Viral Video Debunked: Alleged Tasmanian Tiger Sighting Turns Out to be a Pademelon

In Australian culture, the Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine, is something of a mythic beast.

Unlike other cryptids, it actually used to be around, say, the Chupacabra, but the last known living member of its kind died in captivity in 1936.

Tiger sightings have been reported continuously in Tasmania, an island off Australia's south coast, in the 85 years since. Claims in the local press are an almost monthly feature, but there is a bold, new statement suggesting "not ambiguous" evidence for the existence of thylacine.

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Viral Video

Neil Waters, president of the Thylacine Awareness Group of Australia, claims to have rediscovered thylacine in a camera trap set up in north-east Tasmania in a video uploaded to YouTube on Monday. As he walks down the street with a can of beer in his hand, he says, "I know what they are and so do a few independent expert witnesses,"

Waters claims to have seen not only one thylacine-but an entire family, flicking through images from his SD card. The whole Waters video can be viewed below.

Not Just One but a Family

"We believe that the first image is a mother, and we know that the second image is a child because it's so small, and the third image... He's a dad," says Waters. 'The baby has stripes,' he notes, among a litany of other features he offers as evidence. The images were sent to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, according to Waters.

During its first day online, the video racked up almost 100,000 views.

In the video, Waters states that he handed the pictures to Nick Mooney, a Thylacine expert, at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG). On Tuesday afternoon, local time, a TMAG spokesperson said Mooney had reviewed and evaluated Waters' material.

Debunked

Nick Mooney has concluded that the animals are improbable to be thylacines and are most likely Tasmanian pademelons, based on the physical characteristics shown in the photographs provided by Waters, TMAG told CNET.

A pademelon is a small marsupial with minimal fur on its back, similar to a wallaby.

It's hard to take reports like this at face value with no reported sightings since 1936.

The tiger was thought to be a silent and solitary creature.

If they are still truly around after all these years, how did they manage to stay hidden all the time? Especially with the fact that in 2021 with the proliferation of mobile cameras and ever-dwindling places to hide, how did they remain undocumented.

Waters says the party reveals the tigers are breeding in the footage, but there is now more extreme scrutiny than believers.

The Department of Parks, Water, and Environment of the Tasmanian Government thinks that any kind of population will potentially suffer from inbreeding, making long-term survival untenable. "Even if there did exist a few remaining individuals, it is unlikely that such a tiny population would be able to maintain a sufficient genetic diversity to allow for the viable perpetuation of the species in the long-term," he writes.

Call for Resurrection

For over two decades, there have been calls to resurrect extinct creatures in Australia. In 1999, as director of the Australian Museum, paleontologist Michael Archer took over and committed around $57 million to a project that could clone the iconic marsupial from old specimens.

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