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

  • Escapees from collections, breeding in the UK countryside

    Votes: 58 47.9%
  • 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 5.0%
  • Misidentifications of big dogs, normal cats etc

    Votes: 30 24.8%
  • A big hoax

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Summat else

    Votes: 4 3.3%
  • All of the above

    Votes: 23 19.0%

  • Total voters
    121
Rick minter Big Cat Podcasts is going to feature the thermal footage in a future podcast so odds are it’s nothing to get excited about,if it were conclusive it would already be shouted about from the rooftops.
I would not put it past this phenomena to display a somewhat ambiguous thermal signature, it's what it does

I must say in terms of of this phenomena it's really excelled itself
 
Who is it who mistakes moggies for big cats? It is hard to believe.

not like cats are hard to come by.
I think it's quite often a genuine mistake, when people see a 'feline shaped object' at a distance with nothing available for scale. I mistook my own cat for an ABC once (it was a real 'these are small, those are far away' moment).
 
But Wallabies are easily found; at least on the IOM, they mostly occur in the Curraghs nature reserve, just north west of Sulby. (Though I am told they go all over the North of the Island).

They have become a local delicacy. Those which wander off the reserve aren't protected under any legislation..
 
I agree. They are now trying out the 'dwarf alien big cat' idea, and I can see that inspiring every fame-hungry snapper to take pictures of more housecats and post them with the caption 'New Picture of Dwarf Big Cat Spotted In Lincolnshire Countryside' (or wherever).
 
I like this,British big cats are shrinking and evolving to eat low risk rabbits DESPITE a huge British deer population??
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What are these guys on?
Destroying their own credibility,this is dragonfly productions remember,the same team who gave us thermal footage of Nessie,a “best evidence yet” British panther pic which turned out to be fake and “found” leopard DNA when they were looking for somewhere to screen their new documentary.
 
And why would the population as a whole shrink? Why wouldn't they just ...oooh, I dunno, eat more rabbits?
Darwin need never have travelled to the Galapagos to research his theory of evolution,he should have stayed in the UK and studied the incredibly fast genetic selection of dwarf leopards according to Dragonfly productions.
 
And why would the population as a whole shrink? Why wouldn't they just ...oooh, I dunno, eat more rabbits?
The rabbits are classed as low risk?Leopards evolved for deer,antelope etc,they come to the UK with a huge deer population and De-or Re- evolve to lessen the risks of tackling cervids?
 
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What is happening here has parallels with the whole UFO phenomenon. Sane and sober people have come forward over the years with their encounters, many of which are misidentifications but a percentage of which remain unexplained due to the nature of the witness (experience, reputation, profession) and closeness of the sighting etc. Then you have the blatant hoaxers in it for attention, the self-appointed experts who would have us believe the truth is imminent and the fantasists who are convinced what they believe is real. Mix all this together and feed it to the media along with some blurry images and riddle ensues...

Yet as with UFOs genuine witnesses remain baffled by what they have encountered. As I have posted here before, I know of two genuine big black puma-sized cat witnesses. The first was my next door neighbour who was driving a school minibus early one morning near Rackenford during the height of the 'Beast of Exmoor' wave of sheep killings, the location being close to Knowstone Moor where these incidents took place. The second was in the late-1990s on the Dartington Estate in South Devon in which a farmer's son was driving a tractor across a hay meadow adjacent to woodlands. perhaps he was driving into the wind as he surprised a large puma-like cat that had been either been lying or stalking prey in the tall, pre-harvest grass. The startled cat turned and jumped a hedge and fence that was too tall for a domestic cat to clear in one go. He was absolutely convinced of what he saw, as was my neighbour in 1984.
 
Does anyone on here actually believe there are big cats breeding in the UK?Big cat authors Rick Minter and Jonathon McGowan have both given population estimates of 500-1000 leopard/puma in the UK after “studying” them for years,anyone genuinely believe this (apart from them)?
 
Does anyone on here actually believe there are big cats breeding in the UK?Big cat authors Rick Minter and Jonathon McGowan have both given population estimates of 500-1000 leopard/puma in the UK after “studying” them for years,anyone genuinely believe this (apart from them)?
No way that Minter and McGowan could possibly know this, it is pure speculation on their part.
 
Does anyone on here actually believe there are big cats breeding in the UK?Big cat authors Rick Minter and Jonathon McGowan have both given population estimates of 500-1000 leopard/puma in the UK after “studying” them for years,anyone genuinely believe this (apart from them)?
I believe that there ARE big cats out there in the wild in the UK. I'm not sure about a breeding population - but then I still have a lingering fondness for my theory that there's an underground culture keeping the odd one or two in captivity and allowing them out to roam around on occasion.

My middle daughter saw one on the Castle Howard estate and, due to her total lack of any kind of imagination, I am inclined to believe her.
 
May depend on breeding habits. If the male does nothing after the mating then a chance encounter may result in kittens which may mature and encounter another cat but inbreeding will still be a problem.

I remember seeing a film of a Scottish wildcat mother and kittens (which took a lot of effort to film they said) The kittens played in silence and as soon as the mother saw something there was one "Prpp" and the whole lot vanished.

Mind you if nutters are releasing big cats to roam for a while and there are some longer term escapees the inbreeding effects may take longer.
 
We’re that to happen they wouldn’t get them back.
They would if the cats were fitted with chips that enabled them to be tracked. Same as with birds of prey who are flown loose. Sometimes they go off but the owner can track them and get them back.
 
They would if the cats were fitted with chips that enabled them to be tracked. Same as with birds of prey who are flown loose. Sometimes they go off but the owner can track them and get them back.
Bird of prey telemetry sets are totally different to cat location collars,plus if a cat can be located as easily as you suggest and be recaptured they would be tame,wander up to strangers,get knocked over etc,what type of people would these cat releases and recapturers be?
 
Bird of prey telemetry sets are totally different to cat location collars,plus if a cat can be located as easily as you suggest and be recaptured they would be tame,wander up to strangers,get knocked over etc,what type of people would these cat releases and recapturers be?
It's more of a musing than an actual belief. But I know a fair few 'men' (I use the term loosely) of the kind who like to keep dangerous animals in order to impress one another, or to train dogs to attack on command, and I can see them believing that keeping large cats makes them big men in their community. There are underground clubs for all kinds of nefarious things and I could imagine pumas and the like being very in demand for showing off to one another.

The cats wouldn't wear collars - someone would have reported it by now if they did. You can certainly get implantable tracker chips for dogs, so I'd think they could use something like this. The cats may be used to finding food in certain conditions (like a cage trap) that they'd be semi-trained to enter in order to get a good meal, and you'd only need to know where it was in order to be able to recapture.
 
It's more of a musing than an actual belief. But I know a fair few 'men' (I use the term loosely) of the kind who like to keep dangerous animals in order to impress one another, or to train dogs to attack on command, and I can see them believing that keeping large cats makes them big men in their community. There are underground clubs for all kinds of nefarious things and I could imagine pumas and the like being very in demand for showing off to one another.

The cats wouldn't wear collars - someone would have reported it by now if they did. You can certainly get implantable tracker chips for dogs, so I'd think they could use something like this. The cats may be used to finding food in certain conditions (like a cage trap) that they'd be semi-trained to enter in order to get a good meal, and you'd only need to know where it was in order to be able to recapture.
Fanciful but no,not buying into it,what sort of underground “clubs” are you yourself aware of?
 
It's more of a musing than an actual belief…….. I can see them believing that keeping large cats makes them big men in their community………. I could imagine pumas and the like being very in demand for showing off to one another.
XL Bullies are the in vogue “Prestige” must have animal,easily available and instagrammable.Puma/leopard not so
a) lt is generally illegal to stalk deer “at night”.

b) Many (though by no means all: my cheapo unit doesn’t) thermal imaging devices show data including date & time on their screens. This doesn’t appear here.

These facts tilt me towards a verdict of “Nah!

maximus otter
if you look at the clip there’s a house there,I have a cheap pulsar monocular,looking to get a better new Hik or something,lots more manufacturers putting thermals on the market nowadays since pulsar used to dominate the market.That’s a cat in a garden,one guy said it shows a puma carrying a bone,another said it’s a puma with a kill????Anyway Big cat podcasts apparently have some thermal that’s conclusive (it’s not otherwise it would be on a news channel) for a future episode.
 
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