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b'This week we\'re examining the Tantanoola Tiger, a mystery animal that probably wasn\'t a tiger...but what was it? This episode is rated two ghosts out of five for monster month spookiness! Thanks to Kristie for sharing her photos of the Tantanoola tiger!\\n\\nHappy birthday to ME this week! I\'ve decided to turn 25 again. That was a good year.\\n\\nFurther reading:\\n\\nThe Tasmanian tiger was hunted to extinction as a \'large predator\'--but it was only half as heavy as we thought\\n\\nThe grisly mystery of the murderous Tantanoola Tiger (Please note that the end of this article has some disturbing details not appropriate for younger readers. However, true crime enthusiasts will just shrug.)\\n\\nKristie and her kids reacting to the\\xa0 taxidermied Tantanoola Tiger:\\n\\n\\n\\nKristie\'s picture of the taxidermied Tantanoola Tiger. WHO DID THIS TO YOU, TIGER?\\n\\n\\n\\nThe numbat is striped but too small to fit the description of the "tiger":\\n\\n\\n\\nOur friend the thylacine, probably not strong enough to kill a full-grown sheep:\\n\\n\\n\\nTigers are really really really big. Also, don\'t get this close to a tiger:\\n\\n\\n\\nShow transcript:\\n\\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.\\n\\nThis past spring, when I was researching mysterious accounts of big cats spotted in Australia for episode 274, I considered including the Tantanoola Tiger. That was Kristie and Jason\\u2019s episode, and Kristie casually mentioned that she\\u2019d seen the stuffed Tantanoola tiger on display and wasn\\u2019t impressed. She even sent me pictures, which we\\u2019ll get to in a moment.\\n\\nIn the end, I decided the Tantanoola Tiger deserved its own episode, because it\\u2019s completely bonkers, and that it needed to be in monster month, because parts of the story are weird and creepy. I give it two ghosts out of five on our spookiness scale, so it\\u2019s not too spooky but it\\u2019s more than a little spooky.\\n\\nThe story starts in the southeastern part of South Australia at the very end of the 19th century. The little town of Tantanoola was home to a lot of sheep farmers, and in the early 1890s something was killing and eating sheep.\\n\\nFor years there had been rumors that a Bengal tiger had escaped from a traveling circus in 1884 and was living in the area, so once half-eaten sheep carcasses started turning up near Tantanoola, people assumed the tiger was to blame.\\n\\nThere was definitely something unusual killing sheep. Aboriginal shearers reported seeing an animal they didn\\u2019t recognize, something that frightened their dogs. Paw prints were found that measured over 4 inches across, or 11 cm, which is really big for a dog\\u2019s print although that\\u2019s what it resembled. It also happens to be a reasonable size for a small tiger, although a big tiger\\u2019s paw is usually more like 6 inches across, or almost 16 cm.\\n\\nIn 1892, a couple out driving in their buggy saw a striped animal cross the road ahead of them. They reported it as brown with stripes and a long tail. They estimated its length as three feet long not counting its tail, or about a meter, 5 feet long including the tail, or 1.5 meters. This is actually really short for a full-grown tiger. A big male Bengal tiger can grow more than ten feet long, or over 3 meters, including the tail, and even a small female Bengal tiger is about eight feet long, or 2.5 meters, including the tail.\\n\\nThere aren\\u2019t a lot of animals native to Australia that have stripes. The numbat has stripes and does live reasonably close to Tantanoola, although it was driven to extinction in the area by the late 19th century. But the numbat is only about 18 inches long, or 45 cm, including its tail, and it looks kind of like a squirrel. It eats insects, especially termites, which it licks up with a long, sticky tongue like a tiny anteater. It\\u2019s even sometimes called the banded anteater even though it\\u2019s a marsupial and not related to anteaters at all. Plus, it doesn\\u2019t eat very many ants. The female numbat doesn\\u2019t have a pouch, but while her babies are attached to her teats they\\u2019...'