Big Cat Sightings.

[peppermintcrisp]

Due to hijacking the other thread I have decided to make a thread and hear of any other sightings.

I will copy my previous post.

It's interesting to me that the sightings are nearly always of black cats, when melanistic morphs are rare in leopards and jaguars, and almost nonexistent in other large cat species (for example, there are no known examples of black pumas).

Hmmm I’m very open to the possibility but it seems they would be leaving more trace surely? Big cat poos and footprints if nothing else.

I would be more convinced if there was boring evidence such as poo. Carcasses of prey. Dens. Etc.

There is very little land in the uk which is unmanaged or unused.

I work with people who spend considerable amounts of time in 'wild', rural and isolated places. Including mountains, moorland. But also farmland and woodland. Mix of ecologists, land management, hunting, farming. These people know the land, do surveys of species, have monitoring kit etc. Never a peep about big cats.

Sorry. I don't buy it.

I believe there has been the odd one which has been released from or escaped from illegal private collections. They survive for a time but they're ill adapted to surviving on their own and don't last for too long.

There is simply no evidence for a sustainable breeding population however.

If they were established there would be frequent livestock kills, sightings on wildlife cameras (not dubious out of focus photos from hundreds of yards away). We would hear them call.

Very little of the UK is wild enough for them to go unnoticed.

I know in the case of the “Beast of Bont” as mentioned earlier there have also been multiple accounts of carcasses discovered in trees…so something pretty substantial has carried them up there

The only wild cat species native to the UK is the European Wild Cat (felis sylvestris) and that is only really found in Scotland. Other cats living wild are feral domestic cats, which can occasionally interbreed with the wild cat. Nothing big.

My ex said he saw one. He's not prone to lies. This was back in the late 90s.

He was working for his old boss, who'd retired, at his house in the country (south east) This bloke told my ex he'd seen a big cat nearby, and my ex scoffed at the idea, thinking it was ridiculous.

Then later on he saw a cat loping around, said it was definitely a big cat as it was near a fence post for size comparison. He was quite shocked and scared, so didn't hang around.

I managed to photograph one years ago.
We lived just outside the Exmoor National Park.
This 'big cat' was prowling along the edge of the field opposite our house. I got the camera and got a couple of very poor pictures - poor because it was raining, I was rushing and using an old camera while trying to not fall out of a window.

At about the same time some lambs had been attacked locally - assumed to have been by dogs.

I now live in the National Park and haven't seen any more 'big cats', but I keep looking.

My DS lives in a isolated house in the SE and saw one last year. He description matched a lynx, greyish, no tail. He looked online and someone else reported something similar awhile back in the area. It either is a lynx or something else that resembles one, large domestic cat or unusual breed of domestic cat for example.

😬😱 There’s a rabbit carcass hanging off a branch of a tree on my daily dog walk. I mentioned it to DH yesterday and said the village had gone all Blair Witchy.

Think a rabbit would be too big, but if it's a baby rabbit it could be a shrike (butcher bird).

Given they are rarely/never seen by gamekeepers & farmers, I'm inclined to think town dwellers are confusing domestic cats/Muntjac/black dogs. Half the photo 'evidence' looks like black bin bags.

Adding my name to the list of those who've seen a sandy coloured big cat. Mine was disappearing into the woods late at night.
I thought it was a deer at first but when I saw the long swooping tail I realised what it must be.

My mum saw one, 20 years ago, on a back road in rural East Suffolk. It was a late Summer evening, about 10pm, and she rounded a corner in her car and it was half sat, half lying in the road. She had to slow down and it got up and slunk off. Black, size of a large dog with long tail.

She grew up in Africa and knows what a big cat looks like.

About 18 years ago we were at a wedding in the highlands. We had a room that looked out over fields. Dh and I couldn't be less likely to make this up but we both saw a large black cat (much larger than a wildcat) with a huge long tail walking along the field perimeter.

I had a colleague who’s partner was a big cat keeper and specialist at the local zoo. He was often called out to sightings/prints/fur etc. He would confirm about 4 cases a year across England/Wales.

I asked why it wasn’t talked about, she said it was always kept quiet to avoid fear in one group of people and mass trespass by excited others!

@aitchteeaitch
Thank you! Now I have to read more about the European Wild Cat, very interesting.

I must say that I am a very very sceptical, cynical, logical person - I have previously considered those people in newspapers who've claimed a big cat sighting as deluded nutters...but I know what I saw on Tuesday this week and it was a bloody massive, predatory cat!

I also got fully rounded on by a rather unpleasant woman ("I'm a proper country person" ) on social media who said that the presence of these animals is well known but that people who see them should "keep their mouths shut" so that others don't come trying to shoot them...I asked for evidence of any large cats being shot before but none was forthcoming.

As a teenager I lived in the peaks on the Staffordshire/Derbyshire border and both me and my dad are convinced we've seen one on separate occasions. I used to drive home a lot at night on my own as a 17/18 year old from visiting my friends who actually lived in a town with pubs and things to do - I'm sure I imagined a lot of things but on two occasions I'm convinced one crossed my path. Close to the other sightings posted in Derbyshire by a PP - I used to drive home through Flash!

Going back about 35 years I was in a really old building where the glass had those wavy lines in it sometimes. It was on the edge of a village, surrounded by farmland. I was standing by the window and about 100 yards ( max) away I saw a black animal jump a hedge that had a wire fence in it ( so an animal couldn’t have pushed through it) and drop to the ground then slink off into the undergrowth. It was definitely a cat like movement, nothing like a dog jumping a fence. The animal was long, maybe the height of a sheepdog but longer in the body with a long tail, jet black. I’m convinced it was some sort of wild big cat.

This topic fascinates me.

This is worth a watch: www.amazon.co.uk/Panthera-Britannia-Cliff-Barackman/dp/B0B6DW27PY

I am in the same mind as @Scrowy . I would like proof that cats are living wild in Great Britain, but I am very sceptical they are.

We know decades ago the odd big cat has been found in the wild, but these have been isolated incidents linked to escapes from private homes (when the rules allowed their keeping). I am sure some people let their big cats free after the rule change in 1976 (?) but that was 48 years ago and big cats do not live that long.

The photographic 'evidence' I have seen in the papers is highly suspect. The cat next to a wire fence that is something like four times its height. The cat sitting in grass that is clearly not the sort of grass one finds in the UK. The black cat sitting proud with a white flash on its chest which looks just like one of those large kids toys Toys R Us sold in the 1990's. The photoshopped cats head. The big cat walking into 'bushes' which is in fact a fat domesticated cat walking into an overgrown garden border.

Where is the one undisputable picture or carcass?

I saw one on the road the last year. It was early morning and I was taking my daughter to college. She was annoyingly asleep so didn't see it. It ran across the road quite a way in front of me. It was a quiet country road on the way to Radstock near Bath

There is something in the order of 3m to 6m vehicle dashcams fitted in the UK. Aviva say one in six.

Where is the dashcam footage. By the law of probability these beasts are not going to be selective to non-dashcam cars.

There is a brilliant podcast called Big Cat Conversation which delves into explanations how big cats could be surviving. There’s lots of guests on who are farmers and gamekeepers who explain that they have seen them but the cats keep the number of deer under control so they keep quiet. The farmers don’t want people on their land either.

I was a sceptic but this has convinced me. Conversely I believed in ghost until I listened to Uncanny.