The answer, I’m afraid, is no, you haven’t. You may have seen pictures of one, or some video footage on youtube of the last living specimen, which died in the 1930s. The Thylacine, or Tasmanian Tiger, as it is alternately called, is officially extinct. It isn’t surprising that people would desire, and choose, to believe otherwise. This animal, like the gargantuan Moa bird, no longer is alive in our world strictly because of US, because of human beings. We hunted it to extinction. Everybody loves dinosaurs, but we don’t have to bear any of the blame for their disappearance from the earth. That loss isn’t on us. The Dodo bird, though, that’s on us. The Passenger Pigeon. The Thylacine. It’s only natural that folks today would yearn for an opportunity to correct such a terrible mistake from our collective past, would long for “one more chance.”
Sadly, this video footage purporting to show a living Thylacine in Australia (available at the source link below) is far from convincing. Given that Thylacines were not even known to be indigenous to Australia in modern times, it’s even more of a stretch to believe that the footage shows an extant example. There have been numerous sightings—in Tasmania—and scant evidence in the form of tracks, etc., so it is at least POSSIBLE that the Thylacine is still with us. I sure hope so.
