Researchers Just Unearthed ‘Lost’ Footage of the Extinct Tasmanian Tiger

For 85 years, the last known footage of the now-extinct Tasmanian tiger sat forgotten in the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA), until it was recently unearthed by researchers from a Facebook group called the Tasmanian Tiger Archive.

The NFSA’s newly digitized 21-second clip is part of a nine-minute travelogue called Tasmania the Wonderland from 1935, presumed to be the work of Brisbane filmmaker Sydney Cook (though the film is missing its credits, so that remains unconfirmed). It shows a striped, dog-like creature named Benjamin—the last of his kind ever in captivity—pacing his cage at Tasmania’s Beaumaris Zoo, which shut down in 1937.

Tasmanian tigers aren’t actually tigers—they’re carnivorous marsupials called thylacines. TreeHugger reports that the species died out in mainland Australia about 2000 years ago, but they managed to survive in Tasmania until the 20th century. Though thylacines were officially declared extinct after Benjamin died from suspected neglect in September 1936, the status has been highly contested to this day.

“Do I think the animal is extinct?” Neil Waters of the Thylacine Awareness Group of Australia told HowStuffWorks. “No, because I have seen two and been coughed/barked at by one in South Australia in 2018. There have been more than 7000 documented sightings of thylacines (or animals that appear to be thylacines), with the majority of those sightings on mainland Australia.”

Considering that fewer than a dozen known clips—a total of just over three minutes—of film footage showing thylacines exist today, Benjamin’s 21 seconds of fame in Tasmania the Wonderland is a monumental rediscovery. And, since thylacines were exhibited in zoos in Washington, New York, Sydney, Berlin, and other cities after the advent of film, the NFSA is optimistic that more footage could turn up in time.