Possibly of interest ?
Keith.
Ronald C. Gunn (1850), in a letter to the Zoological Society in London, detailed his arrangements for the transit of London Zoo's first thylacines. Gunn's letter, dated 29th December 1849, states:
The Thylacine Museum - The Thylacine in Captivity: Zoos, Circuses and Menageries: Internationally (page 1)
Owing to the shipping strike, the two voyagers were six months aboard ship. One of them died, but the survivor is in fine condition, and, being the only specimen of its kind in a European menagerie, and the last, it is
said, to be allowed to be exported alive, it is not likely to suffer from a lack of attention".
The surviving female was resident at the London Zoo from 26th January 1926 until her death on the 9th August 1931. She was housed in the North Mammal House, which can be seen in an enlargement of the London Zoo map from 1930. The North Mammal House is noted as No. 62 on the map above. (Link above).
Dead on arrival
We visited the London Zoo Archives to find out more about the thylacines displayed there over the 19th and early-20th centuries. The London Zoo was the place to which the first and last recorded Tasmanian tigers were exported — the former in 1850 and the latter, purchased for the princely sum of 150 pounds, in 1926.
The long sea journey was harsh, and many of the thylacines shipped from Van Diemen's land were simply declared "dead on arrival". One animal died just eight days after arriving in 1888. In the hope of offspring, many thylacines were shipped in breeding pairs. Yet these hopeful reproductive futures were often foreclosed when one of them died in transit, as was the case of the final shipment in 1926.
The hunt for London's thylacines shows a greater truth about Australian extinction - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
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