“Possible evidence of big cat in wild in new clearest picture”

[Soubriquet]

If this isn’t photoshopped, then I would say this is 100% a big cat.

They are obviously thriving in the wild and do not need to be culled or moved into a zoo

Link

Those blurry photos nearly always turn out to be someone's Maine Coone dyed black or something

In fairness, we have lots of wild Wallabys in England but you very rarely see them or hear anyone say they saw them.

I think the pic is fake but I believe there are random big cats in the uk. When I lived in herts there was a small charity up the road that dealt with big cats that idiot rich people had illegally imported over the years. He definitely had a few lynx there and they really arnt small!!!

True but again like the wild boars there's clear video and photo evidence of wallaby sightings. So although they are not seen often there is genuine evidence other than a person's personal recount that these animals are around.

No where near the area you mention but a colleague was certain she saw a Wallabee near our office. She is a very sensible woman in her 60s and was embarrassed to tell us as it seemed so random and she was sure she had to be mistaken.

I saw one clearly in a field near Gatwick Airport when I worked there, and another one a few years before that in the nearby countryside.

@BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz Out of interest I logged on to iRecord and searched for Red-necked Wallaby. Result: 66 records for the UK and Isle of Man, 29 of which are for 2022 & 2023, many with photos uploaded. All open access for anyone to see, with names of recorders and grid references.

If there were wild big cats roaming around, people would be seeing them and getting much more convincing photo/video evidence than grainy images of domestic cats walking across fields in the distance.

I thought it was well known and accepted that we have wallabies in the UK?

From reading through the other posts, it seems it is. I had never heard it before. This one was sitting in the central reservation of a road near the south coast. She was so surprised she turned back around to go and find it but it had gone.

If we had them, David Attenborough would have filmed it already.

This is our Tiddles, missing from home for 3 days now. If found, please call the number on the collar, open a can of tuna and back away very, very slowly.

I think it would have been easy to reach the word count. Finding evidence or not wouldn't matter either. It's the hypothesis and how I go out proving or disproving ( which of course I couldn't disprove for sure)

Find out how much various big cats need to live a) in the wild b) captivity. Then using a few of the suggested species sightings work out how much minium they need to eat and frequency. Use that volume of food available with their normal range, tinker with the range as they aren't I their native habitat. If the available food is out their to sustain life, then its possible and you go about looking at the livestock deaths, look for fur, dna, poop. The list is endless!

I didn't do it because it was too far from my London uni and I was stupid really in hindsight. I should have done it. Not sure my uni could have done the dna profiling on hair but I could have got around that

You could find any animal hair on barb wire fencing, any carnivore poop, any paw prints and as you long as you use your science skills, it's a valid research topic. You just need large volumes of everything over a year.

Almost like it had eaten Ready Brek

Well of course you can but only if the animal is actually there and if they were there someone would have concrete evidence of them already. Logically it's just not feasible that those pets released in the 70's and 80's are still around and roaming the countryside.

Strange how it appears to have an iridescent glow around the edges, don't you think

Not really. Chromatic aberration which causes edge fringing is a common problem in photography. It’s particularly evident in high contrast situations. A black cat’s head against a light grassy background, for example.

Never mind big cats, I'd settle for photographic evidence of the jack russel the size of a labrador.

There was the Surrey Puma story in the 1960s. Many newspaper pages covered in speculation.
Mid 1970 a photograph claiming to show the back end of a similar animal near Bodmin Cornwall.
Wallabies are not rare on Dunstable Downs, It is thought that they escaped from from Whipsnade Zoo.
Wild Boar are found in Forest of Dean area and in Dorset around Beaminster. There was the shooting of a sow because of the damage the pigs (a colony) were doing to crops. (Guess 1990s try Youtube.)
As I understand it wallabies and boar can be found fairly easily. Local knowledge for local people will help. Wallabies usually avoid close human contact and the wild pig, Sanglier is bloody dangerous ferocious if with it's young.

There is only reliable evidence of pig and wallaby none of big cats or Loch Ness monster.

Thank you John, I wasn't querying the existence of the boars, friend on the edge of the Forest has had her garden visited by one, just once, fortunately and evidently without its family and friends. She's seen evidence of the visit but not an actual boar. She's not keen on an introduction.

www.discoverwildlife.com/news/new-dna-evidence-confirms-presence-of-big-cats-in-the-uk/

This thread started out funny but quickly became depressing. Schools really need to spend more time teaching critical thinking.

Panthers and jaguars are a similar size to leopards, all of which are considerably bigger than lynx, which are about greyhound-sized

An adult male jaguar can weigh up to 19 stone and be 5'6" long (excluding the tail). That is BIG.

I spent two weeks on safari in Kenya some years ago, and leopards are near impossible to see, even when the guide is actually pointing at the tree with one in its branches.

all of which are considerably bigger than lynx, which are about greyhound-sized

This is a domestic cat next to a lynx…

The one I saw years ago was slightly bigger than a Labrador and much longer, and had a distinctive cat tail.

I’d been babysitting and was driving home after midnight, deserted roads, before mobile phone days. I saw something trotting along the road ahead and assumed it was a farmers dog. When I got close to it it was obviously a big cat, which was a shock! It kept running up the road in the headlights for what felt like a few minutes, but was probably less than 30 seconds. It then turned and jumped up and over the wall running alongside the road.

Many people at the time saw it. It was unmistakably a big cat, and I was within 3 or 4 metres of it with a very clear view.
I woke my parents up when I got home - they were not impressed!

Yes, not sure what you mean by the '...' but greyhounds and lynx are both up to around 75cm tall. Different shaped heads obviously and I suspect the lynx would win in a fight