You'll Think I'm Mad - Big Cats on Dartmoor

Are you saying there is a resident population or that the occasional wondering male has been sighted there?

 

I think there's a small resident population that gets added to by the occasional wandering individual. They're seen too often and more importantly hit by cars too often for it to only be the occasional wandering male. IIRC there's a resident population in Southeast Canada, too.

~Thylo

 

I once saw a large black cat across a field. The cat seemed as surprised as I was and we just stared at each other for a few seconds. I made a mental note of its size compared to a nearby fence and after the cat had gone I headed over to measure its size. It was just a larger domestic cat. I don't know why it seemed so big, maybe a lack of common urban features to compare it to but I've seen more big cats than the average person and I was fooled. It would take some hard evidence to convince me big cats were living in the UK after that experience.

 

Mobile phones with cameras generally killed stories about escaped big cats, bigfoot, flying saucers, ghosts or headless horsemen.

Wild cats are quite easily identified by their footprints left on dirt roads, pond edges, fresh snow etc. Another good way is to establish scratching posts baited with catnip. A good book about animal tracks and signs costs less than 20 pounds. I still get a thrill whenever I find footprints of a lynx, badger, wild boar or a red deer. More expensive - over 100 pounds - are camera traps.

Trying all these will not let you find a leopard in Britain , but is a good way to get interested in real local wildlife.

 

Ultimately, like religion, it's really a matter of faith (which I don't have).

For me, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and claims for UK big cats haven't really provided unequivocal evidence at any level (that I know of, always interested to hear).

The fact that reliable witnesses have made (usually) private statements doesn't really cut it with me -in my experience when these threads are pulled the stories generally disappear into impenetrable "friend of friend" territory. Additionally, UFO-ology has similarly put forward expert witnesses to support outlandish claims but none of these have survived scrutiny.

 

While I don't think they are there if I was looking for them I would use trail cams or night vision gear. Infra red gear that picks up heat signitures makes hiding in open areas virtually impossible.

Failing that find a goid viewing point that overlooks a large amount of open areas bordering forest or broken country and watch using good binos. Watch early and late till your eyes hurt. If an animal is resident it is often surprising how quickly it will turn up and even nomadic things turn up eventually. This is far more likely to be successful than blundering around in thick cover.

As I say I do not think you will see any cats but you will see cool stuff. Could the marks on wood be stags antlers?

 

Get yourself some camera traps, and spray some calvin klein obsession for men cologne around 5-10 feet in front of them. If you have any cats or canids in the area, this will attract them in front of your cameras just about better than anything else.

 

There is one single record of an escaped Lynx killed in Britain in recent times. However, nothing suggests this was anything more than an isolated, shortly escaped animal. It was well described by Darren Naish on his blog, who also covered the British belief in big cats quite intensively.

Penguins, zebras, antelope, ostriches, emus, condors, kiwis and polar bears were also seen in the wild in Britain, and they were all single, short time escaped animals.

Some of you may be interested in actual experiences of people trying to re-wild Lynx and other big cats in countries they actually live. Zoo-bred Lynx do easily catch wild animals. However, there are completely, naively unafraid of man. They often catch domestic animals without hiding themselves from farmers. They are also very vulnerable to being killed on roads. This makes it very unlikely that a released bigger cat can live stealthily for any longer time.

 

Hediger describes a black Leopard living wild in Switzerland for some weeks, and much more recently a Clouded Leopard from Howletts was at large I believe for months. I have hearsay evidence of Lynx breeding ferally in Norfolk -- most if not all, were eventually shot by gamekeepers.

 

In the late 1960s I often used to see a man walking his Leopard around Clapham Junction in the Northcote Road area.

Clearly there were kept as pets in the UK at some point

 

Many years ago, you could buy most wild cat species at Harrod's.

 

The famously written-up Lion 'Christian' came from there. It's where I saw my first Margay.

 

I forgot he was from there! It was the source of many pet cheetahs through the years.

 

You could buy a gorilla 2 miles from where I live now in Birmingham. Big Cats would not surprise me.

 

Politely saying, not. Unlike supernatural entities, a wild cat, even an escaped one, is a physical animal which existence can be proven.

Wild cats are well studied, and there are proven methods to find them or confirm their extinction. Just in case: watching for Lynx with binoculars is quite a bad way. Most efficient is spotlighting covering lots of ground. However, trying to see a cat is a very bad method to proof its existence to others. Tracks, hair samples, and DNA in a suspected Lynx kill is much easier. .

If you read some German, you may find this website of interest:
Arbeitskreis Hessenluchs: Luchs und Wolf in Hessen
It deals with Eurasian Lynx in Hessen region of Germany, which are wandering animals, mostly from reintroductions in other German states.

This is a very close model of "wild cats in Britain" phenomenon: a few wild cats in a densely settled region with some significant wild places, which long held no lynx.

Things like "a person knowing little about nature claimed to see a lynx" or "X years ago one could buy a pet lynx" would never be considered a proof, even of the weakest category.

Lynx, among many things, leave their footprints all over the place, because they must wander to hunt. They are also territorial, so a sighting in the area can be followed, until the cat is found or its existence dismissed.

Lynx were successfully proven and tracked using photos from tourists, reports of credible people (naturalists and foresters), then quickly tracked by camera traps and hair samples. Although literally few individuals are involved, they are followed and refound. Thanks to DNA, it is even known how related they are to each other.

 

That website is very interesting, especialy video of lynx following lady and her dog on forest road. It is very unusual behavior for wild animal. Wild lynx is (or it should be) timid animal that avoids humans.

 

This thread makes the think about a chapter in George Monbiot's book "Feral". He describes the phenomenon that so many people report seeing big cats in the UK but real proof remains missing, bar a few isolated incidents of escaped animals. Interestingly, the cats are almost always black and spotted at twilight or at night. The book says that the majority of the cases are probably mere black house cats whose size has been judged wrong.

 

Of course. Shape of big and small cats is similar. The cat on a photo or a video is normally ginger-brown or black house cat, on a background of weeds or bush providing no size reference. For a layman, it is difficult to identify the cat. Such a cat can be identified by proportions of tail, ears and face.

Few years ago there were several cases where such cat scares mobilized big police actions which were expensive. If I remember well, in one case footprints were dog, and in another police brought a hi-tech heat sensing camera to watch a life-size tiger toy. Since these incidents, I guess, British police learned to identify cat species.

 

i think the owner of dartmor zoo benjamin mee clamind he saw pumas when he was trying to get the zoo to open again. if that is true he is a reilable sours i my opinon. he tack about it in hi biogarafi.