Extinct Animals Thread

[DaleCoz]

I didn't even read that at first, but you're absolutely right. What an ignorant thing to say. Thylacines were barely like dogs, bar for a slight resemblance, and even then it's a push if you're a true zoologist (I suspect the people studying them would be true zoologists). Thylacines have less babies, don't hunt in packs and have a totally different anatomy, not to mention they're marsupials.

As the person who originally said that 'ignorant thing', I would suggest being a tad more careful in jumping to conclusions. Actually, Thylacines are/were the classic case of convergent evolution with canines in general, though less so for dogs specifically. Yes, they were marsupials, had fewer babies in a litter, and didn't hunt in true packs, though so little is known about their behavior that we can't entirely rule out hunting as a family group--adults and nearly adult offspring. In terms of size and type of prey likely hunted they were more like coyotes than wolves.

As to the supposedly ignorant statement that looking at Thylacines could give insights about dogs, or more properly about canines in general, the idea is that we have two kinds of animals that both evolved as fast-moving, endurance-running predators. What sorts of things do the two kinds of animals do the same way? What sorts of things do they do differently? What parts of their anatomy and behavior are due to the ecological niche and what parts are due to their very different ancestry? Those are all questions that Thylacines could help answer about dogs or more properly about canids in general. Believe me, if you offered someone who specialized in canine anatomy and behavior a chance to study a living Thylacine they would so jump at the chance.

By the way, (a) The mummified remains of the mainland Thylacine turned out to be a couple thousand years old if I recall correctly. There were rumors of a pocket of Thylacines on the mainland of Australia into the mid-to-late 1800s, though no proof, and there are still numerous alleged sightings there. (b) On Tasmania, a small subset of settlers actually kept Thylacines as sort of dog-substitutes while they were common enough for that to be feasible. They could be taught to walk on a leash and made decent watch-Thylacines, generally warning their owners that someone was approaching considerably before the resident dogs detected the approach. (c) Unlike most extinct animals, Thylacines are on YouTube. Quite a bit of video footage was shot of captive Thylacines in the 1920s and 1930s, and much of the preserved portion is up on YouTube. Just go to video search on Google and type in Thylacines. Very cool stuff.

I actually have a short story called "Kyle Hits a Thylacine" in the writer's section of this forum. They were very cool animals. I wish they were still around.

 

[Tocomocho]

About 40 000 to 30 000 years ago if I remember right.

Actually thylacines did just fine after humans arrived. They only went downhill after the dingo was introduced about 4000 years ago and thus don't qualify as part of the megafauna extinction event.

 

[DaleCoz]

I reread my earlier post and it sounds a bit harsher than I intended when I wrote it. Hard to get state of mind across in a post. The reasons why Thylacines would be helpful for understanding canines are probably not immediately obvious, but they are valid.

Convergent evolution is a wonderful natural tool to understand why animals do things the way they do. That's why people studying early man are often interested in the New World monkeys, even though they are a long ways from human ancestry. Capuchin monkeys have a niche that in some ways converges with that of chimpanzees, and their use of primitive tools is often cited in articles in the like of Journal of Human Evolution. Primatologists are starting to study the tree-climbing marsupials of tropical Australia and New Guinea for insights about monkeys, though none of the living marsupials there are more than superficially convergent with the omnivore/fruit-eating monkeys that probably were in our ancestry.

I had a sugar glider (think marsupial flying squirrel) as a pet for several years and in some ways it was about as close to an alien intelligence as you can find on earth. Sugar gliders are unusual marsupials in that they are social, noisy, and have one of the larger brain-to-body ratios among the marsupials. And based on what I saw of it over the years it was a smart little booger, probably smarter than a squirrel, but maybe not quite as smart as a dog. It was a subtly different kind of smart though. I can't put my finger on it, but the long distance between our ancestry and it's ancestry made it just react differently--not smarter or dumber, just different to any normal mammal I've interacted with.

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

Quagga could've lived if people had realised they were a species and not just odd coloured zebra.

1) people tended not to worry about preserving species then
2) DNA studies suggest that it IS an odd coloured zebra.

 

[Cuāuhtemōc]

I'm sure the Barbary Lion could had been saved had strings had been pulled.

 

[NothingNow]

I had a sugar glider (think marsupial flying squirrel) as a pet for several years and in some ways it was about as close to an alien intelligence as you can find on earth. Sugar gliders are unusual marsupials in that they are social, noisy, and have one of the larger brain-to-body ratios among the marsupials. And based on what I saw of it over the years it was a smart little booger, probably smarter than a squirrel, but maybe not quite as smart as a dog. It was a subtly different kind of smart though. I can't put my finger on it, but the long distance between our ancestry and it's ancestry made it just react differently--not smarter or dumber, just different to any normal mammal I've interacted with.

They're pretty mischievous as well. I had one that would not stop messing with my father.

 

[The Kiat]

But what will the WWF use as their mascot?! Pandas are often sighted in Northern India, Nepal and Bhutan too though. Probably not enough to sustain any kind of population, but hey, there's that!!!

There is the Red Panda. Or the Cook Sea Cow. Or, just for laughs, the Jersey Devil.

 

[Emperor-of-New-Zealand]

snip

snip

Okay, I feel a little insulted. Linking me to a video of a thylacine, really? I know what they are, who hasn't seen that video? I had this same argument with my biology teacher, who actually agreed with me in the end.

Thylacines are a good example of convergent evolution, yes. But only at a stretch, if you squint. One of the biggest factors in my argument was the fact that they are so vastly different from dogs behaviourly and anatomically; their legs are one example. Thylacines weren't high-speed runners, and were built more for endurance, as seen by their unusually stiff and awkward gait. They had a very similar skull, I'll give you that. But liken their behaviour to something akin to a mustelid, and their overall body-structure. They had relatively short legs, lean bodies, and long stiff tails for balance (may have also acted as a rudder for turning while running).

Don't get me wrong, I see your points, these are just mine.

 

[Riain]

The problem with preventing animal extinctions is that it happens usually for a number of reasons simultaneously. Habitat destruction is usually accompanied by overhunting or whatever, so you can't pick a PoD and change it.

 

[Cook]

so you can't pick a PoD and change it.

Unless it’s something like Thomas Austin not releasing Rabbits on his property in Geelong or the Sugar Cane industry not introducing Cane Toads, those were pretty spectacular events.

 

[Emperor-of-New-Zealand]

The problem with preventing animal extinctions is that it happens usually for a number of reasons simultaneously. Habitat destruction is usually accompanied by overhunting or whatever, so you can't pick a PoD and change it.

Unless it’s something like Thomas Austin not releasing Rabbits on his property in Geelong or the Sugar Cane industry not introducing Cane Toads, those were pretty spectacular events.

Besides the exceptions Cook listen, Riain is more or less correct. But I'm sure there were scientific minds in the past that contributed to the survival of certain species, the problem is saving other species will probably cause the ones that were saved OTL to go extinct.

 

[Riain]

I read that in Nepal the Rhino is being looked after because they sacrifice some occasionally in Royal cerimonies. Perhaps this is an approach that could be successful elsewhere prior to the realisation that everything is going extinct. All sorts of little principalities could save their own poster animal for their own ends, up to the point where conservation becomes important for its own sake.

 

[freodhoric]

As an on topic sidenote, saving the dodo is borderline ASB. Considering the Dutch didn't have much else to eat in Mauritious.

I've heard they tasted nasty. Also, FWIW, that extinction was more due to rats and cats eating the young and eggs.

As the person who originally said that 'ignorant thing', I would suggest being a tad more careful in jumping to conclusions. Actually, Thylacines are/were the classic case of convergent evolution with canines in general, though less so for dogs specifically.

I'm sorry, i think that the way i phrased my post gave an incorrect impression that almost warranted that response. Any chance you could repost this story?

 

[mowque]

In my TL, I killed off a few species. I can list them,with why they are dead, if you want.

Guess not.

 

[DaleCoz]

Okay, I feel a little insulted. Linking me to a video of a thylacine, really? I know what they are, who hasn't seen that video?

Anything in my post after BTW was not directed at you. Tell you what: If you want to be offended by my saying that there are videos of Thylacines on YouTube I can be offended by you calling something I posted ignorant without reading it. Or we could both prove we have lives by moving on. And by the way, in the universe I have a life in, the vast majority of people don't even know what a Thylacine is/was, much less that there are videos of it on Youtube.

I had this same argument with my biology teacher, who actually agreed with me in the end.

That's surprising, because everything I've read about Thylacines point to you being wrong, including heavy duty stuff from collections like "Carnivorous Marsupials."

Thylacines are a good example of convergent evolution, yes. But only at a stretch, if you squint. One of the biggest factors in my argument was the fact that they are so vastly different from dogs behaviourly and anatomically; their legs are one example. Thylacines weren't high-speed runners, and were built more for endurance, as seen by their unusually stiff and awkward gait. They had a very similar skull, I'll give you that. But liken their behaviour to something akin to a mustelid, and their overall body-structure. They had relatively short legs, lean bodies, and long stiff tails for balance (may have also acted as a rudder for turning while running).

Don't get me wrong, I see your points, these are just mine.

I'm not sure you do see my points. The primary value of convergence isn't that the animals are identical or even very similar. As a matter of fact animals with that degree of convergence would be of very little value. If Thylacines were structurally and behaviorally pretty much just like another canine species, why not just study the other canine species. The value of convergence is in seeing how animals with very different ancestry fill similar niches.

Being a marsupial imposes quite a few constraints on an animal. As I'm sure you know, the front paws of a marsupial have to be able to grasp the mother's fur in order for the new-born to climb to the pouch. That means that it is difficult for marsupials to reduce fingers to paws or hooves, at least on the front feet. It's difficult for a marsupial to develop a digigrade stance (habitually standing on their toes rather than on the flat of their feet--explanation for bystanders only, so hopefully no excuse to be insulted). How did thylacines adapt to an endurance running life-style? You can get the physical adaptations from the remains, but not the behavioral ones.

As I'm sure you also know, marsupials (at least the branch that the Thylacines are from) don't have the thick connection between the hemispheres of the brain that 'normal' mammals do. That may account for the fact that their brains are about 40-50% of the size that most similarly-sized canines have. How does that impact behavior? Does it make certain types of behavior impossible? Does it force the animal to use less flexible behaviors? What kind of limitations does the brain-size difference impose on learning? Since it has been theorized that play behavior and flexible behavior in adult-hood are highly correlated, it would be interesting to compare the play behavior of young Thylacines with puppies or coyote cubs.

That's just scratching the surface. Physical and behavioral differences in ecologically similar animals are at least as important as similarities, and in some ways more so.

By the way (note the change of focus from a response to a wider audience): the website where I originally posted the Thylacine article is back up. The URL is in my signature line. I'll try to dig through and find it to post it here when I have time (which, may be a while with NaNoWriMo coming up).

 

[freodhoric]

By the way (note the change of focus from a response to a wider audience): the website where I originally posted the Thylacine article is back up. The URL is in my signature line. I'll try to dig through and find it to post it here when I have time (which, may be a while with NaNoWriMo coming up).

Some of the pages are not there. June 2004 is down. So is 3 Fewer Crosses on Flanders Field.

 

[Dave Howery]

saving now-extinct species that lived on small islands is about impossible once people settle on them, bringing cats, pigs, goats, etc. Some others could be saved by changing the animals themselves... passenger pigeons could be saved if they were able to breed in small groups instead of vast flocks only. Others can only be saved if they existed in larger numbers over bigger territories (Stellars sea cow, etc.). There are hundreds of PODs that you could come up with in this basic scenario...

 

[Geekhis Khan]

Preventing the Pacific War in WW2 would save a lot of small island isolate birds and rodents wiped out by starving Japanese soldiers. Note these were small uninhabitable or barely habitable atolls.

A surviving and sucessful Tecumpsah nation (British protectorate?) could theoretically save the Passenger Pigeon by preventing OTL's mass deforestation of IN/IL/MI.

 

[cumbria]

Fasinating subject.
The BBC did a great documentry series on extinct animals.
It was called the Monsters We Met.
Showed the type of beasts ancient man had to fight.
These included a man eating eagle as mention from New Zealand and and a huge man eating Lizard from Australia.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loKRGd7xqe8&feature=fvw

 

[Greenlanterncorps]

What would be the effect of several large Passenger Pigeon flocks on Commercial and General Aviation in the Midwest US? Not to mention driving conditions in and around a town where a flock decided to land.