An Australian magazine has offered to pay $1,25-million to anybody who can prove that there is a Tasmanian tiger still alive in the wilderness.
The last Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine, is believed to have died in a Hobart zoo in 1936 but since then almost 4 000 sightings of the animal have been reported.
But as none has been backed up by hard evidence, the respected newsweekly The Bulletin has offered the reward to “solve one of Australia’s most enduring mysteries”.
“Show us a live, uninjured thylacine that, according to our strict terms and conditions … is the genuine article, and you will share in the $1,25-million reward,” editor Garry Linnell wrote in the issue out on Wednesday.
About 150 sightings of the animal, which flourished on the southern island state of Tasmania until Europeans arrived with their own dogs, are investigated yearly.
Last month, a German tourist submitted two digital images of what he thought could be a Tasmanian tiger that he had taken while bushwalking.
Earlier this year, the Australian Museum shelved an attempt to clone the animal by recovering DNA from preserved museum specimens.
The thylacine was a dog-like carnivorous marsupial with stripes down its back. — AFP