Opportunities lost: Zoos and the marsupial that tried to be a wolf

Abstract

In the archives of the National Zoo there is a story of an opportunity lost. Aszoo stories go, it is not unique. There are many others like it. Such stories sometimestell us about ourselves.It started sometime in early 1902. Zoo director William Hornaday wanted toexhibit a thylacine: Thylacinus cynocephalus—the pouched beast with a dog’s head.Depicted by Patterson as “a species perfectly distinct from any of the animal cre-ation hitherto known…” [Quammen, 1997:281], the thylacine had been describedalmost 100 years earlier. Though sometimes called the Tasmanian tiger because ofits striped coat, this strange marsupial was actually a “wannabe” wolf. The long-muzzled head with its short ears, the deep chest, and the feet and legs were distinc-tively dog-like, but the rear end and long tail hinted of marsupial ancestry. True dogscan wag their tails. This one could not. All the same, the thylacine remains a remark-able example of convergent evolution, and the largest carnivorous marsupial to sur-vive into the 20th century.Hornaday made his wishes known to a Washington diplomat and zoo buff, Dr.F.W. Goding, who was U.S. Consul of New South Wales. Although thylacines haddisappeared from mainland Australia before Europeans arrived on the scene, theystill survived in Tasmania where they preyed on sheep and consequently were con-sidered a nuisance. Goding used his influence. In due course, a Tasmanian trappercaught a female, which was shipped to the states. The creature endured the confinesof a crate for over 3 weeks as the steamer carried it across the Pacific and a trainconveyed it to the nation’s capital.Upon arrival in September 1902, the animal’s shabby condition showed thatthe journey had taken its toll. Until then, the strange-looking animal also had kept asecret. She was a mother. Three pouch young, no bigger than rats, had miraculously