<span class="SFPTagline">
From SCIFIPEDIA
</span>
The Queensland Tiger is an Australian cryptid.
The animal, known from only a few reports, is generally described as a striped, cat-faced, dog-sized carnivore that climbs trees.
A large, unknown carnivorous mammal in modern Australia? While cryptids (reported animals unrecognized by science) often seem to be out of place in the local ecology, this is particularly true in the case of a striped big cat in Australia.
First, outside of the dingo (an Australian canid that probably arrived less than 10,000 years ago)) and humans, there are no large non-marsupial mammals wild in Australia. If the Queensland tiger is actually a non-marsupial, it would most likely be an introduced animal, such as escaped pet. However, Australia's strict rules against the importation of non-native animals makes that explanation less likely in this case than in the case of maned lions in America (where it is known that people have had pet lions, both legally and illegally).
Up until the 1930s, there was a striped, fairly-large predator in nearby Tasmania. It is possible that there was a population of thylacines in mainland Australia. One of the immediately distinguishing characteristics of the thylacine was a very long muzzle, which is notably un-catlike. Also, the thylacine was (or is) striped on the back half, while perorts of the Queensland Tiger do not that follow that specific pattern.
There was another large marsupial predator in Australia, known as a thylacoleo. Actually, there were several related species, and some of them could fit parts of the reports of the Queensland Tiger. It would require a much longer survival of a species thorugh a much greater climate change than would be the case with the thylacine.
The animal was featured in On The Track of Unknown Animals (ISBN 978-0710304988), the book that got many cryptozoologists involved in the subject.
External Links
2008, SCI FI. All rights reserved.
