Tasmanian tiger— back from the dead

Tasmanian tiger to be reborn - 10th October 2022

Scientists at the University of Melbourne have launched an ambitious project which attempts to reintroduce the Tasmanian tiger. The species died out almost a century ago, but scientists will utilise and modify DNA to bring back the strange creature.

Despite its name, the Tasmanian tiger, or "thylacine" as zoologists call it, wasn't actually a cat but a large doglike creature, with black stripes across its back. It was a marsupial, having a pouch on its stomach for its babies. Being carnivorous, it would eat anything it could find, including its cousin the kangaroo.

Blamed by European settlers in Tasmania for killing their livestock, hunters were offered rewards for shooting the animal. In 1936, the last Tasmanian tiger - Benjamin - died in a zoo, bringing the species to an end.

Scientists like biosciences professor Andrew Pask now plan to revive the species. They anticipate doing this through digitally reconstructing its DNA and then modifying the DNA of the thylacine's closest living relative - a mouse-sized marsupial called the dunnart. Pask said, "We are essentially engineering our dunnart cell to become a Tasmanian tiger cell."

A dunnart will then be used as a substitute or "surrogate" mother for the Tasmanian tiger foetus. This is possible since marsupials like the dunnart and thylacine give birth to tiny young, the dimensions of a grain of rice.

News of the thylacine's return has had a mixed response. The ancient animal was important to the culture of Aboriginal people. However, critics say that the project's funding should be used to stop the extinctions currently happening globally, of significant species such as the hawksbill turtle.

Agreeing that this is a considerable problem, Pask declared, "This technology offers a chance to correct this and could be applied in exceptional circumstances."