Ielts reading question-type based tests true false not given matching headings

TEST 3 – Tasmanian Tiger 
Although it was called tiger, it looked like a dog with black stripes on its back and it was the largest 
known carnivorous marsupial of modern times. Yet, despite its fame for being one of the most fabled 
animals in the world, it is one of the least understood of Tasmania’s native animals. The scientific name for 
the Tasmanian tiger is Thylacine and it is believed that they have become extinct in the 20th century. Fossils 
of thylacines dating from about almost 12 million years ago have been dug up at various places in Victoria, 
South Australia and Western Australia.
They were widespread in Australia 7,000 years ago, but have probably been extinct on the continent 
for 2,000 years. This is believed to be because of the introduction of dingoes around 8,000 years ago. 
Because of disease, thylacine numbers may have been declining in Tasmania at the time of European 
settlement 200 years ago, but the decline was certainly accelerated by the new arrivals. The last known 
Tasmanian Tiger died in Hobart Zoo in 1936 and the animal is officially classified as extinct. Technically, 
this means that it has not been officially sighted in the wild or captivity for 50 years. 
However, there are still unsubstantiated sightings. Hans Naarding, whose study of animals had taken 
him around the world, was conducting a survey of a species of endangered migratory bird. What he saw that 
night is now regarded as the most credible sighting recorded of thylacine that many believe has been extinct 
for more than 70 years. 
“I had to work at night,” Naarding takes up the story. “I was in the habit of intermittently shining a 
spotlight around. The beam fell on an animal in front of the vehicle, less than 10m away. Instead of risking 
movement by grabbing for a camera, I decided to register very carefully what I was seeing. The animal 
was about the size of a small shepherd dog, a very healthy male in prime condition. What set it apart from a 
dog, though, was a slightly sloping hindquarter, with a fairly thick tail being a straight continuation of the 
backline of the animal. It had 12 distinct stripes on its back, continuing onto its butt. I knew perfectly well 
what I was seeing. As soon as I reached for the camera, it disappeared into the tea-tree undergrowth and 
scrub.” 
The director of Tasmania’s National Parks at the time, Peter Morrow, decided in his wisdom to keep 
Naarding’s sighting of the thylacine secret for two years. When the news finally broke, it was accompanied 
by pandemonium. “I was besieged by television crews, including four to live from Japan, and others from 
the United Kingdom, Germany, New Zealand and South America,” said Naarding.
Government and private search parties combed the region, but no further sightings were made. The 
tiger, as always, had escaped to its lair, a place many insist exists only in our imagination. But since then, 
the thylacine has staged something of a comeback, becoming part of Australian mythology. There have been 
more than 4,000 claimed sightings of the beast since it supposedly died out, and the average claims each 
year reported to authorities now number 150. Associate professor of zoology at the University of Tasmania, 
Randolph Rose, has said he dreams of seeing a thylacine. But Rose, who in his 35 years in Tasmanian 
academia has fielded countless reports of thylacine sightings, is now convinced that his dream will go 
unfulfilled. 
“The consensus among conservationists is that, usually, any animal with a population base of less 
than 1,000 is headed for extinction within 60 years,” says Rose. “Sixty years ago, there was only one 
thylacine that we know of, and that was in Hobart Zoo,” he says. Dr. David Pemberton, curator of zoology at 
the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, whose PhD thesis was on the thylacine, says that despite scientific 
thinking that 500 animals are required to sustain a population, the Florida panther is down to a dozen or so 
animals and, while it does have some inbreeding problems, is still ticking along. “I’ll take a punt and say 
that, if we manage to find a thylacine in the scrub, it means that there are 50-plus animals out there.” 
After all, animals can be notoriously elusive. The strange fish known as the coelacanth, with its “proto-legs”, 
was thought to have died out along with the dinosaurs 700 million years ago until a specimen was dragged 
to the surface in a shark net off the south-east coast of South Africa in 1938. Wildlife biologist Nick Mooney 
has the unenviable task of investigating all “sightings” of the tiger totalling 4,000 since the mid-1980s, and 

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