Back From The Dead? Mysterious Animal Filmed Crossing Driveway In Australia

Security cameras outside your house don't usually capture anything interesting. The odd animal doing its business on your patch of grass, maybe a drunk person staggering about.

But unidentifiable creatures casually strolling across the driveway? Now, that is interesting.

A man captured the footage at about 2am outside his house in Australia.

What the hell animal is this?! It's got four legs, and at first looks like it's probably a dog or some sort of fox - until you get to the tail.

This creature's tail is thick and stiff, and extends from the back of the animal straight to the floor. Not like any fox we've ever seen.

The man posted the picture to Imgur, asking its users for help in identifying the mysterious beast.

People immediately began asking where the man lives, believing he has captured evidence of the extinct (yes, extinct) Tasmanian Tiger.

One user excitedly commented: "Please please please tell me that you live in Tasmania and you have footage of the long thought extinct Tasmanian Tiger!!!!!"

Wikimedia Commons

The Tassie Tiger, formally known as the thylacine, was the largest carnivorous marsupial in modern times, but was believed to have gone extinct back in the 1930s.

It got its nickname because of its striped lower back, even though it isn't related to tigers. Its closest living relative is thought to be the Tasmanian Devil, but whatever this night-time wanderer is, it definitely doesn't look like one of those.

Other people, less helpfully, have said that the critter looks like a chupacabra, which is a legendary creature from America.

And when we say legendary, we don't mean it's a top LAD - we mean it literally is the stuff of legends and folklore.

Chupacabra literally translates to 'goat sucker', because of its apparent habit of killing livestock and sucking its blood.

Its first reported sightings were in Puerto Rico but stretch all the way up to Maine in the USA. None in Australia, though.

The Tasmanian Tiger has been extinct on the main land for up to 2,000 years, with the last one dying in captivity in the '30s.

There's no real explanation for what this actually is - could it be that the Tasmanian Tiger is back after 80 years missing from Planet Earth?

We'd love that to be the case, but we reckon it's probably just a fox with a weird tail or the camera playing tricks on us.

Topics: Animal, Animals, Australia

Daisy Jackson

Daisy Jackson is a freelance writer, who has previously worked at Shortlist Media and Trinity Mirror. She has written about the Manchester terror attacks and appeared on BBC Five live to discuss the aftermath, as well as interviewing an orthopaedic surgeon in Syria.