Death of the last captive thylacine
The last known thylacine (Tasmanian tiger) died at Hobart Zoo on 7 September 1936, weeks after the species was given legal protection. It was declared extinct in 1982 (IUCN) and 1986 (Tasmania).
1936 CE · -42.88, 147.34 · status: official
The account
Bounty hunting, habitat loss and disease wiped out the species. Its official extinction opened one of the world's most active 'cryptid' searches, since many Tasmanians and mainlanders continue to report sightings.
The researched reading
The extinction was real, though it probably came later than 1936. Most modern sightings are misidentified dogs and foxes, and survival today is a small but not impossible chance.
| Explanation | Weight | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Something known, misidentified | 40% | Most modern “tiger” reports, especially on the mainland, are dogs, foxes, mangy or striped dogs, or quolls seen briefly. No carcass, road kill, clear photo or DNA has turned up in 90 years. |
| Perception, memory or mind | 18% | The thylacine is a national icon. Expectation and the wish to be the one who sees it shape brief glimpses at dusk, and sightings cluster after media coverage. |
| An unknown or out-of-place animal | 15% | It very likely survived in the wild for some time after the last captive died. Brook et al. (2023) modelled 1,237 records and put extinction most likely between the 1980s and early 2000s, with a small chance it persists in Tasmania’s south-west. That keeps a real but small share for survival today. |
| A cultural story | 10% | Sighting lore, clubs and rewards keep the story alive independently of the evidence. |
| Undetermined | 10% | The share a generic explanation had beyond what has been shown for this case: it fits many cases like this one, but has not been demonstrated for this one. |
| A hoax or fabrication | 5% | Several photographs and videos offered as proof have been staged or doctored. |
| Genuinely anomalous | 2% | A surviving thylacine would be a zoological fact, not an anomaly. |
Official position: The last known thylacine died at Hobart Zoo in 1936; the species was declared extinct by the IUCN in 1982 and by Tasmania in 1986.