A SOUTH Australian schoolteacher has filmed what he believes could be a thylacine in farmland near Moonta on the Yorke Peninsula.

Paul Day, 52, captured the footage at dawn on June 30 when he was scouting for a location to take sunrise photographs.

The vision — which can be seen at advertiser.com.au — shows a four-legged animal with a peculiar gait crossing in front of Mr Day’s camera.

The animal appears to be hopping on its back legs, a style of movement often attributed to the Tasmanian tiger.

The last know thylacine — a captive specimen named Benjamin — died in Hobart’s Beaumaris Zoo in 1936.

Since then, hundreds of people have claimed to have sited the marsupial carnivore, both in Tasmania and on the mainland, where scientists say it hasn’t been found for around 2000 years.

Mr Day said he’d been rising early to shoot sunrise pictures and footage for his YouTube channel.

“I was chasing the fog because I thought it would make a good photo. I finally found a good spot and set up the camera when I saw something out of the corner of my eye,” he said.

“At first I thought it was a fox crossing in front of the sun, then I thought that it might have been a dog.

“It wasn’t until I saw footage of another thylacine sighting on Facebook that it dawned on me. I thought to myself, ‘If that’s not a thylacine I’ll eat my hat’.”

Mr Day uploaded the footage to his YouTube channel for others to watch and comment on, and said the reaction was instant.

The video has now received more than 12,000 views. He said he knew some people would ridicule him for his insistence that the video showed a thylacine.

“Look, negative people are always going to be negative and there’s nothing you can do about that,” Mr Day said.

“But ... I’m putting this out there for people to make up their own mind.”

One person who didn’t take much convincing was Thylacine Awareness Group of Australia founder and avid Tassie tiger hunter Neil Waters.

Mr Waters said that while he was “cautious” about thylacine videos and pictures, his “heart skipped a beat” when he saw Mr Day’s film.

“This animal has a tail with a thick base, just like a thylacine, and there appears to be some discolouration on its back.

“Then it has this gait that is so peculiar, but it’s just like people have described the thylacine movement.

“It has those two back legs pushing off together, and many people who say they’ve seen a thylacine described it as moving in the way.”

Mr Waters said the creature’s thick neck, “boofy” head and large back legs ruled out speculation that it could be an injured fox.

As soon as Mr Waters became aware of the video he drove from Adelaide to Yorke Peninsula to meet with Mr Day and look for prints or scat. Mr Waters said he believed this was the best evidence that the Tassie tiger was not extinct.

“Unless Mr X wants to come out of the closet and show us what he actually has then this is the best footage in existence,” he said, referring to an unidentified Tasmanian man who is claiming he has clear video of a thylacine but is refusing to release it.

However, one person who doesn’t share Mr Day’s and Mr Waters’ enthusiasm is world renowned zoologist and University of Adelaide academic Kristofer Helgen.

After watching the video Prof Helgen said the “image leaves a lot to be desired”, but that the creature depicted appeared to be “a fox that is probably lame or injured”.