the mouth in the photo. That or maybe just white spots on the front of the lips?
I overlayed the skull of thylacoleo over the head of the photo, and it is a very close fit. So, for what it is worth, I think the animal is a thylacoleonid of some sort. Before I get piled on, we don't know what thylacoleo looked like in the flesh(I know we have the skeleton, but that only takes you so far))or how it moved or behaved. I think it had a totally unique appearance, and photo may be a window into that. Shouten's latest thylacoleo painting looks a lot like the animal in the photo, and that cave painting discovered by Willing of a possible thylacoleo looks much like the animal in the photo too(down to the scrawny back legs and big muscular front ones). And then there's the patterned ring around the eye, both present in the photo and the cave painting.
For what it is worth, this is my opinion.
Posted by: Jeff Johnson | August 20, 2010 1:04 PM
Jeff: fascinating stuff, and although I'm still a sceptic, I would love to be proven wrong and for your explanation to be the correct one. Do you have any links to these alleged rock paintings of Thylacoleo? I've never heard of these before.
Also, how much has that area of Victoria changed since 1964? Is there enough wild country still around that could support a cryptic large carnivore, or are we looking at the one and only photo of a species that we no longer have any hope of finding alive?
Posted by: Dave Hughes | August 20, 2010 1:22 PM
looks like a aligator head on a tabby cat body
Posted by: moronicus | August 20, 2010 1:35 PM
If this is indeed a mammal; couldn't the supposed supportive structure actually be a semi-erect penis?
Posted by: John Halas | August 20, 2010 1:38 PM
Suddenly occurred to me that this animal can be an ordinary tiger, with its head intentionally blurred and re-painted by some photo trick.
Posted by: J.S. Lopes | August 20, 2010 1:38 PM
Hi Darren,
I'm with the people who think this is a hoax, or just about, as this photo makes poor evidence for anything, unfortunately. I can only actually see one leg - the left foreleg. The other thing at the front looks more like a support, and similar to the back bit you also think looks like a support. Where does the other back leg go? Does it just vanish? As for the head, it's almost not there, and what we can see looks as much like background vegetation as anything else.
As has been mentioned, there would have been some adulteration to make this fit for newspaper printing, so my opinion is, if it truly represents a cryptid, the evidence is too poor to tell. Shame.
Posted by: Richard Pharo | August 20, 2010 1:38 PM
Thanks for the fascinating additional information Jeff. The "Rilla Critter" is too small to be a Thylacoleo carnifex but there were smaller species of thylacoleonid. Unlike T. carnifex, however, none of these smaller species are known to have persisted past the Pliocene. The main problem I have with interpreting the animal in the photo as a thylacoleonid is that it obviously exhibits a cursorial adapted morphology whereas the semi-opposable thumbs, retractable claws and structure of the shoulder girdle indicate that Thylacoleo could climb trees. Also, thylacoleonids didn't have much of a tail whereas the animal in the photo appears to have a massive tail. I can't make out much detail of the animal's head but if we only had the head to go on, I might be more inclined towards the hypothesis that the animal was some sort of thylacoleonid. Its post-cranial morphology appears much more in keeping with the notion that it's a rather robust species of thylacinid.
Posted by: darwinsdog | August 20, 2010 2:03 PM
Looks like Carl Buells Andrewsarchus.
Posted by: MIKE SHERIDAN | August 20, 2010 2:20 PM
Thanks for that Dave. The area has changed over time, and doesn't have as much wilderness. The Quest for Thylacoleo visted the site sometime back, and it seems this place is more open now. They did find a number of sheep skeletons there, but they could have died in a number ways. I think the animal was just moving through the area at the time. It had been sighted by locals just prior to Rilla photographing it, as well as reports of livestock kills and strange screams being heard.
Reports of the "Queensland Tiger" are still coming in, and I am sure they are still around. They might look like a thylacine to some(which it does, somewhat)and may be behind some mainland thylacine sightings. What else do they have to compare it to? It is a large striped carnivore, so a thylacine is the closest thing many can relate it to. When I look at it, it reminds me of a cross between a huge possum and a cat.
The cave painting was covered in Darren's post about the "jaws" photo, and was published in Antiquity. Another cave painting has been discovered since probably showing another thylacoleo, again covered by Antiquity. Here's a thought: I know this is very unlikely, and has no supporting evidence, but what if the creature is a unknown mainland form of giant quoll or giant devil, filling the void left by the demise of thylacoleo? Fun to think about....
Posted by: Jeff Johnson | August 20, 2010 2:42 PM
I think itsa thylacine. The 'stripes' on the fore part are caused by light and shade from trees. The 'support' i thin, is a broken branch. The jaw line and hind quarters look very like a thylacine.
Posted by: Ricard Freeman | August 20, 2010 2:50 PM
Thanks darwinsdog, some good points. I would say that these animals have been seen climbing, even to the point of the aborigines warning don't dare follow it when it flees up a tree, or risk a savage attack(see Yarri). Now there coud be 2 different large striped cat-like animals roaming modern day Australia, one that could climb and one that cannot. But I am guessing there is only one.
Rilla said the animal was about the size of a large dog(shepard)and if my dog had a tail that long, it would approach 6 ft. That's close to keeping in size to carnifex, it think. I wouldn't say thylacoleo or its kin had a little tails, (heck, correct me if I am wrong, but a tail that was longer and broader than a thylacine's in relation to the body) I think they sported substantial tails. If the rear legs were held at a strange angle during movement(maybe like we see in the photo), a lot of might drag the ground. It all boils down to how low to the ground thylacoleo held the rear of the body. The program Catalyst about the discovery of the first full skeleton showed that thylacoleo used its tail like a kangaroo to balance on so it could stand on its hind legs and scan the area for prey. All I can say is: you never know. Cheers
Posted by: Jeff Johnson | August 20, 2010 3:24 PM
Re: my 'support object' idea... I'm more than happy to admit it as pareidolia. It depends on whether you regard the area to the right of the 'support' (and beneath the left leg) as a rock or not. If this is a rock, the 'support' is best interpreted as an artefact of light, shade and partially obscured (dark) objects beneath the belly. But, I have to say... it doesn't look like a rock to me. I remain nonplussed, and matters like this mean that I partially agree with Dave Hughes (comment 53) on the futility of these little exercises.
As Jeff noted (comment 72), the alleged thylacoleonid cave art was previously covered here. I'm really very surprised to hear (comment 64) that Paul Cropper has the 'original print'. Really?? I'll ask Paul asap (but I'm about to disappear for a while, so no quick responses).
As always, thanks to everyone for the great comments and discussion. Your comments and ideas are appreciated.
Posted by: Darren Naish | August 20, 2010 4:31 PM
Tigers are not ordinary in Australia!
Posted by: David Marjanović | August 21, 2010 7:27 AM
Darwinsdog:
Actually, you don't even know that for sure. Robustness is something relative, and it doesn't always correlate positively with body size; a smaller species may very well be more 'robust' than its larger relative. For example, a wallaroo is more robustly built than a great red kangaroo, a jaguar is more robustly built than a lion, and a chimpanzee is, in most respects, more robustly built than a human.
Posted by: Dartian | August 21, 2010 8:10 AM
You know, the photo is so bad and the object so unlike any known mammal, with these smears on forebody, that one needs much good will to discuss it seriously.
It matches a dog as well or better than thylacine. It can be a sculpted and painted tree trunk, and quality is so low that you wouldn't know.
Maybe let's talk about New Guinean thylacines and megalanias. As the Australasian cryptids go, they have much better probability and received less interest.
Posted by: Jerzy | August 21, 2010 10:30 AM
Here's what Paul says about the photo he has(took me a while to dig this up from another forum!)
"In 'Out of the Shadows' Tony and I featured a direct (maybe 2nd gen) copy of Rillas photo. I got it from Janiece Plunkett (the Queensland tiger hunter) who got it sometime in the late 60s. I still have the original in my files somewhere. I'd say the shot in our book is the best one out there, and that's including the ones in the local press at the time. Cheers Paul."
Posted by: Jeff Johnson | August 21, 2010 11:09 AM
To me the species duo robust thylacinid/thylacinus cynocephalus could be respectively analogous with the Grey wolf/coyote one.
Posted by: Longfinmako | August 21, 2010 12:00 PM
The thread is still hopping, so after getting through the whole thing, I'll just make some image/perspective comments.
One, it looks like there's a shrub branch that drops down to obscure the head; it's hard to see what you can conclude about it.
Two, those forequarter stripes look terrible. The way the ends lighten (in addition to narrowing) really makes it look like the paper went after it in the darkroom. That, and they don't really vary in intensity with the surrounding coat color; they're the same at the height of the back with full light as at the belly? Come on now.
Given those two points, the stripes may be giving the wrong impression of how the neck is oriented. Ignoring them, I'd personally guess that the animal's head is turned toward the photographer, which could pretty well explain why the neck looks so robust. Also much more likely behaviorally.
And again for the robustness, go back to that last picture of a thylacine, and look at the rear leg; the thing is practically a bag of bones!
Anyway, what I'm saying is that this doesn't look (mostly) faked to me; aside from the front stripes, there's nothing obviously wrong. And since that picture of a thylacine from life sure looks like it's in poor health (as are most we've probably got from captive animals), this seems reasonably to be within the healthy range for one.
Of course, seeing a live thylacine is fascinating enough on its own; I'd love to see some better evidence.
Posted by: Chris M. | August 21, 2010 11:56 PM
Has anyone noticed the color difference around the left shoulder? Especially in magnification, it looks like the left forelag is cut out somewhere else and then glued to rest.
Posted by: JJM | August 22, 2010 7:50 AM
I can't add much to the foregoing comments, some by people obviously with far more (crypto)zoological knowledge than myself. For what little it's worth, my assessment would be that it's a photo of a genuine though not necessarily live animal, not a thylacine but related, touched up by the newspaper's darkroom as was pretty routine practice for the era. The apparent lack of effort on the photographer's part to exploit the image more argues for her sincerity.
One thing I would question is the dismissal by some of the animal's possible identity as a thylacoleo (or close relative) on the grounds of its smaller size. Might it not be a juvenile? This could also go some way towards explaining the anomalous (for an adult) markings: I'd expect that if/when the picture lab played with the picture, they would have exaggerated stripes, etc but not invented them entirely, so the animal likely did have markings somewhat like those now seen, but less distinct.
Posted by: Terry Hunt | August 22, 2010 10:25 AM