Technology has enabled us to view the glimpses of one of the finest, though deadly, creatures that became extinct, before most of the living human beings were even born, in 1936.
Resurfaced video clip from the Australian National Film and Sound Archive shows the last documented clip of extinct thylacine, most commonly called the Tasmanian Tiger.
The footage was part of “Tasmania the Wonderland,” a travel documentary. The shooting was made in 1935, more than 12 months after making the second most popular clip of the tiger in December 1933.
The archive confirmed the existence of fewer than a dozen thylacine clips. It noted that the shootings took place either at the Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart, Tasmania, or at the London Zoo in England.
Altogether, there’re just only three minutes of black and white clips. Therefore, the resurfaced clip adds another 21 seconds to the tiger’s archive.
On 7 September 1936, the last Tasmanian Tiger died in captivity. That was barely a year after the filming of the resurfaced footage.
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Popular opinion believes that the photographer and exhibitor Sidney Cook shot the travelogue at the Beaumaris Zoo but never finished it.
The last Tasmanian Tiger
In the clip uploaded to the archive earlier this week, the tiger was roaming in his cage. Also, it interacted with zookeeper Arthur Reid, who was trying to get his attention from outside.
The unnamed narrator said that the tiger, “such a deadly opponent likened to the devil. He added that it “now quite rare” as at the time of the filming.
He added that the thylacine was forced “by the march of civilization out of its natural habitat.”
Also, he claimed that the tiger in the video “is the world’s only one in captivity.”
The archive stated in its press release that since the film’s production, the thylacine was exhibited in New York, Berlin, and other locations around the world.
They hope to find the clips of one of the tigers in color, or one with capture sound from the animal.
