I first posted this on another website and decided to repost it here.
The last of its kind. Benjamin wasn't male as the name would indicate. She was female. Known as a Tasmanian Tiger although she wasn't really a tiger.
The species got that name because of the prominent stripes that blanketed the rear half of the coat. She was a Thylacine, a large carnivorous marsupial. Benjamin spent the last of her days in a small pen at the Hobart Zoo in Hobart Tasmania, Australia where she died in 1936.
Thylacines were quite prevalent in Australia until 3 or 4 thousand years ago when they became extinct in the Australian mainland due to its inability to compete with dingos. Dingos, introduced to Australia by the Aborigines, always had a relationship with humans which gave them a bit of a head start over the Thylacines who were their main competition.
When the Thylacine's habitat shrunk to include only Tasmania, competition for resources such as food and land, again with dingos, humans, and other mammals continued to help erode the populations.
In the wild humans considered it a pest stealing chickens and small livestock in its search for food. Bounties were placed on its head but in what seems to be a complete contradiction many were captured and kept as pets. .....Thylacine As A Pet
Young thylacine pups in captivity would play with objects such as dangled string, much like a kitten or puppy. Unlike dogs, they did not fight over food. They were generally unaggressive even when grown and, like dogs, were tolerant of children. Irene Semmens recalled that as a child in the 1920s, she played with the children whose family kept a thylacine as a watchdog. If, during the course of a game, a ball landed on or near the thylacine, the children simply walked up to the animal, picked up the ball and continued playing. The thylacine made no aggressive response. It behaved just like a well-trained domestic house-dog
Eventually the Tasmanian Tiger was hunted to death. The species was wiped out before anyone realized how low the numbers were.
Sad really.
Vintage footage of Benjamin:
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