I really meant Tails.
Here is the thing.
You find a photo like this below
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| The hunt for the australian tasmanian tiger |
And you would look at the tail and go "okay, thylacines have striped tails".
And that would appear be a logical statement...
But then you notice that not all thylacine speciments have striped tails...actually the majority do not.
So what gives...?
Simple..
They dont..what photos we have of the animals alive..and short 8mm film clips...that appear to show a striped tail..are actually just showing the vertabrae shadow under the skin.
But back to the photo.
The stripes are painted on...thanks to the work of Cameron Campbell and Dr Sleighholme we know that the animal above is "the specimen is listed in the ITSD as the thylacine in Walter Rothschild's collection in Tring (Hertfordshire in the UK .The stripes on this specimen have been painted on, and are not due to natural pigment."
And then Cameron kindly provided this next photo.
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| The hunt for the australian tasmanian tiger |
There are one or two other taxidermy specimens where this has been done. The other specimen that comes to mind is the taxidermy in the National Museum of Ireland, in which the stripes continue along the full length of the tail (photo attached). You will never find this anomaly on any of the specimen skins, or for that matter, in a living thylacine.
The worlds greatest data base on the thylacine is this site