Lindsey Pulse
Cheetahs Are Dangerously Close To Becoming Extinct
According to a new report, only about 7,000 of these majestic cats are left in the wild.
LEARN MOREPosted: 3:35 p.m. EDT Apr 1, 2017
People in Australia are claiming they've seen an animal that's supposedly been extinct for decades.
The rumored sightings of the Tasmanian tiger — which isn't really a tiger at all — have been in Queensland.
But the last known Tasmanian tiger died in 1936 at Australia's old Hobart Zoo.
The animals, which are also called thylacines, are marsupials — like kangaroos, koalas and wombats. They actually look a lot like a dog.
In the 1800s, the government put a bounty on the animals because people thought the creatures were killing a lot of sheep. That turned out to be exaggerated.
Still, humans hunted them for years in the wild, which is likely a big part of why they died out.
In 1986, the tiger finally was declared "extinct by international standards." Still, Tasmanian tiger sightings have been reported for years, but those haven't been totally confirmed.
And these recent alleged sightings have all been at night. Now, researchers are putting cameras in the area to see if the tigers are back from the dead.
