BASIC BOOKS, SEPTEMBER 2017Earlier this year, there was a flurry of excitement in Queensland, Australia, over the renewed search for the iconic Tasmanian tiger—a.k.a. thylacine. Never mind that the last documented thylacine died in the Hobart Zoo in 1936, and that the animal was declared extinct 50 years later in accordance with international conservation standards. Sightings of the Tassie tiger have continued with regularity not only in Tasmania, but also on the mainland, where they haven’t lived for 4,000 years. And yet, a tiger was reported at the northernmost tip of the Cape York Peninsula this year, spurring an army of camera trappers into action to prove they’re still out there.
Clearly the dog-like appearance of the marsupial thylacine is a case of convergent evolution, but it made me wonder: If thylacines looked like dogs, did they think and behave like dogs do, too? Alas, the animal’s mind seemed lost forever. Thylacines had been extinguished just as scientists had begun looking seriously at animal behavior.
I became obsessed with the thylacine. But rather than trying to find one hiding in the Tasmanian bush (although I did that, too), I spent two years searching for and studying the one artifact that might actually tell us what it was like to be a thylacine: its brain.
I describe this research in my latest book, What It’s Like to Be a Dog: And Other Adventures in Animal Neuroscience.
There ...
