Chris Rehberg first learned about Tasmanian Tigers when he was a kid growing up in Sydney’s southern suburbs.

“I’ve got this memory from childhood of just being fascinated with this animal. It’s a really striking animal. It’s got this majestic name of ‘tiger’, which is really dramatic,” Chris told Hack.

It wasn’t until a Tasmanian exhibition on the animal toured through Sydney in 2001 that Chris’s interest in the tiger became a bit more serious.

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Whatsapp Thylacines, or Tasmanian Tigers, were declared extinct in the 1930s.

“All of a sudden all of the possibilities of what might be true of this animal - is it still there and what’s its history - are running through my brain.”

The Tasmanian Tiger, or thylacine, was a large, wolf-like marsupial known for its distinctive stripes and wide jaw.

It went extinct on the mainland of Australia in the 1800s, and around the same time, the Tassie government put a bounty on the animals. Pretty soon it went extinct there, too. The last known tiger died in captivity in 1936.

Or so they say.

There have been hundreds of reported sightings of the creature in eight or so decades since it went extinct.

‘Forensic investigation’

In 2006, Chris decided to investigate some of the claims. He approached the task with the intensity of a CSI detective.

“When it comes to looking at evidence, it reaches a point where it becomes like a forensic investigation,” he said. “It’s just me taking what I consider to be a logical, rational and try to be a balanced approach to analysing the evidence.”

Analysing photos is quite technical. It involves comparing depths of field, angles, location and lighting.

Chris doesn’t have any formal training in this area, meaning he’s been learning as he goes.

“I started a biology degree at university, but I switched my degree over to an IT career after that. Wildlife and a science background has always been a passion, and that doesn’t go away because I’ve changed my job,” he said.

Frequent trips to Tassie.

Looking for the Tassie Tiger isn’t Chris’s full-time job, but it does take up a lot of his time.

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He tries to make it to Tasmania at least once a year for a days or weeks long expedition.

While he’s there he scours the dense scrub for footprints, nests… and poos.

“The Tassie Tiger was said to have a very distinctive dropping, particularly if it was old. It was white and waxy,” he said.

He’s started up a website chronicling his expeditions and collecting up all the evidence of the animal’s existence.

He reckons he’s gotten pretty damn close to one.

“I heard an animal call while I was resting at my campsite. It was the classic Tasmanian Tiger double yip, so [it sounds like] yip-yip, yip-yip, yip.”

The evidence he’s analysed makes him pretty sure they’re still out there.

“When I began this, I was about 50-50. As time went on, I found a prospective footprint, then I’ve heard this call and again, it’s not definitive, not by a long shot. But it gives you a sense of - there might be a possibility,” he said.

“There’s a lot of people looking, but every camera is just a pin-prick in an enormous ocean.”

“I’ve moved to the greater than 50 per cent chance. In fact, I’d go so far as to say, 90 per cent and above.”

He admits that his family thinks he’s “a bit crazy”, but that isn’t going to stop him from pursuing evidence that will one day conclusively prove the tigers’ existence, once and for all.