u/lprattcryptozoology

During the late 19th century, crowds across America eagerly paid a dime to meet the "Man-Bear," a snarling creature advertised as half man and half beast. Behind the sensational ads, however, stood David Mysherall, a man whose severe congenital deformities were transformed into a successful sideshow attraction.

Man-Bear advertising illustration. Colorized.

By Kevin J. Guhl/American Strangeness

Late 19th-century America loved human curiosities. Traveling sideshows introduced audiences to giants, dwarfs, tattooed men, bearded ladies, and numerous other "freaks of nature" whose extraordinary appearances were embellished by imaginative showmen. Few attractions embodied this fascination better than the "Man-Bear," whose lurid advertisements promised visitors the chance to gaze upon one of nature's greatest aberrations, a terrifying hybrid of man and beast.

Throughout the spring of 1891, the Man-Bear hit Kansas and surrounding areas like a furry tornado. A lengthy newspaper advertorial heralded the monster's appearance in each town it visited, enticing residents to visit a local storefront that would contain this abnormality of nature. "A rare opportunity will be afforded our citizens in general of seeing one of nature's greatest freaks—alive and living—that may not occur again in a life time," the article promised. All that was being asked for was the small admission fee of 10 cents, simply to "cover current expenses occasioned by stopping over."

According to the announcement, which included a fierce and sneering illustration of the hybrid, the Man-Bear was alive (a qualifier that presumably assured the skeptical public it wasn't a taxidermy specimen), white, weighed 153 pounds and was about 27 years old. Man-Bear was able to speak plainly and distinctly (if insensibly), a very human trait. However, his head was said to greatly resemble a bear's, along with a complete absence of knee-caps, forcing him to walk on all fours. His feet were "formed exactly as those of a bear, being entirely devoid of heels." He reportedly had "claws, six in number, on each of his fore limbs, webbed out beyond the second joints, while the nails split in the middle and hook at the ends." His forehead was about an inch in height, with deep-set eyes about half the natural size, under long, black eyebrows. The Man-Bear's ears were described as being "as large as a silver quarter," and the lower part of his face as halfway between that of a man and the muzzle of a bear. He lacked any teeth except for a few "snags" in the front. Notably, an earlier version of the illustration showed the furry Man-Bear with a more human head.

Earlier version of the Man-Bear ad illustration.

The Man-Bear was presented by Dr. Ezra L. Buckey, "a man with a melodious voice" stated to be an enterprising agent in the employ of the Northwestern Museum Syndicate, headquartered in Chicago. Buckey was accompanied in his traveling show by another man named E. L. Sanderson. The Man-Bear, displayed to the public on a platform elevated five feet above the floor, was said to have attained his odd appearance due his mother having been frightened by a bear during his gestation. In another version of the Man-Bear's origin, his brutal father cut the throat of a bear cub and tossed it onto his pregnant wife's lap. Her baby thus inherited two birthmarks on his neck that looked like the healed scars of two knife thrusts, as well as ursine characteristics. Buckey cordially offered all practicing physicians, city and county officials, and members of the press a free pass to examine what he purported to be a genuine freak of nature, or "Lusus Naturae."

The press, at least, took Buckey up on the free tickets, and the reviews it published ranged from glowing to condemnation...

"Dr. E. L. Buckey was in town yesterday and raked in many a dime by exhibiting his Man-bear. This is certainly one of nature's greatest freaks, a human being with power of speech but the actions and movements of a bear. It is no fraud," proclaimed the Territorial Topic of Purcell, in the Chickasaw Nation (today within Oklahoma). The Weekly Telegram of Winfield, Kansas wrote, "The man-bear which was exhibited here last week was a most wonderful monstrosity and well worth the small admission fee. Notwithstanding the gentlemen in charge have been maligned by some newspapers, they are gentlemen in every way and advertise nothing which they do not show."

More common were reactions like that of the Osage County Times, which wrote, "The two fellows with what they call a 'Man-Bear' ought to be arrested as frauds. Their exhibit is nothing more than a deformed human being—an idiot. Every town they stop at they tell the story of being on the way to the Chicago Zoological Gardens, and have a day or so to spare. They are frauds." Or the Newton Daily Republican, which stated, "The 'man-bear' is merely a deformed man who has no more of the appearance of a bear than has a cow. Nor does he resemble in the least what his published portrait would indicate him to be... The 'man-bear' is a fraud, and should be avoided."

Some reporters just had fun with the Man-Bear's visit. "The bear man scared J. A. Bills so badly that his hair actually stood up on the top of his head," wrote the Arkansas City Traveler. "Charles Barnett is hiding out. When the man bear took after him he broke out of the room on a run. He has not been seen since." When the Man-Bear toured Indiana that November, the Evansville Journal quipped, "The 'Man Bear' on exhibition on Main Street isn't a marker to the women bare who will be on exhibition at The Grand to-night."

Despite the critics, it appears the Man-Bear show was a success. "The room where the Man-Bear was exhibited was crowded all afternoon, and the dimes contributed by the curious kept up a continuous jingle at the door-keepers stand," reported the Winfield Tribune. According to the Wellington Monitor, "A travelling showman was in town this week with a poor, deformed creature, whom he exhibited as a 'man-bear,' in the old Campbell show store room. It was a fake of the rankest description, but lots of people squandered a dime to see it, though a minute's look at the unfortunate 'freak' satisfied the curiosity of nearly everybody."

Contemporary reports described the Man-Bear's raucous antics, showing he was as much an entertaining personality as a freak show. As a staple of the act, doctors would step up on stage to examine the hybrid, after which the keeper would "foolishly" bring his charge down onto the floor. At this point, Man-Bear would break free and rush toward the audience, knocking things over and aiming to catch spectators in his "playful, loving, strong-armed" embrace. During a stop in Ludlow, Illinois, several ladies stepped into a caboose in which Man-Bear was housed without knowing of his presence "and were somewhat hysterically embarrassed, so to speak."

The Freeport, Illinois Bulletin even once managed to snag an "interview" with the Man-Bear. The reporter was ushered through a doorway that actually had a doorplate reading "Man-Bear" above its entrance. There he found the Man-Bear seated on a table with his hind feet crossed wobblily underneath him, clad in the remains of a sleeveless flannel undershirt and trunks that reached halfway to where a person's knees would normally be. "His face is not handsome. It looks like something like a ripe squash hit with an axe," the writer brutally assessed, further describing the Man-Bear's forehead that retreated back to just over his eyebrows and merged with a "door mat" of back hair. "He has an eye like a seed-onion and as expressionless as the platform of the Greenback party. When he looks long and earnestly at you, you simply form the impression that it is good to be somewhere else," the article continued. 

According to the Bulletin, "His arms are one of his main features. They are long and thin and the muscles vary from the usual program by being on the under side, so that when he wants to show off he has to do his fighting backward. At the end of these arms come a couple of hands—hands that are dreadful to contemplate. Not content with a double thumb he has five fingers beside, so that when he pours out a drink he could cover anything not larger than a seltzer bottle. His lower limbs are not mates and he walks with equal facility whether standing up or sitting down, by reason of this curious malformation. The soles of his feet come where the inside of the ankle ought to be. He has no knee-caps and therefore the manager takes a night-cap instead."

The Man-Bear spoke to the reporter in "a sort of hand-me-down English," spewing a torrent of curse words and requesting chewing tobacco, puppies and cough medicine. To close the interview, Man-Bear playfully grabbed the writer's ear and yelled in his face until his "whiskers vibrated." 

"It is not given to him to lead victorious armies or to place the banner on the farthest outpost. He can not sway vast audiences with inspired eloquence nor can he play slide trombone in a German band," the Bulletin surmised. "But as a man-bear he occupies a field hitherto untrodden by the foot of man. Without fear of losing his job, with no dread opposition of rivalry, no fear of monopolies or trusts, he goes through life with no thought of the morrow or what may be bruin for him."

So, who was the man behind the Man-Bear? His biography derives from the numerous articles planted in the press by his promoters over the years, so it's  hard to parse fact from fiction. Although the details drifted slightly over time, nearly identical articles were published by the local press coinciding with the Man-Bear's appearance in any given town. It can be gleaned that the Man-Bear's real name was David Mysherall (possibly Myshrall or Norceau) and he was born about 1858. It was consistently stated in his bio that he came from a large family living on the frontier in St. Johns, Queens County, New Brunswick, Canada, although they were later reported to be living in Armstrong County, Texas. His father was French and his mother was Irish. David was apparently one of a dozen brothers and sisters, but the only one born with such deformities. 

A likely (hopefully) fictional part of David's story was that he was kept in solitary confinement until his cruel father set him loose outdoors at the age of 12. He was discovered there by Mr. H. E. Sproul in June of 1881, eating nuts and bark in the woods and acting like a wild animal. As the lore goes, Sproul tamed the wild man  to be "modest, docile and harmless." David was said to be mischievous, playful and inoffensive despite his immense strength. He also had a fondness for music, and would entertain by singing and playing the organette. Sproul caused a splash in the fall of 1881 as he toured the Man-Bear throughout New England, news of their appearance in Providence, Rhode Island reaching Great Britain. 

David was able to capitalize on his Man-Bear sideshow act for several years. By 1887 he was managed by Buckey, drawing large crowds at they toured states such as Kentucky, Arkansas, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and Texas. (It is unclear if Sproul was another showman who originated the Man-Bear act or just an alias for Buckey.) One 1891 article referred to Mysherall not just as the Man-Bear but as "the Wild Man of Borneo," associating him similar popular sideshow acts of the era under that name, in which performers were presented at semi-feral man-beasts captured in the wild. 

Buckey and Mysherall appear to have continued their Man-Bear act through at least 1893. Despite David's presentation as a fearsome man-beast, it seems he attracted many fans. "The Man-Bear is our idea of an ugly man," wrote the Atchinson Daily Globe in May 1891. "Yet it is said that wherever he goes, he attracts great attention from giddy women. These show people are great for flirting. The Man Bear's correspondence is said to be very large."

Although no diagnosis can be made with certainty from 19th-century newspaper descriptions, Mysherall appears to have suffered from a complex congenital disorder affecting multiple parts of his skeleton rather than the excessive hair growth that characterized many famous "man-beast" sideshow performers, such as Julia Pastrana ("The Bear Woman") and Fedor Jeftichew ("Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy"), who were afflicted by hypertrichosis, abnormal hair growth over the body. Contemporary reports consistently described severe malformations of David's limbs, including absent kneecaps, unusually formed feet, and abnormal hands with extra digits and malformed nails. Collectively, these traits resemble features found in a variety of rare congenital skeletal and developmental disorders recognized today, including conditions affecting the head, limbs, hands and feet. For example, Nail-Patella syndrome can involve absent or underdeveloped kneecaps together with nail abnormalities, while other rare syndromes can produce combinations of extra digits, webbed fingers, and a malformed skull and limbs. However, David's reported deformities were quite extensive, and given the limitations of 19th-century newspaper accounts, as well as the likelihood of promotional exaggeration, any retrospective identification of his condition must remain speculative.

Buckey himself was an interesting character. He was born near Middleburg, Maryland and graduated from Jefferson Medical College in 1883. But Buckey had a "roving disposition," leaving home as a young man to spend six years at sea, and touring around the world three times with entertainment acts. Buckey was described in an 1883 Dallas Herald newspaper article as having light blonde hair, wearing glasses, and claiming to be from London. The doctor professed to have originated the Parisian art of window decorating with silk handkerchiefs. The Herald labeled a Buckey a "fearful fraud," though, after he stiffed their printing room for 1,000 business cards and convinced the Sanger Bros. department store into paying for lessons in the art of hanging goods. After his years touring with the Man-Bear, Buckey managed other sideshow acts including sharpshooter W. J. "Wild Jim" French and Chiquita, a little person who danced and sang. Buckey also entertained children with a traveling puppet and magic show. 

In May 1897, the dashing young Dr. Buckey scandalized Richmond, Kentucky (where he was known for his Man-Bear shows) by eloping with Lulu Shearer, oldest daughter of Capt. T. R. Shearer, proprietor of the Shearer House. The couple, who had been corresponding for some time, married in Lexington. It does not appear that this marriage lasted, for later in life Buckey was married to a woman named Myra. (A 1925 issue of Billboard mentioned that Buckey's first wife predeceased him, but stated that she was from Gallipolis, Ohio.)

In another widely circulated story, Buckey was twice the victim of monkey theft. While residing in Sandusky, Ohio during the summer of 1896, Buckey was entertaining two visitors from Cleveland. As the "wine flowed faster than water from the old town pump," the Clevelanders befriended Jocko, a "naturally destructive" monkey the doctor kept chained in his home. Surely not sober, the guests decided to purloin Jocko and took him back with them on the boat to Cleveland. But Buckey beat them there by train and met the thieves at the docks with police. It cost the monkey-nappers $68 to get out of trouble, and Jocko was returned to his rightful owner. A year later, while living with Buckey in Cleveland, Jocko was once again stolen, this time by a local bookkeeper, A. C. Berry. Jocko was retrieved from where Berry had stashed him and the bookkeeper was locked up on the charge of petit larceny. It is unclear why Clevelanders were so obsessed with stealing monkeys.

Buckey eventually settled in Brooklyn and amassed a large fortune in the real estate business. He was half-owner and resident manager of L. A. Thompson's scenic railway in Buffalo, New York and for 17 years was the American representative for "Animal King" Frank C. Bostock, managing the trained wild animal exhibits at Bostock's Animal Arena on Young's Pier in Atlantic City. During his final world tour in 1914 as manager for Leroy, Talma and Bosco, illusionists, Buckey had to cut short the Australian leg due to the outbreak of the First World War. He and the company of 27 people, a hundred animals and 70 tons of equipment had a harrowing voyage back to San Francisco on an English steamship, all the time carefully evading the patrols of hostile German vessels. Buckey, 62 and by then retired, died of pneumonia on Jan. 13, 1925. He was eulogized as one of the best-known of the United States' old school of showmen.

Ezra L. Buckey

More than a century later, David Mysherall, the "Man-Bear," remains an enigmatic figure. The sensational stories invented by his promoters have obscured what was almost certainly the life of an individual born with extraordinary congenital deformities during an era when mainstream employment and social acceptance for people with such disabilities were often limited, making the sideshow one of the few avenues through which some could earn a living. The newspapers preserve flashes of his mischievous personality—his fondness for music, practical jokes, and startling spectators—but little else survives of the person behind the performance. In separating advertising fiction from eyewitness accounts, the Man-Bear emerges not as a monster or even a fraud, but as another reminder that many of the greatest curiosities of the 19th-century sideshow were, in the end, simply human beings whose humanity was often overshadowed by the legends created around them.

Of course, there are also the infamous reports of a "ManBearPig" in South Park, Colorado, during the early 2000s, but that is a story for another time...

ABSTRACT

The timing and causes of the extinction of Pleistocene megafauna are unresolved issues in the natural history of Australia and New Guinea (Sahul). In Australia, megafauna are believed to have become extinct by c. 41ka, but in the Highlands of New Guinea some species persisted until the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), as late as c. 22ka. Here, we present the first evidence that one of these taxa survived beyond even this timeframe. We describe a manual phalanx from a megafaunal macropodid, probably referable to a quadrupedal, forest-dwelling member of the genus Protemnodon recovered from the Middle Holocene (6.8 - 5.3ka) archaeological deposit of Taora, a coastal rockshelter located west of Vanimo, Papua New Guinea. This late local persistence is likely a consequence of low human populations and a relatively small body size. Its disappearance from the region is coincident with broader decline in local mammalian diversity following post-glacial environmental change. Taora provides the first indication that any of Sahul’s megafauna survived beyond the end of the LGM and highlights geographic and chronological variability in this diverse group’s extinction history.

Bernard Heuvelmans seems to have been one of the first authors to discuss historical instances of animal entanglement in marine debris, a decade or more before the subject became widely discussed in academia. This discussion takes place in In The Wake Of Sea Serpents, a volume characterized by outlandish and unrealistic speculation, which makes this even more interesting!

The significance of this passage was first pointed out, at least to my knowledge, by Robert L. France, in his paper discussing an 1857 Cape Town sighting of a ‘sea serpent’ (it was also partially reprinted in his book Disentangled):

https://preview.redd.it/tzz5fdjawn7h1.png?width=656&format=png&auto=webp&s=2166b3a9ccd89b708c74ea3b07d2463b99599d51

This really is a rare moment of clarity, and interestingly one that seems to have been added to the English translation - the original passage from the French edition cracks a joke about Dr. Biccard’s knowledge of anatomy. There are many such additions to the translation, including the attribution of the word “cryptozoology” to Ivan Sanderson - I don’t believe these have been documented in any detail before.

https://preview.redd.it/bwrwsroewn7h1.png?width=628&format=png&auto=webp&s=c4c5934f526d18767462ad811693901d9c7f5abe

Entanglement in marine debris is of course a huge issue, as it is often fatally inhibitive for animals ensnared. Many studies have looked at contemporary reports of entanglement, or even into the history of entanglement studies, but there is a complete absence of entanglement instances before 1970 outside of three cases (a bird in Hawaii and two seals off Californian), and discussion on the subject as a whole does not consult grey literature, much less works like France’s, at least based on the ~40 I’ve looked at so far. There seems to be an incredibly significant gap regarding historical research on the subject, a gap which Heuvelmans and his sea serpents help to fill.

I no longer have my copy of this book and can't find a version online to check the index. I'm looking to see if there is a reference to Kasai rex in here (2004). Google books search flags it but gives no preview. If anyone has it, can you please check. If there is an entry, please take a screen shot. Thanks.

Alongside the archetypal lake monsters and wildmen, cryptozoology as a subculture is fascinated with late-surviving carnivorous mammals - examples include the Eastern cougar, Hokkaido wolf, and Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine. This category of cryptid is unique because of its materiality and the emotions that come with it. These were real species which existed just shy of 100 years ago, only to fall victim to deliberate, human-caused persecution and presumed extinction. Posthumously, these animals have become symbols of extinction, failures existing as part of a shameful past modern society hopes to distance itself from. As symbols of extinction, they motivate others to challenge or reinvent extinction, whether those are future potential extinctions, or the extinctions of these animals themselves. These extinctions have become extinction narratives, filtered through human understanding and emotion. All named after their former homes, these species have defined local identities, becoming mascots, adorning flags and products, or having their imagery used to recruit interest in conservation or local history. These cryptids are likely biologically extinct, but culturally persist, living as ghosts inhabiting the broader cultural imagination. The thylacine is, in my opinion, the most poignant of these examples, and among the most interesting because its mythologization and commodification have spawned a unique cryptozoological subculture, much like Bigfooting in the United States (for reference, read Jamie Lewis & Andrew Bartlett’s “Bigfooters And Scientific Inquiry”). 

The thylacine was wrongly persecuted, labeled as a threat to the newly established pastoral economy and therefore Tasmanian livelihood. It was slandered as a vampire and child and sheep killer, and even the names we use to communicate and classify the thylacine position it alongside other “maneating” carnivorous mammals - tiger, wolf, panther, dingo, hyena, Thylacinus cynocephalus. The thylacine existed as an evil inhabitant of a savage and primordial land to be paved over by colonists. These attitudes slowly changed and the perception of the thylacine did with them; a reversal even science has supported, with studies finding that the thylacine was poorly equipped for hunting sheep, contrary to reputation. As a nation seeking to define its collective identity, Tasmania "rediscovered the thylacine as a testimony to its enviable uniqueness” (Guellec-Minel, 2017), going so far as to have the date of the last thylacine's death, September 7th, be their National Threatened Species Day. The embracing of the thylacine as an icon has helped put significant distance between the past and present in extinction narratives.

The recognition of these historical wrongs has led to a cultural mourning, an incredible guilt over the loss of a unique and now emblematic animal. Neil Waters of the Thylacine Awareness Group Of Australia, in Living... The Thylacine Dream, cites the following as a motivation for the search for living thylacines:

“A lot of people in Australia feel guilty to a certain degree on a national conscience kind of scale because it was something that we screwed up essentially as a nation. We handled that animal really poorly and we treated it badly and it slipped away from us because of that.”

The cultural mourning of the thylacine manifests in many ways. The shift from terms like “Tasmanian tiger” to the more romantic “thylacine” may be one example. Elsewhere, there continue to be startups and attempts to “clone” thylacines, to resurrect the species from extinction. Rather than cloning, groups like the Thylacine Awareness Group Of Australia, follow reports of potential living thylacines with the goal of rediscovering the species. These all offer a form of redemption, a way to re-assume control, challenge prevailing narratives, and defy extinction. This idea is not unfounded, as with the rediscovery of the Night Parrot or Leadbetter’s possum; it is genuine, plausible hope.

The thylacine may not just represent extinction redemption, but also colonial redemption. The Indigenous Tasmanian population was subjected to villainization and persecution much worse than the thylacine, also labeled “devils” and “beasts”, subjected to the Black War. Both the thylacine and Indigenous Tasmanians are allied by their immortalization with an “endling”, in Benjamin the thylacine and Truganini, the “last” Tasmanian, a race also deemed “extinct”. Benjamin’s body was discarded, and his female replacement was hidden in museum collections, while Truganini’s was desecrated and put on display at the Tasmanian Museum despite her final wishes. In recent years there have been pushes to recognize Indigenous peoples across Tasmania and rehabilitate perceptions of them, just as with the thylacine, and Indigenous artists across both Tasmania and Australia have compared the struggles both have faced. By asserting the thylacine as a local symbol and potentially rediscovering it, there may be a way to alleviate the guilt of history, and to heal the old wounds of Tasmania and its nature. In this way, the thylacine has become a sort of “redeeming genius loci” (Guellec-Minel, 2017).

The narrative of the thylacine's extinction has been simplified and the Indigenous plight has been far removed from it, as discussed by Whittle (2026). This has been called "active forgetting", by Paul Gilroy; "[o]nce the history of the empire became a source of discomfort, shame, and perplexity” for formerly imperial nations, “its complexities and ambiguities were readily set aside. Rather than work through those feelings, that unsettling history was diminished, denied, and then, if possible, actively forgotten.” Whittle continues "What Gilroy foregrounds here is that certain stories and lived experiences are not merely forgotten; rather, those histories that prove to be disruptive to the nation’s narrative about itself are actively written out. This involves the selective acknowledgement of certain strands of a nation’s history and the reduction of the significance of others. In the context of this article, Australia has sought to ‘work through’ its ‘unsettling history’ of species extinction by publicizing images of what was, until very recently, thought to be the last Tasmanian tiger, and by commemorating its death with an annual day of reflection on human-induced species endangerment."

Unfortunately, however, there is likely no redemption to be had. There is little evidence to suggest that thylacines persist in Tasmania, much less Australia. Claimed thylacine sightings are likely caused by artefacts of colonialist presence, digging the trenches of guilt deeper, and proving the distance between past and present farcical.

Mainland Australia is the leader in animal extinctions currently, even with invertebrates. Colonist encroachment and especially the introduction of invasive predators is to blame. Woinarski et al. (2015) report that 30 mammal species (over 10% of native mammals) have gone extinct in Australia since 1788. Subfossils have shown that Australia’s small-mammal fauna (the primary prey for thylacines) was significantly impacted by colonization, with species or populations going extinct before even being documented as present. Australia is now overrun with introduced foxes, while both Australia and Tasmania face severe stray cat and dog problems. Interestingly, these invasive predators (including the Indigenous-introduced dingo) have rewired Australian food webs, restoring levels of food web complexity not seen since the Late Pleistocene - those animals brought over by colonists have truly replaced the native species.

Rock art and fossil evidence currently suggests that thylacines died out on mainland Australia just shy of 3,000 years ago, though poor sampling of fossil deposits in Northern Australia could pull this farther forward. Dingoes seem to have broadly ecologically displaced thylacines, and the aforementioned extinction rates render the possibility of thylacine survival on the content deeply improbable. Provided evidence to date, particularly in the form of photographs/videos, clearly depicts foxes and dogs, or in the case of Neil Waters’ trail cam photos, a numbat. 

Mangy foxes and thylacine photos

More foxes and thylacines

A stripey dog, I believe this was caught as a \"thylacine\", but am unsure

I personally wonder if the shift towards New Guinea in terms of thylacine survival within online spaces reflects a recognition of the improbability, similar to folks who believe Nessie is a giant eel, that the Bodette film will reveal all, or that Bigfoot is interdimensional.

Tasmania has been similarly ecologically crippled, though the island seems to be significantly less studied. Thylacines are likely still extinct on the island, but the date of this extinction is certainly more ambiguous. As Brooke et al. (2023) and Sleighthome and Campbell (2016) suggest, thylacine populations likely persisted in Tasmania into the 1940s, rather than the 1936 date most often cited, tapering out over the next few decades. Brooke et al. received significant media attention due to the claim of thylacines potentially persisting into the 1990s or even 21st century, based on a weighted database of sightings. Notably, these estimates are based on the incorporation of sightings from “non-experts” (non-scientists, hunters, trappers, etc.), and that when only using sightings from experts combined with verified and unverified kill and capture data, they got a much more plausible date of the late 1950s to early 60s. The whole body of Tasmanian sightings, particularly those after 1960, is incredibly poor. Using the list of sightings available at recentlyextinctspecies (the majority of which were part of the Brooke et al. dataset, to my knowledge), you get such gems as:

“Bill Morrison and Laurie Thompson reported that on 12 August 1961 they were camping in a hut on the coast while fishing. One night they heard a noise as if some animal was trying to reach a bucket of fish bait left outside. Thompson got up and picked up a piece of wood to drive away whatever was there. In the darkness he saw the shape of some animal at the bait. He ran at it and struck it with the baton he carried. It disappeared in the darkness, but next morning the men found what they said was a young male Tiger stretched out dead not far from the hut…They reported they had put the corpse in the hut, intending to take it out with them when they had finished their fishing and produce it for examination at a museum; but on returning to their camp from another fishing trip they found the corpse missing. Apparently in their absence some person had entered the hut and stolen it!”  (How convenient… Fur and blood was later allegedly collected and “confirmed” to be thylacine, but these results and the fur/blood was not made public to my knowledge)

“I watch a tiger hunting a couple of years ago in the Fingal Valley. Probably a little different to most...i spotted the tiger from the air!... I was testing a student pilot who was doing his Private Pilot Licence test.Anyway we were in the Fingal Valler about 4500feet above ground when I closed the throttle on the engine to simulate a engine failure. At this point the aircraft becomes a glider and remained so for the next 5-6 minutes while the student went thru his drills. We were circling (silently) above the river valley when I noticed an animal almost directly below us moving through the gorse. The animal was a grey/brown colour, a little over 1.2m in length from nose to visible tail (which was carried "down" rather than extended). It was moving along a track through the gorse and appeared to be stalking..ears laidback in a crouching walk. I am sure it was not a dog or a deer.”

“We saw an animal bolt from the undergrowth about 3-4 metres to our left front as we were heading down the incline. I remember seeing the animal from behind as it dashed from its cover and ran to the left of where we were heading. It had clear black striped bands across its orange/brown back. Unfortunately, we did not get to see its head to identify it. It scared the hell out of us as it broke and ran. It was gone in a flash, and so were we. Its back appeared quite broad and we just assumed it was a feral pig and said nothing more about it. It has been bugging me for years, so I thought it’s time to say something about it. Although I feel the thylacine is extinct, it was enough to plant a seed of doubt in my mind as to the real identity of the animal we saw. I can’t say categorically that it was or wasn’t a pig as it moved very fast and we only caught a glimpse of it. It could have been a feral dog perhaps. Who knows?”

“After some discussion about conservation and my interest in it he told me some stories of his camping trips in the Tasmanian bush. He said he had found scat that looked like no other animals he had seen. Also, he was positive he had seen Thylacines, but , given his age and no comprehension of modern telephone technology, together with not having a camera, he wasn't able to prove anything. I believed him.” 

"A mature age PhD student, who had just migrated from Britain to a job in Launceston, and did not know that thylacines were supposed to be extinct, saw one on a road nearby. He had a camera, but thought to himself: ‘I will see plenty of these’. He hasn’t."

and a couple being told "Yes, it looks like you saw what you saw. Now, will you do us a favor and shut up about it? Don't tell anyone." 

Thylacines apparently attacked sheep or were shot while chasing sheep, all dubious (e.g. "Farmer suspects this to be a thylacine kill because devils did not touch the carcass for days afterward”), including one sighting that happened when the witness was five years old, and notably before the aforementioned 2011 paper.

Rex Gilroy, known hoaxer, is also quite involved from the 1970s onwards. He single-handedly revitalized the Yowie phenomenon, so I do find his claims questionable, especially reports originating solely from him (to my knowledge), such as “Four hundred plaster casts of Tasmanian tiger prints have been collected by Noel Sutton of Fingal, Tas, in his lengthy study of the animals breeding in local bush. He has taken night photos of them. Some pictures show two adult animals with six pups, the head of a Tiger with body obscuring, a distant figure exhibiting the classic features of the tiger”. 

In general, thylacine hoaxes abound such as Ellendale, and the Adamsfield thylacine. Rusty Morley, behind the Adamsfield thylacine, claimed at least 5 different sightings. Others, such as Col Bailey, Neil Waters, and Tigerman claimed multiple as well. Not only has there been monetary incentive for hoaxes, but there is clearly a market for public attention. Many hunts for tigers have drawn public interest, including sightseers disturbing traps, and many were worried about “fortune hunters” disturbing any potential thylacines; sightings were also withheld for “fear of numerous visitors, destruction of the bush and perhaps also the tiger “. 

There are several claims of scat, dens, howls, kills, and the everpresent “feeling of being watched”, none of which have been substantiated or unequivocally demonstrated to be a thylacine. Claims of samples proven to be thylacines have not been made available for scrutiny to my knowledge. Some tracks were intentionally obscured, for example:

"My wife and i have been doing our own private studies since September when we were camped at a secluded part of tas. We came across a chase scene on a beach of which appeared to be a wallaby and a thylacine…These prints we have are approx 75mm across, and we have multiple vids and pics of them. We have been back seven times now and got fresh videos and pics of fresh prints five out of the seven times. We erase the prints from the sand each time we are there, but as summer is now upon us, more and more people are visiting the area to camp etc, and so things have gone quiet. We have showed these prints and vids to two tas parks and wildlife officers just recently who were astounded, and asked,us if we had released,it publicly yet, to which we replied that we haven't." 

The remaining eyewitness testimony is frighteningly archetypal. The most common story type by far is witnesses seeing an animal from their moving vehicle, often at dusk, night, or dawn. Several were in poor, rainy weather, and over a dozen were from a distance of 50 feet or more. I counted 53 examples plus an additional claim of a carcass seen in this fashion. There were additionally several sightings in this way by people walking alongside roads. Many instances had multiple witnesses who deliberated about what they saw before all, eventually, agreeing on a thylacine. Moving vehicles, poor conditions, great distances, and much debate define these reports.

This deliberation is done through cross-comparison with other animals, both through chimeric amalgamations (Weinstein, 2026 offers the example of “like a cat crossed with a kangaroo and a dog’s head”) and by demonstrating what the animal was not; “Eyewitnesses often qualify their descriptions by what it was definitely not, differentiating their sighting from a dog, mangy fox, or large feral cat by specifying the missing features that they would have recognized in those animals, like “the fox’s bushy tail” and “cat’s flatter face”” (Weinstein 2026). Differences can be rationalized away (for example, one could suggest that “the man said the striped animal was about the size of a large cat, and he expected that a thylacine would have been larger” is actually describing a juvenile thylacine). If everything known can be ruled out, only the unknown - the thylacine - is left. Incredibly significant is the fact that many stories have witnesses turning to encyclopedias, seeing images online, or at museums/zoos and posthumously identifying their encounter with a thylacine, some time later (e.g. “The hunter did not believe that he could have seen a thylacine until he later saw a stuffed museum specimen”, “We saw an exhibit the next day on the Thylacine and the differences we noted the night before matched the characteristics of a Thylacine”). Witnesses thought of dogs, cats, foxes, and even goats upon first seeing their mystery animal.

There have been genuine misidentifications, not just the foxes provided above. For example:

"Driving home to the Launceston suburb of Ravenswood one evening after his GP rounds, Brown saw a 'Thylacine'. So astonished was he that he insisted [Jeremy] Griffith return to the area with him immediately. Together, they found the animal: 'It was a greyhound with four stripes across its back'." 

See also this \"sheep-killing animal\" from Douglas, 1990

This brings other stories into question, such as:

“The animal was dog-like, but in an area where a dog would not be expected, and where no dogs had been seen before or after the sighting.”

The thylacine conclusion seems obvious, especially when “The presence of images depicting this animal in the daily life of Tasmanians is astounding; they appear almost everywhere one goes in Tasmania” and that “Many of these postextinction works either implicitly or explicitly reference the thylacine’s extinction or potential perseverance after that supposed extinction”(Ahlstone, 2019). This even extends into the verbage used by government and conservational groups, for example the Tasmanian Parks & Wildlife Service (PWS) states: “The Thylacine is the only mammal to have (possibly) become extinct in Tasmania since European settlement”. They continue: “Nonetheless, the incidence of sightings introduces a reluctance among some authorities to make emphatic statements on the status of the species. Even if there did exist a few remaining individuals, it is unlikely that such a tiny population would be able to maintain a sufficient genetic diversity to allow for the viable perpetuation of the species in the long-term”. The Australian Museum website also uses “now believed to be extinct” The National Museum of Australia states: “Thylacines are functionally extinct which means that any remaining population is so small that the species no longer plays a significant role in the ecosystem”. The absence of scientific consensus naturally adds uncertainty to the debate over extinction versus survival, and the culture of thylacine imagery naturally reinforces any and every identification with the thylacine.

Thylacines are not alone in being mistaken on Tasmania; Marks et al. (2017) and sources therein describe mis-claims of foxes on Tasmania after an unsubstantiated allegation of fox releases in 2001. 

I think it’s clear that people believe they are seeing a thylacine, rather than actually seeing them. If the thylacine is gone, however, there is no hope for redemption. The idea of living thylacines persists for good reason. 

WORKS REFERENCED:

Ahlstone, 2023 - Giving Life To Legends
Brook et al., 2023 - Resolving when (and where) the Thylacine went extinct
Crane, 2010 - Extinction and Ethics in Julia Leigh’s The Hunter
Douglas, 1990 - The thylacine - A case for current existence on mainland Australia
Guellec-Minel, 2017 - The Tasmanian Tiger - From Extinction To Identity Myth
Marks et al., 2017 - Trends in anecdotal fox sightings accounted for by psychological factors
Sleightholme & Campbell, 2016 - A retrospective assessment of 20th century thylacine populations
Smith, 2012 - Unsettlement and the Tasmanian tiger
Vakil et al., 2025 - Worse-than-realised losses of small-bodied mammals in Australia
Weinstein, 2026 - Animal, Cryptid, or Ghost - Interpreting the Signs of the Tasmanian Tiger
Woinarski et al., 2015 - Ongoing unraveling of a continental fauna
Wooster et al., 2024 - Recently established predators restore complexity to food webs
Whittle, 2026 - Tasmanian Tiger Extinction in Walton Ford’s The Undead Yoneyama & Weinstein, 2024 - Reimagining Extinction in Australia and Japan

ADDITIONAL READING:

McCorristine & Adams, 2020 - Ghost species
Morton & Tsahuridu, 2023 - Moral Framing And The Thylacine
Smith, 1999 - Feral cats and wild dogs in Australian imagination

This post was compiled exclusively using literature from the Cryptozoological Digitization Project’s paper library, a WIP index of which can be found here! As the title suggests, I'm just spitballing here as a sort of prelude to a thylacine deep-dive, with the goal of maybe eventually doing an ethnographic survey in line with Lewis & Bartlett but for thylaciners. We'll see what comes of it!

u/Nublar1993, our good friend Paisano, located and shared with us a complete scanned copy of Bernard Heuvelmans' 1978 book Les derniers dragons d'Afrique, one of the most important sources on the giant snake photo, Mokele-mbembe and other African reptilian cryptids. This is a huge deal, very excited to see this online!

Sharing some small things I've been working on beyond updating V1 the spreadsheet of files from the library, which currently only contains cryptozoological files contributed as of late April (meaning it's only 1/2 of the article library to date, missing not-cryptozoological articles and contributions after April).

The ISC Cryptozoology issues 5-7 have now been split into individual articles for convenience, more to come in the next few weeks. Still working on getting volume 13.

I've also split chapters from Abominable Science, Cryptozoology: Science And Speculation, Hunting Monsters, Folklore And Zoology, and Anthropology And Cryptozoology, editing them to include a bibliography where applicable. Hopefully these are of use!

u/Nublar1993 and I have also started parsing through the bibliography from L'Institut Virtuel de Cryptozoologie, Michel Raynal’s old website. I've found several English-language papers I didn't know of before and a treasure-trove of French-language stuff we're hoping to locate and port over. Very exciting stuff indeed.

Over the last two weeks, 130+ new articles have been added to the Digitization Project's library, all to be uploaded at the end of May - I do think monthly bulk-uploads are best. The Digitzation Project Discord is open to contributors as well, to better coordinate our efforts; if you have stuff to contribute you're welcome in. PM me for info.

Otherwise, enjoy the content. More new books coming soon!