Head to head
Tasmanian Devil vs Thylacine
The Tasmanian devil and the thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, were the two largest marsupial carnivores in Australia when Europeans arrived, and both were confined to Tasmania by the time they were studied, having vanished from the mainland thousands of years earlier. One survived the twentieth century; the other did not. They were relatives, both persecuted as livestock killers, and both hit by a combination of bounties, habitat loss, and disease.
| Tasmanian Devil | Thylacine | |
|---|---|---|
| Status | Endangered, but alive | Extinct since 1936 |
| Weight | About 6 to 9 kg | About 20 to 30 kg |
| Body plan | Stocky, bear-like, powerful jaws | Wolf-like, convergent with dogs |
| Diet and hunting | Scavenger and opportunistic hunter of small prey | Active predator of wallabies, birds, and small mammals |
| Bite | Extreme force for its size; crushes bone | Wide gape (about 80 degrees); weaker bite than a wolf |
| Pouch | Rearward-opening; up to 4 young survive of ~20 born | Rearward-opening; present in both sexes |
| What hit it | Devil facial tumour disease since the 1990s | Government bounty, disease, habitat loss, competition |
| Comeback prospects | Disease-resistant populations emerging; mainland reintroduction begun | A funded de-extinction project; no living animal exists |
Tasmanian Devil vs Thylacine: common questions
Are the Tasmanian devil and the thylacine related?
Yes. Both belong to the order Dasyuromorphia, the marsupial carnivores, which also includes the quolls, the numbat, and the small insect-eating dunnarts and antechinuses. Within that order the thylacine was distinctive enough to have its own family, the Thylacinidae, and the devil is in the family Dasyuridae with the quolls, so they are more like cousins than siblings, but they share a recent common ancestor and a similar ecological history. When both were alive in Tasmania, the thylacine was the larger active hunter and the devil the smaller scavenger, and the two overlapped without one excluding the other.
Is the Tasmanian tiger really extinct?
By every standard of evidence, yes. The last known thylacine died in captivity in 1936, wild sightings dried up in the following decades, and repeated systematic searches through the twentieth century found nothing, no tracks, no scats, no carcasses, no photographs that survive scrutiny. It was officially declared extinct in 1986. Reported sightings still occur every year in Tasmania and, more improbably, on the mainland, and they sustain a persistent hope, but none has ever been backed by physical proof, and most are explained by other animals, spotted-tail quolls, foxes, or dogs, seen briefly or at distance.
Could the thylacine be brought back?
A well-funded project is trying, using gene-editing to rebuild a thylacine-like genome inside cells of its small living relative the fat-tailed dunnart and then attempting to grow embryos. The technical hurdles are enormous: a complete, accurate ancient genome, thousands of precise edits, a working marsupial artificial-womb or surrogate system, and, even if an animal results, the questions of whether it would truly be a thylacine, where it would live, and whether the effort is the best use of conservation money. For now there is no living thylacine and no near-term prospect of one, though the research is advancing marsupial reproductive science along the way.