Sunday, September 23, 2012

Autobiography of an exinct animal

My name is  Thylacine.  Some people call me Tasmanian tiger because I have  striped back . Some people call me  Tasmanian wolf . May be I look like a wolf. Do I ?
I was a native of continental Australia. My relatives lived in Tasmania and New Guinea too . Tasmania and New Guinea are islands and are part of Australia.  
I was the largest known carnivorous marsupial of modern times. Do you know what a Marsupial is? Marsupials are kind of mammals whose babies are born incompletely developed and are typically carried and suckled in a pouch on the mother's belly.
Our species , that is the  modern thylacine , first appeared on the earth about 4 million years ago.
Location and Habitat
We originally used to roam all over the mainland of Australia, but was confined to the island of Tasmania for the last 3,000 years. We used to live in forest and scrubland close to our grazing preys like wallabies.
Appearance
Let me tell you how I look. 
I resembled a large, short-haired dog with a stiff tail similar to that of a Kangaroo. My body colour was yellow-brown with  dark stripes half way down my back  which got me the nickname, "Tiger”. I had dense and soft hair in my body. My ears were erect and rounded and  about 8 cm long . My belly was cream-coloured. We typically had a length of 1 to 1.3 m and our tail was about half a metre. Our height was about 60 cm and we weighed about 20 to 30 kg.
We were one among the two marsupials to have a pouch in both male and female. The other is the water opossum. The female had a backward facing pouch. The male thylacine had a pouch that act as a protective sheath, covering the male's external reproductive organs while he runs through thick bush.
You know one interesting thing ? I could open my jaw upto 120 degrees and I had 46 teeth !!!!!
Diet
 Do you know what I used to eat?
I was a carnivorous animal. I was a nocturnal hunter hunting other marsupials like wallabies, smaller animals like rodent and also sheep. I hunted at night by smell using my pace and stamina to run down smaller animals until they became tired. I used to use my wide opening jaws to rip out its preys neck .I liked to feed only  from the fresh kill.
 Breeding
 We, the Thylacines typically used to breed once a year, with the young being carried in their mother’s backward facing pouch. After approximately 6-8 months the young ones too big for the pouch were left alone in a sheltered place while their mothers went for food.
Why did we become extinct?
We were living happily. That is when the most unfortunate things happened to us,

A wild dog called “dingo” arrived in mainland of Australia. We had to compete with him for food. The dingo hunted for the same food, but was a lot more efficient and adaptable. Slowly we became extinct about 2000 years ago.
Although we were extinct in the mainland of Australia, we survived in Tasmania till 1930.  European settlers were there in Tsmania. The introduction of sheep in 1824 led to conflict between the settlers and thylacines. We were blamed for killing their sheep. Government offered rewards to people for killing us. There were other reasons too for our extinction.
We had to compete with wild dogs introduced by European settlers; we lost most of our habitats due to grazing and farming. There was some disease  too that killed some of us.
We became extremely rare by late 1920’s.
The last known Thylacine to be killed in the wild was killed in 1930 by Wilf Batty, a farmer from Tasmania.
The last captive thylacine, later referred to as "Benjamin" was captured in 1933 sent to the Hobart Zoo where it lived for three years. This thylacine died on 7 September 1936. It is believed to have died as the result of neglect—locked out of its sheltered sleeping quarters, it was exposed to a rare occurrence of extreme Tasmanian weather: extreme heat during the day and freezing temperatures at night. To commemorate our loss 7th September is declared as 'Threatened Species Day'  in Tasmania . This is to raise awareness of all the threatened species in the world, and to encourage action.
We held the status of endangered species until the 1980s.But nobody could confirm our existence. So  Tasmanian government declared as extinct in 1986.
Today our pictures have been used extensively as a symbol of Tasmania. I am featured on the officialTasmanian coat of arms and also on the official logos of Tourism Tasmania.Since 1998, my picture has been prominently displayed on Tasmanian vehicle number plates.
We remain now only in pictures. That is my story friends. So , dear friends, I would like to conclude with this small piece of advice.
Every creature has as much right to  life as you do. So, protect and care for them.
PLEASE DON'T SHOOT animals WITH GUNS, DO WITH CAMERAS IF YOU WANT.

1 comment:

  1. It is nice but sad and hear touching story , well written.While reading through the same one cant help feeling sympathetic towards this ill fated distant cousin of homo sapiens. One should also give credit to the writer for expressing towards this interesting animal of the past.

    Nature has its ways so cruel and unjust - unjust by humanitarian values.However the fundamental rule that manifest in nature is that if the survival of the fittest. The evolution of various life forms to what we see them as today has been a tragic and adventurous story at the same time. Competition is un avoidable and only the ones who can dominate persists. Rest perish and disappear from earth for ever.

    The tendency to compete and dominate is intrinsic to all beings including humans. Though with highly evolved human values ,we the home sapiens have suppressed our desire to dominate over others to certain extent.We have invented less harmful substitutes for competitions , in terms of sports completions, exams, quizz , beauty shows, etc as an rather "harmless " alternative to quench our thirst for competing and coming on top.

    While , one may wonder why we humans still carry such traits to dominate , even when we have developed civilizations and tools to produce the resources and consumable for our existence ( and hence scarcity, which fuels competition is no more a major factor) . The key to the answer lies in our genetics - the gene pool we carried forward from our earlier generations and from the other species existed before them. Such traits to dominate and belittle others manifest even today in ordinary humans and with out our knowledge it comes out in our inter relation ships with others. While this being an inherent trait it is difficult to completely negate its influence n our life , yet carefully reflecting upon our thoughts and actions would help them to suppress the effects of such basic instincts,thereby cleansing us of prejudices and ill conceived opinions about others, which gets manifested due to such common genetic patterns.

    Coming back to the subject , one may get really shocked if he were to know the number of different kinds of species that got extinct over the evolution so far. It is many many times than the total number species that live on earth today!!

    Life is precious and every form of life need to be cared for. But the big unanswered question remains for ever. And that is how life was formed first time on earth , and is there any other forms of life in any other part of the universe.

    The answer to these question will be unearthed by science in future. And the young children of today have a big role to play in that as they pursue that path of scientific thinking and exploration. . . !

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