CRYPTOLINK: Thylacine cameraman copped buttocks bite

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The cameraman who took footage of the last captive Tasmanian tiger was bitten by the animal. Source: AAP

THE cameraman who took the famous footage of the last captive Tasmanian tiger was bitten on the buttocks while filming.

Biologist David Fleay's pictures shot at a Hobart zoo in 1933 are known around the world as the haunting last images of an animal nearing extinction.

A tiger, or thylacine, known as Benjamin, is seen pacing uncomfortably inside a concrete pen three years before it was to become the last of its species to die in captivity.

But a new exhibition at Launceston's Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery has shed more light on the shoot.

The museum is displaying witness accounts, remembered by Fleay's daughter Rosemary, that recall him being bitten after two warning "yawns" from the tiger.

"The animal managed to get behind him and bite him on the buttocks," curator David Maynard told AAP.

"He had fair warning and he got what was coming to him."

Fleay, who was working under a curtain commonly used by photographers in the early 20th Century, suffered no serious injury.

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