Apart from bringing a thylacine to the Royal Society meeting, this next account is one I find most astounding - again because we are dealing with a captive caught animal, but note just how ridiculously quickly this wild creature adapted to its newfound captive status: Quoting Graham, "Mr William Cotton [snr] came into the town of Swansea leading a Tasmanian Tiger, most people at the time were scared of the animal, and were amazed to see a person doing such a thing. ... Cotton ... had snares set about 4 miles [6.4 km] west of Swansea ... and ... one morning found he had caught a tiger. ... After some consideration he cut a short pole about five feet long, and to the end attached a piece of rope ... and with a noose made on the end slipped it over the tigers neck, held him at bay, cut the snare, and set of [sic] to Swansea leading the tiger with him. He had great trouble to get the animal to travel, but after going a few hundred yards the animal started to act just like as if it was a dog, and followed along beside him for the rest of the way to Swansea with the lease of trouble" (p 72).
A few hundred yards! One animal is recorded as walking with its owner for 10 kilometers on a lead in the 1920s. "Newly caught captives soon gave up aggresive responses towards their primary care-giver, accepting the parameters of the power relationship newly entered into: 'my grandfather caught ... them and took them ... down to Hobart into the zoo. ... He took one home and he ... had him tied up on a dog-chain and he used to feed him rabbits, in an old blacksmith's shop. And he walked in one night and thought he was back from him - struck a match before he was going to give him the rabbit, like - and he was standing up against the old tiger. He'd walked further over towards him than he'd thought, and the old tiger's standing there, wagging his tail, he said, looking up at him, waiting for him to give him the rabbit.'" (quoting Miles) (pp 72 - 73).