section_path: Extinction/Last of the species
section_name: Last of the species
paragraph_text: Last of the species
  
  The last captive thylacine, lived as an endling (the known last of its species) at Hobart Zoo until its death on the night of 7 September 1936. The animal, a female, was captured by Elias Churchill with a snare trap and was sold to the zoo in May 1936. The sale was not publicly announced because the use of traps was illegal and Churchill could have been fined. After its death, the remains of the endling were transferred to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. The remains were not properly recorded by the museum because the animal had been caught illegally. It lay undiscovered for decades until a taxidermist record dated from 1936 or 1937 mentioning the animal was noticed. This led to a full audit of all thylacine remains at the museum and the endling's successful identification at the end of 2022.
  
  In 1968, Frank Darby invented a myth that the endling was called Benjamin. The myth was widely circulated in the media, with Wikipedia itself repeating the invention. The thylacine that Darby was referring to was a female at Hobart Zoo. This animal is believed to have died as the result of neglect—locked out of its sheltered sleeping quarters, it was exposed to a rare occurrence of extreme Tasmanian weather: extreme heat during the day and freezing temperatures at night. This thylacine features in the last known motion picture footage of a living specimen: 45 seconds of black-and-white footage showing the thylacine in its enclosure in a clip taken in 1933, by naturalist David Fleay. In the film footage, the thylacine is seen seated, walking around the perimeter of its enclosure, yawning, sniffing the air, scratching itself (in the same manner as a dog), and lying down. Fleay was bitten on the buttock whilst shooting the film. In 2021, a digitally colourised 80-second clip of Fleay's footage of the thylacine was released by the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, to mark National Threatened Species Day. The digital colourisation process was based on historic primary and secondary descriptions to ensure an accurate colour match.
  
  Although there had been a conservation movement pressing for the thylacine's protection since 1901, driven in part by the increasing difficulty in obtaining specimens for overseas collections, political difficulties prevented any form of protection coming into force until 1936. Official protection of the species by the Tasmanian government came all too late; it was introduced on 10 July 1936, 59 days before the last known specimen died in captivity.