The Tasmanian Tiger Was Branded a Livestock Killer. New Research Challenges That Myth

Thylacines had powerful snapping bites suited for catching small and medium-sized prey like bandicoots—not taking down large animals such as sheep and cattle, as European colonists feared

Sarah Kuta | Daily Correspondent

September 10, 2026 1:43 p.m.

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When European colonists settled in Tasmania some 200 years ago, they feared that thylacines, also known as Tasmanian tigers, would attack and kill their livestock. So, incentivized by government bounties, they killed as many of the striped marsupials as they could, eventually hunting them to extinction.

Now, new research suggests those concerns were probably unfounded. A new analysis of Tasmanian tiger skulls, published August 31 in the journal Nature Communications, suggests the creatures primarily hunted small or medium-sized prey like bandicoots, not larger animals like sheep and cattle.

The findings challenge the myth that thylacines were “ferocious predators of livestock,” a misconception that ultimately caused the species to die out, says lead author Vera Weisbecker, an evolutionary biologist at Flinders University, in a statement.

“Their extinction is a story of ignorance and lack of respect for Australia’s unique wildlife and its Indigenous custodians,” she adds.

Thylacines once roamed throughout Australia. But the species is thought to have disappeared from the mainland roughly 2,000 years ago, continuing to survive only on the Australian island of Tasmania.

When European settlers began arriving in the early 1800s, an estimated 5,000 thylacines lived in Tasmania. To the colonists, the striped, semi-nocturnal animals looked a lot like the wolves they had back home. They “tended to view unfamiliar wildlife as primitive copies of more familiar European species,” Weisbecker tells CNN’s Ashley Strickland.

Based on their physical similarities, colonists also assumed thylacines behaved like wolves.

“They decided that thylacines were a danger to livestock and put a bounty on its head,” Weisbecker adds.

Settlers began systematically killing Tasmanian tigers, until only one known individual remained in captivity in a zoo in the city of Hobart. When that creature, an older female, died in 1936, the species was presumed extinct. However, more than 1,000 potential thylacine sightings have been reported since then, so some speculate that thylacines might have persisted in the wild well into the 20th century.

Scientists recently compared the size, shape and proportions of thylacine skulls from museums around the world with those of other carnivorous species.

Thylacines only weighed about 37 pounds on average, about half as much as the average wolf. However, their skulls were about the same size as wolf skulls, giving them proportionally large heads for their body size.

The striped marsupials also had long, slender, delicate snouts—not at all like the robust, sturdy snouts found on grey wolves.

Additionally, their feeding style appears to have been unlike any living predatory mammal. Instead, scientists think they hunted more like crocodiles and predatory fish species. They probably used their long jaws and snouts to quickly snap up fast-moving small or medium-sized prey, rather than powerfully chomping down on large, struggling animals like wolves do.

“The longer a jaw is, the faster its tip moves during biting,” Weisbecker and study co-authors Andrew Pask, a bioscientist at the University of Melbourne, and Douglass Rovinsky, a biologist at Monash University, write in the Conversation. “Long jaws like this are usually quite weak, but the huge size of the thylacine’s skull would have added enough substance to withstand lethal snaps into potentially unsuspecting bandicoots.”

The findings align with earlier research, which suggested that thylacine teeth were probably best suited for delivering crushing, penetrating bites, rather than pulling, tearing or holding.

Thylacine skulls - huge heads for high-impact snapping!

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Thylacines may look a lot like wolves, dogs and other members of the Canidae family. However, they were more closely related to kangaroos than canines. They’re believed to have descended from an ancient lineage of marsupials that diverged from the ancestors of dogs between 122 and 166 million years ago.

“It’s a fascinating example of how two animals can look remarkably similar at first glance, while in reality functioning in fundamentally different ways,” Love Dalén, an evolutionary genomicist at Stockholm University who was not involved with the research, tells CNN.

Overall, the findings suggest thylacines probably weren’t capable of killing adult livestock. But it’s possible they occasionally went after unguarded babies, Weisbecker tells IFLScience’s Stephen Luntz.

“Sometimes when an animal is desperate, it will eat things it normally would not tackle,” she says.

However, “even if attacks happened occasionally, [the species] was not the threat that was claimed,” she adds.

Sarah Kuta is a writer and editor based in Longmont, Colorado. She covers history, science, travel, food and beverage, sustainability, economics and other topics.