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Alien Big Cats ('ABCs')

In your opinion what are alien big cats most likely to be?

  • Escapees from collections, breeding in the UK countryside

    Votes: 57 48.3%

  • A species of endemic British big cat somehow overlooked by science

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Zooform Phenomena - animal-shaped manifestations of paranormal activity

    Votes: 6 5.1%

  • Misidentifications of big dogs, normal cats etc

    Votes: 28 23.7%

  • A big hoax

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Summat else

    Votes: 4 3.4%

  • All of the above

    Votes: 23 19.5%
  • Total voters
    118
Robbrent said:
Here's the thing, there are plenty of very shy rare animals of both land and sea, but none is so rare or shy that they have never been captured or studied, if there is a population of big cats in the UK, what we need is real physical evidence, what do we get?

Ambiguity?

And as I have repeatedly observed ambiguity is the hallmark of Fortean phenomena, people are more than welcome to go on wild goose chases, and the phenomena will lay lots of false clues that send to down the wrong path, until we stop chasing it and try to understand what it's trying to tell us ( I haven't a clue )
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Spot on.

From my perspective there seems to be three elements to this big cat phenomenon in Britain:

  1. Reputable witnesses who encounter big puma-like cats that are almost certainly rebased or escaped animals. I'm putting that Dartmoor Zoo owner at the top of the list as not only did he encounter a puma-like big cat (multiple witnesses) and make an identification, but also the creature was heard calling to his own captive pumas and local landowners reported that animals such as horses were very unsettled during this time. Also in this category are the occasional lynx sightings and physical evidence such as the dead lynx in a Norfolk gamekeeper's freezer
  2. The truly mysterious big black cats that leave no trace, have never been hit and killed by vehicles and are often sighted in association with other paranormal goings-on and associations. Author Merrily Harpur also came to this conclusion after researching hundreds of such sightings. To my mind there are of the same nature as the big black dogs of yesterday (Black Shuck et al.), just don't ask me why in the 21st Century we see big black cats instead of big black dogs
  3. The muppets on the internet who take every photo or fleeting sighting of a black domestic cat and present it as evidence of Britain being overrun with 'black pumas'. For example, North Wales Puma Watch: https://pumawatch.co.uk/sightings/, a site pebbledash with photoshopped pumas and my all-time favourite "black puma on a city centre toilet block roof" report: https://pumawatch.co.uk/chester-market-puma/...
 
What does everyone make of this,described as a malnourished 6-7 month old leopard cub?
B26DA45B-8055-4F6E-8613-6E59C8FAE67D.jpeg
 
Druk said:
What does everyone make of this,described as a malnourished 6-7 month old leopard cub?View attachment 69686
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Could be any black cat, not exactly in-focus either, are there any more photos? Even if it is a leopard cub it is highly likely to have been an illegal pet that either escaped or was no longer wanted. Curious as to why no scavengers have been at the corpse nor any sign of blowfly etc.?
 
Paul_Exeter said:
Could be any black cat, not exactly in-focus either, are there any more photos? Even if it is a leopard cub it is highly likely to have been an illegal pet that either escaped or was no longer wanted. Curious as to why no scavengers have been at the corpse nor any sign of blowfly etc.?
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Episode 96 of big cat conversations podcasts tells the story,but 100% that is NOT a leopard cub.
 
Druk said:
I listened to the podcast,apparently the “cubs” mother was shot in the UK the year before leading to the leopard cubs malnourished state and stunted size,then a few months after the mothers death that cub was shot.
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Do we have an out-of-focus image of the mother, too? The tail on that 'cub' looks odd, like the image has been photoshopped to make it look longer
 
Paul_Exeter said:
Exactly the same sort of people who encounter and even get pursued by balls of light/plasma/unidentified craft in the sky, encounter ghosts and experience time-slips...
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Well no, actually, just people who don’t believe in the supernatural, think yetis are nonsense, would laugh at you if you talked about UFOs , but saw something they believed was a big cat. And that, to me, seems a bit different to other ‘fortean’ phenomena we talk about on here
 
JaneD said:
Well no, actually, just people who don’t believe in the supernatural, think yetis are nonsense, would laugh at you if you talked about UFOs , but saw something they believed was a big cat. And that, to me, seems a bit different to other ‘fortean’ phenomena we talk about on here
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Not wanting to be pedantic, but did they believe in the existence of these black cats before they encountered one? So many witnesses to poltergeist activity were skeptics before they had their experience, likewise ghost sightings and UFOs.
 
Paul_Exeter said:
Do we have an out-of-focus image of the mother, too? The tail on that 'cub' looks odd, like the image has been photoshopped to make it look longer
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Actaully, is that a long tail or an ordinary cat tail and a gouge in the soil? The half of the tail furthest from the body (by the foot) doesn't look tail-like at all.
 
Paul_Exeter said:
Not wanting to be pedantic, but did they believe in the existence of these black cats before they encountered one? So many witnesses to poltergeist activity were skeptics before they had their experience, likewise ghost sightings and UFOs.
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Don’t think they saw black cats , to be equally non pedantic. I don’t think any of them were believers beforehand and am not sure they are believers now, just that they saw something that looked like a big cat and they couldn’t explain it in normal parameters. They are all different places/ people/ incidents i was told about over a fair period of time.
 
Paul_Exeter said:
Actaully, is that a long tail or an ordinary cat tail and a gouge in the soil? The half of the tail furthest from the body (by the foot) doesn't look tail-like at all.
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The tail doesn't taper, but looks wider than the section closer to the back.

And I agree. That animal is right at the literal foot of the person taking the photo. Why wouldn't you take a closer and better picture?

And another curiosity. What's with the pruners that are between the front legs? For scale? But the person's foot gives us scale. A very posed picture imo. So skeptical. I'm not even sure if it is a cat. The hind legs look very muscular for a "malnourished" animal.
 
brownmane said:
And another curiosity. What's with the pruners that are between the front legs? For scale?
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The “malnourished leopard cub” was feeding on a dead sheep when it was shot,the podcast made no mention of why the pruners were there,as you say the foot is the scale.After 100 podcasts spanning several years that’s what it amounts to…….Nada.
 
Druk said:
The “malnourished leopard cub” was feeding on a dead sheep when it was shot,the podcast made no mention of why the pruners were there,as you say the foot is the scale.After 100 podcasts spanning several years that’s what it amounts to…….Nada.
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Are they suggesting that little kitty killed the sheep...?!
 
Paul_Exeter said:
Are they suggesting that little kitty killed the sheep...?!
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Most lamb deaths, pre and post natal, are nearly always blamed on foxes here - I don't know about Britain. What has been found is that a fox will take a carcass (due to birthing problems), rather than a live lamb. I reckon that this pussy cat has just taken advantage of a possible stillborn lamb, like the fox does.

Most Merino and similar fine bred sheep seem to be lacking in mothering skills and can, and do, walk away from a primary lamb if the mother is birthing a twin.

Foxes clean up a lot of placenta and dead lambs here, which ties in nicely with them pupping through September, the same time as sheep drop their lambs in the paddock

It's usually terrible weather, with sheep grazier alerts constantly heard on rural radio.

Sheep...stupid bloody things...
 
Druk said:
Proof?
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So I just watched 3 minutes. He's funny. He speaks of the one deer kill having been DNA tested and says that the testing was able to pick up DNA of a Burmese python along with dog and fox. He goes on to reveal that the python DNA was from scissors(?) he'd used on the deer that he'd also used to taxidermy a Burmese python. He comments on how well these traces of contaminating DNA were picked up, but no ABC.

Then he says that there were no dog nor fox prints found (nor prints of ABC) so the dog and fox DNA found is only a ruse to cover up the real (nonexistent) evidence of ABC.

So not only is he contaminating his specimen, he also won't accept anything that does not corroborate his belief.:rolleyes:

I didn't bother watching any further.
 
brownmane said:
So I just watched 3 minutes. He's funny. He speaks of the one deer kill having been DNA tested and says that the testing was able to pick up DNA of a Burmese python along with dog and fox. He goes on to reveal that the python DNA was from scissors(?) he'd used on the deer that he'd also used to taxidermy a Burmese python. He comments on how well these traces of contaminating DNA were picked up, but no ABC.

Then he says that there were no dog nor fox prints found (nor prints of ABC) so the dog and fox DNA found is only a ruse to cover up the real (nonexistent) evidence of ABC.

So not only is he contaminating his specimen, he also won't accept anything that does not corroborate his belief.:rolleyes:

I didn't bother watching any further.
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He is one of britains 3 top big cat experts,seen lots of cats including cubs in the UK but never managed to photograph one.The roadkill cat was 9 feet long but he didn’t have the correct lens on his camera to photograph the creature :dunno::oops:
 
Druk said:
Proof?
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He said he only had a telephoto lens with him. Couldn’t he just remove that & use the camera with no lens attached? Also why not take a photo of the whole animal while you’re there? For a naturalist that seems unforgivable.

I’m not expert enough to tell if some of his kill finds were made by big cats. He seems adamant they weren't dogs/badgers/foxes/ etc scavenging as they make more of a mess. Cats apparently are cleaner in their eating habits. Also the canine teeth marks [if that’s what they were] on nose or throat of the kills points to cat.

Interesting video.

There was a ‘British big cat night’ on tv a couple of weeks ago in which they found large paw prints which certainly looked like a cat. Definitely not dog. Can’t remember the location.
 
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