SUSAN CARLAND: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be aware that this series
may contain images, voices or names of deceased persons.
BRUCE SCATES: Welcome to ‘Susan Carland: In Conversation’. This interview is a supplement to
Episode 2 in the Australian Journey series, ‘A Land of the Weird and the Monstrous’.
SUSAN CARLAND: I’m in the old vault of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. And I'm
surrounded by all these boxes of some of the last remaining physical evidence of
that remarkable creature, the thylacine. Joining us to talk about this today is
curator Kathyrn Medlock. Kathryn, thanks for joining us. KATHRYN MEDLOCK: That’s fine.
SUSAN CARLAND: Kathryn, we mostly know the thylacine by its more popular name, the ‘Tasmanian
tiger’ – but did the thylacine ever exist anywhere else? Perhaps on the
mainland of Australia? KATHRYN MEDLOCK: Yes, it did exist all across Australia but by the time
Europeans arrived in Tasmania in 1803 it was confined to the island which was cut
off by Bass Strait. The theory is that it went extinct on the mainland with the
introduction of the dingo from northern Australia around 5000 years ago. And so
when Europeans arrived they had heard that there was this large carnivore in
the bush. They were a bit fearful of it. They gave
it the name ‘Tasmanian tiger,’ ‘Tasmanian wolf’, ‘Marsupial hyena’. So all these names
connoted a fear and a worry about having such a horrible, fierce animal.
SUSAN CARLAND: I understand that in Tasmania the destruction of the thylacine was really
part of a deliberate government policy. Is that correct? KATHRYN MEDLOCK: Yes, the Tasmanian
government introduced a bounty on the thylacine in 1888 and that was because
the agricultural industry was getting established and they wanted to have
sheep farming and they blame – it was difficult – they had a difficult time
getting sheep farming going, and they blamed the thylacine for sheep losses.
But it’s most likely it was wild dogs roaming around. There are only a couple
of reports of thylacines killing sheep and no doubt thylacines would have
got sheep but it probably would have been
sickly young lambs and, and things like that. But it was a convenient scapegoat.
So the farmers lobbied the government and eventually to save sheep farming the
government placed a bounty on the thylacine, and they paid one pound per
head for a dead animal and five shillings for a young animal. And over
2000 animals were killed under this scheme. So it was very destructive for
the population, although, saying that, there were some people that were against
the bounty. It only went through Parliament by one vote. Yes, some people
were concerned that the thylacine might go extinct and that
goes right back to the 1860s. John Gould, the famous ornithologist, he predicted
that the mammal might go extinct but having a bounty on the thylacine – it was
also – it was a convenient way to give farm workers a bit of extra income. The
bodies had to be destroyed so the museum wasn’t very happy about that because it
prevented museums from getting specimens.
SUSAN CARLAND: Why did the bodies have to be destroyed?
KATHRYN MEDLOCK: To prevent them making a second claim. SUSAN CARLAND: Ohhh!
Some environmental historians explain the
policy to destroy the thylacine using the term ‘placental chauvinism’ – can you
tell me what that means?
KATHRYN MEDLOCK: Yes, well the first thing to understand
is that the Tasmanian tiger was a marsupial. Its young are born at a very
very early stage – probably no bigger than that – and they crawl into their mother’s pouch,
and then they finish their development in their pouch just the same
as a kangaroo, a koala, those more familiar marsupials. And there was this
idea that marsupials were somehow inferior to placental mammals, like dogs
and cats that give birth to their young and at advanced stage. So there were many
reports of marsupials being dumb, you know. In zoos, they reported them – they
said they were boring and not very interesting. I mean they were interesting
to zoologists but generally the idea was that
they were inferior to placentals so that no doubt coloured people’s ideas about
the value of this animal. And they didn’t really see it as being an important part
of the Tasmanian environment. SUSAN CARLAND: What you said about the marsupial – these were not,
in fact, taken ‘in utero’. These were taken from the mother’s pouch.
KATHRYN MEDLOCK: Yes, each one of
these baby thylacine was taken from their mother’s pouch. They were born when
they were very, very small and they probably lived in the pouch for five or
so months. We’re not really sure. The mother could have up to four young in
her pouch at one time and they would have to stay in their mother’s pouch
at least until they got fur. So they could be out and about and even then
probably would go in and out of the pouch a little bit, just like kangaroos do.
Very, very much the same. Unfortunately, we don’t know how long they stayed in
their mother’s pouch for, because nobody did ecological or behavioural studies in
those days. This one here is probably around about four months old, we think.
It was collected in 1902 and the mother had two young in her pouch at one time and
you can see they haven’t got their fur on them yet. They’re at a quite early
stage of development – they wouldn’t have been able to survive out of their
mother’s pouch. They wouldn’t leave the mother’s pouch until they had fur and
they were able to sort of be, more or less, kept warm, and a bit on their own.
Yes, they’re very interesting specimens. The mother of this animal
here was killed in the bounty scheme – it came from central Tasmania. And the two
young were taken out of the mother’s pouch and the mother animal was sent to
to the Sydney University for dissection.
SUSAN CARLAND: So, do you think there’s any chance that the thylacine could still be out in the wild?
KATHRYN MEDLOCK: Well, unfortunately there has been
no verifiable evidence of thylacine in the wild since the last one
died in the Hobart Zoo in 1936. There has been nobody, there’s been no
roadkill. No one’s found any evidence of them which is very sad actually
but it’s difficult to prove something’s not there. You can always prove it’s
there, but you can’t prove its absence. There’s no doubt the thylacine
did survive after 1936 – there would have been some out in the bush –and there are
stories that there have been people who had sightings. But unfortunately
sightings don’t ‘cut it’ – you need evidence. SUSAN CARLAND: Today the thylacine is celebrated all
across Tasmania. You can see pictures of the Tasmanian tiger everywhere, even on
my taxi, it was on the number plate. But that wasn't the attitude in the early
20th century, was it? KATHRYN MEDLOCK: No, it wasn’t and I find that really
interesting. Actually, in the early 20th century and in the 1800s, it was
certainly seen as a pest. People didn’t want to be reminded of it. They just
wanted it destroyed and gone. I have a story from a woman. She told me that her
uncle had a thylacine skin and it was hanging up in the wall in his house.
‘When he died,’ she said, ‘my mother and I, that was the first thing we put on the fire.
We didn't want to be reminded of this animal’. And then it sort of changed.
About the 1970s it seemed to change and people started sort of getting a bit
more of an understanding of what was gone. I guess with more emphasis on
ecology and environment and things like that. And it’s become an icon.
It’s really an international icon of extinction now and it’s an international –
and it’s a very much a symbol of Tasmania, as well. It’s on our state coat
of arms, number plates, it’s everywhere. SUSAN CARLAND: Museums like this one have a lot of
great specimens of the thylacine and some may even still contain DNA.
Some scientists think that, like in ‘Jurassic Park’, we could extract
that DNA to recreate the thylacine. Do you think that’s possible or even desirable?
KATHRYN MEDLOCK: Well it’s not possible at the moment but who’s to say it won’t be
possible in the future? These specimens were collected a hundred years ago and
these are the sort of specimens that are the focus of a lot of those programs.
They're stored in ethanol which doesn’t destroy the DNA too much. But there’s no doubt
the DNA will be degraded. But you can’t say it will never happen.
That molecular science is going ahead really quickly so it could well happen
one of these days. As to whether it’s desirable or not,
that’s another issue, you know. And it’s it’s ethics, it’s ethical too. I sometimes
think that if they got a thylacine, a live thylacine, it’s going to be a really
valuable animal. Or is it going to be any better off than the poor last one that
was in the zoo, in the film footage? Are they going to put it back into the
Tasmanian bush, you need a population. The first one that they get, it won’t have a
thylacine mother. So we don’t know how much they were maybe taught by their
mother or father or siblings. All those questions, we don't know and also I
wonder if it was reintroduced what would the farmers think? Would they again start
persecuting it and not liking it...? Who knows. And the other thing is that
the Tasmanian environment, sort of, it hasn’t recovered completely from the
loss of the thylacine but its changed. So you’ll be putting an animal back into an
altered ecology. We don’t know what effect that will have. So there’s a lot
of questions, a lot of questions. SUSAN CARLAND: And remember from ‘Jurassic Park’, the new
animals always turn on their makers, though.
KATHRYN MEDLOCK: You never know, you never know. SUSAN CARLAND: Kathryn, thank you so much to you and all your
colleagues here in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. And you can learn more
about this museum’s fantastic collections online.
The Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery is in Hobart and you can get here straight from a flight from
Melbourne or across the Bass Strait on a ferry and it’s well worth a visit.
[Music]
SUSAN CARLAND: Tasmania isn’t the only place you’ll
find physical evidence of the thylacine. Here in the National Museum of Australia
they have a number of important specimens of the thylacine and joining
me to talk about this today is Dr George Main, senior curator here at the
National Museum of Australia. Thank you for joining me.
GEORGE MAIN: Oh, you’re welcome. SUSAN CARLAND: George, I understand that the mainland did once contain thylacines.
Can you tell me more about how they existed here and what collections do you
have here at the museum that can explain that situation? GEORGE MAIN: We know that thylacines
lived on the mainland. There’s a lot of specimens that have been found around
the country, including this extraordinary mummified thylacine head which is
thousands of years old. Well, we have it on loan from the West
Australian Museum. It was found in a cave on the Nullarbor plain in Western Australia.
So it’s an extraordinary item and it’s one of a number of specimens
and bones that have been found across the country. And we also know the
thylacine lived on the mainland because Aboriginal rock art across the
country represents thylacines. SUSAN CARLAND: I know that in Tasmania the thylacine
was hunted to extinction. Is that what happened on the mainland as well?
Or was there some other situation? GEORGE MAIN: Oh look, there’s conflicting theories.
One idea is that the introduction of the dingo about 4000 years ago from the north of
Australia led to the destruction of the mainland thylacine. Dingoes are bigger
than thylacine – they hunt in packs, they’ve got bigger brains and it’s
thought that they may have it actually, you know, hunted thylacines to extinction,
or also competed for food, for prey species. And another theory is that
around the same time, human populations were increasing substantially in
Australia. People were becoming more sophisticated in their hunting and
gathering techniques and they could have also, like in Tasmania, have been hunting
the thylacine, and also perhaps competing for food.
SUSAN CARLAND: And was the climate very different on the mainland to Tasmania?
GEORGE MAIN: Ah, about at the same time as the dingo
arrived in Australia we did go through a period of climate variability and which
didn’t affect Tasmania in the same way and it is thought that that variability
may have made conditions more difficult for thylacine and may have been a factor in their demise.
SUSAN CARLAND: This is an amazing piece? Do you
have anything else here at the NMA that you would consider to be a really
important specimen of the thylacine?
GEORGE MAIN: We do. We actually have here, in our back of house storage areas,
the only full adult specimen of a thylacine known in the world.
SUSAN CARLAND: Oh wow! Well, let’s go check it out! GEORGE MAIN: Terrific.
SUSAN CARLAND: And here we are. So where is this specimen from?
GEORGE MAIN: Well, it came to the Museum from the Australian Institute of Anatomy Collection
which was put together by Sir Colin McKenzie
who was an orthopaedic surgeon who also had a role in developing the Healesville
Sanctuary in Victoria near Melbourne, and it’s thought that he may have acquired
this specimen from that sanctuary. SUSAN CARLAND: Right! Now George, I know some scientists think
that it might be possible to clone a living thylacine, that there might be
enough intact DNA in specimens that they can extract it and bring it back from
extinction? Do you think this is possible and do you even think that this would be a good idea?
GEORGE MAIN: Well, some scientists think it could be possible. I do know that a
number think it wouldn’t be possible – that this sort of mode of
preservation doesn’t allow for enough DNA to be abstracted. But I mean, if it is
possible, it’s going to be a very expensive and time-consuming process and
some people do argue that the resources that would go have to go into that
process could be better spent on protecting the habitat of species that
are now endangered and that are at risk of going extinct.
And I think there are some other issues too about efforts to clone an extinct
species. I mean it does tend to give people an understanding that maybe
science can step in and save the day. Whereas really what is happening in a
lot of these extinction events, and, and we’re living in the midst of a massive
extinction event at the moment, is that people are acting, you know, societies are
acting in destructive ways for cultural reasons that are really complex and if
we rely too much on science and technology to get us out of these sort
of problems and to, you know, bring species back from the dead.
It seems to me that that gets in the road of addressing some of these big cultural
questions that are really at the heart of the extinction process. SUSAN CARLAND: Right. Yes, I
see George. Thank you so much to you and your colleagues here at the National
Museum of Australia. GEORGE MAIN: That’s a pleasure. SUSAN CARLAND: And you can learn more
about the way the Museum grapples with these big cultural questions at their
online collections. And remember, no visit to Australia’s national capital is
complete without a tour of our National Museum.