Search ongoing for extinct Tasmanian tiger amid efforts to revive species | 60 Minutes

There is the lake monster in Scotland and in the Himalayas there is the yeti, the abominable snowman in Tasmania, a teardrop of an island under the eye of the Australian continent, there is the thyine, a creature that highlights folklore and people armed with grainy images convinced to have seen But unlike other mythical creatures, the thyine or Tasmanian

tiger

actually existed indisputably. A super predator the size of a small wolf roamed the island as recently as the last century, giving hope to so many obsessive dreamers and true believers

search

ing for the Tasmanian

tiger

in the bush and as you'll see in the lab, this is a story. which says as much about human nature as it does about nature, further proof that even in the face of science and logic, passion survives in nature.

Alright the story will continue at a time you've been doing this how many years I've been doing this for over 30 years and every day is an adventure okay here we go getting there wasn't easy but Adrien Richo Richardson , a retired military man who became self-proclaimed. Tiger Seeker retraced his steps wandering through Tasmania's dense outback on January 28, 2017 at 12:45 p.m. she heard the sound and suddenly it was a powerful H like this. I was Gob hit the hairs on my arm and my neck stood on end and when that call ended, another one came from the other side of the forest trail another how like that, how does it sound exactly like that Richo craned his neck but didn't see any creatures, yet he is sure what a Tasmanian tiger was, the whole environment was silent for about a minute, there was an incredible feeling, I just can't explain it, yes you.

I'm still excited talking about this look. I have to remember that call from the time I made it and then had to try to prove to others what I heard when he returned to his house in Hobart, the capital of Tasmania, he didn't. I went down to the pub to share his account no, he sat at his desk and stayed up writing a detailed report with 22 footnotes what is my passion is yours I know it's there and this only reinforced your faith oh surely a little problem a crease on the Barbie as if it were the creature Richo described so vividly and breathlessly that was declared

extinct

almost 40 years ago I thought you know maybe it's a dingo maybe it's a wolf in Tasmania we don't have anything remotely like it nor We don't even have wild dogs in any form, the only wild thing we have around here are deer or cats.

I don't think the deer are making that noise. A pouch weighing about 55 pounds, the Tas tiger was easily distinguished by its straight, jointless tail. He was also a carnivore who prayed over farm sheep remembering the fate of the wolf of the American West around the same time the local government was paying bounties. Hunters presented carcasses by the mid-1930s, the tazzy tiger population had dwindled to a single captive at Hobart's Bis Zoo, where it died in 1936. The required 50 years passed without a confirmed sighting. The tiger was listed as

extinct

in 1986, but put Mania in Tasmania, the

search

became a national obsession and the Tasmanian tiger, not the Tasmanian devil, became something of a local mascot.

His image adorns the coat of arms and government buildings of Tasmania. Here is the current license plate for the island. In local bars, regular customers leave their Tiger beer for a long time. enough to tell you that they have seen the animal or know someone who has seen it. I stood there and held the torch for 40 seconds. Reon, when Nick Money was a full-time biologist in Hobart, he felt that he should investigate the various accounts of the Tasmanian tiger. Now retired, he is the island's unofficial referee. I know several people who have camera groups in very remote areas, serviced remotely by setlight, and who go and check the cameras with their own helicopter, moved all kinds of things much further afield.

The guy with binoculars says I think I might have seen something. Oh absolutely, you can't help but notice that no one captures a clear image. Still, sightings are reported in the thousands. Have you ever received a report or have you ever researched something that gave you a little pause, yeah, um, sometimes people are very precise with times, places, distances and they are very good naturalists, they often don't exaggerate, they They take their abilities very seriously and it's very difficult to tell those people, um, I don't think. you saw a thylene for the devoted army of searchers, the investment is not just one of hope and time each year, Richo spends more dollars than he would like to admit on trail camera batteries alone, how much money has he invested in this excess, Sir?

I don't like to speculate and please don't tell my wife that it's our secret, that's our secret, she often asks and I don't understand you, I just stop that one, can I stop that one, can you redo that again in the Bush, we met another enthusiast, Chris Rayberg, who flies in from mainland Australia and approaches the search like a CSI detective, away from the cameras. I GA, you been looking for fur, even poop, yes everything, so droppings. The prints are big um and I found a series of 18 19 individual steps in a tracking line that are a great match for Tazy Tiger, not only are they a great match, the quality of the prince is impeccable, stay tuned, check it out, you know what the animal has been eating. um, yeah, and call if you hear them, there are even tracking groups.

Richo was part of Richardson's Tiger team stand. Thank you for joining us on what we believe is a historic day that made global headlines in 2017 after calling a press conference to announce a sighting. but when they provided this image as proof, Nick Money evaluated it as an opportunity, but not an official confirmation, what is the middle ground, you can be right, you can be lying or you can be delusional and there are all kinds of ways that the memory can be um um affected by time. I've had many conversations with psychiatrists and detectives trying to figure this out.

You really often have to choose a personal call at the end to essentially tell them that they are wrong and that their mind is playing tricks on them, oh you can't tell them that because essentially you don't know, if you weren't there you don't know Richo and all the other Seekers don't. They will have to wait a long time, they will not even have to enter. Andrew Pass is counted among the paralyzed tigers, tazzy, arriving to the search although he is armed not with binoculars but with a microscope in his tiger laboratory. He imagines that day you are on.

Not just use another P, yes, 100%. I think about it all the time, what it would be like to be in that landscape and just see one walking through the bush, a real one instead of a shitty photograph, tell us exactly what you are. In doing so, we can't magically bring the Tasmanian tiger back, we have to start with a living cell and then end up designing our focine to bring it back into existence, so the way to do that is to find the closest living relative to your animal that has become extinct and by It is a small mass of P

species

called Fat Tiled, but a developmental biologist at the University of Melbourne Pascus raised $15 million for an extinction project reminiscent of Jurassic Park in collaboration with the company American Colossal Biosciences that counts, wait for it Leonardo DiCaprio Paris.

Hilton and even the CIA among his sponsors are convinced that he will replicate the genome of a mouse like a marsupial and turn it into a much larger tazzy tiger. We'll let you explain. We tested all of his DNA. We compare it to DNA. of their extinct

species

, the Tasmanian tiger, and we see everywhere that those two genomes or those two piles of DNA, if you will, are different and once you've identified those differences, it's just a matter of them going in and doing all those editions. convert your fateful genome or dard cell into a phocine cell and you're saying that dunard, that little duner marsupial field mouse, is closer than, say, the Tasmanian devil, but that little dut is a ferocious carnivore even though It's very, very small and it's a Very good substitute for us to do all this editing on a Minnesota native.

Chris Helgen is director of the Australian Museum Research Institute in Sydney. He understands the drive to extinguish the tazzy tiger. This is truly one of my favorite mammals. I love all mammals I'm a mammal Guy, this is a special animal, he took us upstairs to his lab to show us why. This is the 19th century Tasmanian tiger. Look at the stripes. Look at the thick tail. Look at this open mouth with sharp teeth. What do you think of this extinction effort regarding the Tasmanian tiger? You know, I would be the first person to line up to see this animal if it could somehow be brought back from extinction.

He said that Helgen is the skeptic and gently explains that he wants tazzy. The tigers were running rampant does not surpass science, the idea that you could actually modify the DNA of this mouth-sized animal to turn it into this super predator of Australia does stretch the imagination in many different ways. This is an impossible project. We all love optimism. We all love innovation. What they're saying is we're going to modify the genome of a dart to create a genetically modified dart that might look a little more like yours, maybe we can genetically modify it and it gets a little bigger, maybe we can genetically modify it and it has some streaks, but there are about a thousand intermediate steps.

H has thought about the source of the current passion for Tazzy Tiger and wonders to what extent it is driven by remorse. It is a special symbol. about Australia and about what we've lost, we've had a lot of extinctions here in the last 100 200 years, only 30 mammals, so in the United States only one or two species of mammals have completely disappeared, so why is the People take this seriously and why? Are there people investing so much in this? So many people have a dream that we could bring this animal back, maybe it would help us think differently about extinction or the guilt we might feel for having removed such a special animal from the planet, you know?

They imagine he could still be hiding in Tasmania or in a laboratory to be reborn. There is a burning hope. Richo believes that if his compatriots at the DNA sequencing labs can resurrect a tazzy tiger, good for them, but he'll keep coming here anyway. Unbreakable faith. I am sure this animal most famous for being extinct is not extinct at all if someone accused you of being obsessed could you be guilty oh sir I will raise my hand for your honor I am guilty you are a Tasmanian tiger Obsessive, in fact am I? It's been my love.

Why is that? Why have you continued searching for this for so long? I just know it's there. I do it in my own heart. I know it's there and if it's not there, well, we say, what's the harm in looking? to the basement of Planet Sub Bush attacking this beautiful terrain, there are worse ways and places to spend the days