History Channel -- Original Air Date: 5/14/09
Is the Tasmanian Tiger still alive on the island of Tasmania? This episode of MQ goes looking for the supposedly extinct beast. Eyewitnesses report seeing the wolf-like striped marsupial in recent years -- but is there any proof? 350 sightings since its supposed extinction, but one expert points out that witness memories and eyes are notoriously unreliable. MQ sends a team out to the remote SW corner of the island to look for the creature; they're toting the usual gear and camera traps. After the last tiger died in 1930, a naturalist launched an expedition in 1946; he thought he saw tracks, but found no animal. In 2008, some of the samples from that expedition were found; hairs are sent to be analized. A tiger-hunter says he has a recent picture of one (blurry), and pictures of sheep that have been attacked in the way the tiger killed.
Further, a couple claims to have distinctly seen a mother tiger and her child crossing the road one night. A biologist also saw one late at night and studied it for 3 minutes, but it fled as he got out his camera. Meanwhile, a scientist believes he can clone the tiger back into existence. He hopes to use Tasmanian Devil DNA to fill in the gaps in the preserved aniimal's genes -- but they're not there yet. The hair sample is not a match. The MQ team gets an intriguing but unidentifiable photo and a footprint that looks like a tiger (thylocene). This episode of MQ seems to get closer than most, but still no indisputable proof.
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