THE ZEBRA WOLF

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21329, 23 November 1934, Page 20

THE ZEBRA WOLF

TO TUB F.DITOE OP THE PRESS. Sir,—On looking through the Universal Graphic Dictionary (edited by W. J. Pclo, and published by the John C. Winston Company, Chicago), I came across Iho word "thylacino," which is described as the "zebra wolf of New Zealand." Could any of your readers give me any information about this animal, or is it only another American "myth?"— Yours, etc., BONES. November 21, 1934. IA zoology student at Canterbury College to whom this letter was referred said that it was apparent that the American lexicographer had mistaken Tasmania for New Zealand. The "zebra wolf," which inhabited Tasmania, was not actually a wolf but a marsupial. He quoted the following account from F. E. Beddard's "Mammalia": "The genus thylacinus contains but a single species, which is now limited to Tasmania, and is generally known as the Tasmanian

wolf. It has the build ol an ordinary wolf, and is of about the same size. The hinder part of the body is marked with a series of black transverse bands. . . . This animal, now confined to Tasmania, is getting rarer on account of its sheep-killing propensities, and the consequent war of extermination declared upon it by t- ie colonists. It will, however, feed UP 0 " other animals, and it is related that the first specimen ever captured_ had in its stomach the remains ot an echidna. Mr Thomas thinks that J 1 persistence of this and of some ot toother larger carnivorous marsupials in Tasmania after their extinction 1,1 Australia is not unconnected with advent of the dingo. But. it )>• that the thylacine is quite capable of keeping even a pack of dogs ar. bay." The word "thylacine" is to be found in the Oxford Dictionary, and is recorded as having first been used by Owen in 1838. j