Home Surveillance Video from Australia Shows Possible 'Tasmanian Tiger'

A still image from the surveillance footage.

A resident of northern Kellyville, a suburb of Sydney, Australia, shared a video online last Monday that shows a quadrupedal animal walking along a driveway. The video was shot from the resident's home surveillance camera on June 3rd at approximately 2 a.m.

The video was posted on YouTube, and shared in the Sydney subreddit on social media site Reddit. A screenshot of the video was also posted to Imgur.

Viewers of the video are divided in their opinions, with some speculating that it could be a surviving member of the reportedly-extinct thylacine species--sometimes referred to as the Tasmanian Tiger--while others think that it might be some sort of fox with mange.

"Thylacine," posted one commenter in response to the resident asking what the animal could be.

"My first thought too," commented another in response. "Many people up in far northern [Queensland] have reported seeing them. It's likely they aren't extinct after all."

Many others are unconvinced that it is any sort of cryptid animal, and believe it to be a stricken fox.

"A fox with mange," said a commenter.

"Agreed," a second commenter replied. "I hear there have been a lot of foxes up that way of late, and it's definitely not looking healthy."

The animal's movements and gait were used as evidence in favor of it being a fox, along with the fact that foxes are a thriving invasive species with a large population in much of Australia.

The last known thylacine died in captivity in 1936, but held its status as an endangered species until the 1980s, and many scientists believe there is a strong possibility that some survived into the 1960s--although no hard evidence exists to support that hypothesis. Their status today is still hotly debated, but some mainstream scientists take the issue seriously enough to investigate it, including these two Australian academics that the Singular Fortean Society reported on back in March of 2017. Meanwhile, video and photographic evidence of supposed thylacines continues to come from Australia, with trail camera footage and pictures submitted by the Thylacine Awareness Group of Australia a year ago, the same month a schoolteacher claimed that he had taken a video of a thylacine while filming the sunrise, and last September a trio of investigators claimed to have captured footage of a Tasmanian Tiger.

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