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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
I genuinely do think the DNA was planted,Dragonfly aren’t exactly known for being 100% accurate,they used the “Most conclusive” ever pic of a UK big cat in that Documentary which was a fake,while making the mockumentary they didn’t have anyone ready to screen it,so they needed a hook voila the DNA and the photo.
 
Does anyone have,or can point me in,the right direction of the foot-snares the old big cat enthusiast Quentin Rose was trying to design for the UK?
 
brownmane said:
Still difficult to get idea of size. The gentleman being interviewed at least knows what type of felines are in his area.
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This is interesting but even experts can be fooled by lack of scale. We all have issues with judging unknown size at a distance, no matter how much of an expert you are in your field.
 
Paul_Exeter said:
Mystery big cat videoed in Arizona and it is black:

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Interesting it mentions jaguar in Arizona,one of them was killed by hunters apparently a number of years ago,fish & game recognised it from rosettes on the skin which matched rosettes on the cat when it was alive and picked up on trail cam.
 
The one British flesh-and-blood puma case I certainly feels holds water were the ones attracted to the big cat enclosure at Dartmoor Zoo. This was seen by the the owner Ben Mee and also landowners reported that horses and livestock were extremely agitated whenever one of them was sighted in the area. Mee thinks these releases died in a harsh winter:

"He said: 'Puma were released in the Sparkwell area in the 1980s and there were many sightings of puma in this area up until 2010.

'I even saw one when I first came here in 2006.

'They used to come out into the village. I saw one by a crossing.

'The farmers don't want the publicity and wouldn't tell you this if you asked but there were a lot of animals lost to the pumas during those years.'

It wasn't until the winter of 2010 - the coldest for years - that Ben believes the pumas were wiped out and there have been no reported sightings since."

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...ynx-zoo-admits-released-pumas-wild-1980s.html

This makes sense in many ways, especially as these cats can roam over huge territories and so possibly accounted for the Beast of Bodmin etc. However, none of the big cats at the zoo are black (melanistic) or bred to be black:

https://www.dartmoorzoo.org.uk/animals/

Nor is there any evidence these alleged releasees were melanistic and yet people keep reporting big black muscular cats
 
Druk said:
Puma or mountain lion wouldn’t die from cold it gets down to -40 in places like Alberta and the cats handle it.
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A very good point. Perhaps the issue was more food supply as these were animals that had been fed by their previous owners and so their hunting skills may have been lacking once the farm animals were brought in for the winter. There are deer and pheasant etc but not on the scale you would find in Alberts and also a lot more unintentional human interference when hunting.
 
The Exmoor Cat looks good. On the Implications Of Cryptid Discovery thread, lordmongrove discusses taking about the Dartmoor Zoo pumas with Ben Mee. The keepers there told me about them in the late 1990's.

Here in Devon, I've several times have met police on social occasions. They say reports of big cats are received regularly. The local papers rarely bother unless there is a "story". Too humdrum and repetitive.
 
Paul_Exeter said:
A very good point. Perhaps the issue was more food supply as these were animals that had been fed by their previous owners
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But if they associated humans with food they would have wandered up to people,on farmland that would have meant being shot as they would have one day approached the wrong person.I honestly don’t think there’s a single big cat living wild in the UK currently,I have been following the subject for 35 years,been in real big cat country many times and there’s always real proof they are around,never seen any in the UK however.
 
Has anyone on here ever been to one of the lectures or talks hosted by any of the UK big cat “experts” I wouldn’t mind going to one to be honest.
 
Paul_Exeter said:
A very good point. Perhaps the issue was more food supply as these were animals that had been fed by their previous owners and so their hunting skills may have been lacking once the farm animals were brought in for the winter. There are deer and pheasant etc but not on the scale you would find in Alberts and also a lot more unintentional human interference when hunting.
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I was of the idea that maybe there was scarcity of food.


Druk said:
But if they associated humans with food they would have wandered up to people,on farmland that would have meant being shot as they would have one day approached the wrong person.
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I'm not sure about this supposition. Cats (domestic included) do survive in the wild because they can adapt to the conditions. The cat does need to know how to hunt and kill, though.

They would not necessarily approach people closely for food. If they were starving, maybe.

But I have seen domestic strays that are around occasionally and they will come if food is left for them, but they still will not come if a person is close. Even those that are skin and bones. It still takes some time for them to trust strangers enough to get close.
 
brownmane said:
I was of the idea that maybe there was scarcity of food.



I'm not sure about this supposition. Cats (domestic included) do survive in the wild because they can adapt to the conditions. The cat does need to know how to hunt and kill, though.

They would not necessarily approach people closely for food. If they were starving, maybe.

But I have seen domestic strays that are around occasionally and they will come if food is left for them, but they still will not come if a person is close. Even those that are skin and bones. It still takes some time for them to trust strangers enough to get close.
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These are cats that were born and brought up in captivity originally,would take a while to revert to the wild,a dangerous transition period,even then would they become fearful of man?
 
Druk said:
These are cats that were born and brought up in captivity originally,would take a while to revert to the wild,a dangerous transition period,even then would they become fearful of man?
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Maybe not as fearful as feral, because they aren't entirely feral, but even my cats won't show when someone comes into my house. I went away once for 4 days and my friend came to feed them. They knew her. They wouldn't come out to eat until she was gone.
 
brownmane said:
Maybe not as fearful as feral, because they aren't entirely feral, but even my cats won't show when someone comes into my house. I went away once for 4 days and my friend came to feed them. They knew her. They wouldn't come out to eat until she was gone.
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Uk is a bit different to here,haven’t seen one domestic moggy around due to coyotes.I still don’t buy into the black leopards and mountain lion wandering around the UK till I see them listed in a book showing clear pics as naturalised invasive species.
 
Druk said:
Uk is a bit different to here,haven’t seen one domestic moggy around due to coyotes.I still don’t buy into the black leopards and mountain lion wandering around the UK till I see them listed in a book showing clear pics as naturalised invasive species.
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OT, but I was driving home from my mom's the other night and there was a coyote eviscerated on side of road. Even with just headlights, I could see.
 
brownmane said:
Maybe not as fearful as feral, because they aren't entirely feral, but even my cats won't show when someone comes into my house. I went away once for 4 days and my friend came to feed them. They knew her. They wouldn't come out to eat until she was gone.
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My daughter and her partner have a rescue cat. Sometimes I can walk up to her and stroke her (this is the cat, not my daughter) and she will roll around at my feet. Other times she will leg it upstairs as soon as I walk into the room.
 
When I was young, next door had a cat that was rescued as a very young kitten from a hospital where they were rounding up the feral cat population. He was always very nervous of humans, even his "family". He would never appraoch anyone when outside and even when they were on holiday and I went in to feed him would be very shy of me being anywhere near him.
 
I am still puzzled slightly by the fact that all the ABCs that are seen tend to be muscular and fit. Why is nobody seeing lame cats? Or thin, sick looking cats? They ought, behaviourally, be the easiest to see, slower moving and more likely to be hanging around near humans - but they all seem to be reported as glossy, muscular, sleek creatures.
 
catseye said:
I am still puzzled slightly by the fact that all the ABCs that are seen tend to be muscular and fit. Why is nobody seeing lame cats? Or thin, sick looking cats? They ought, behaviourally, be the easiest to see, slower moving and more likely to be hanging around near humans - but they all seem to be reported as glossy, muscular, sleek creatures.
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And why no road kills?Even Amur leopard are knocked down by vehicles in the middle of nowhere.
 
Amur leopard roadkill maybe 100 left in the wild?
8DF15B09-062B-472A-BA99-2EA103EC5319.jpeg
 
Been reading the Robert Macfarlane book "The Old Ways - A Journey on Foot". He and a friend had spent a day on the Ridgeway in the area of Knapp Hill and Walker's Hill. There was snow on the ground. Just leaving in their vehicle at dusk, a large black cat with big yellow eyes appeared on the verge before moving into the hedge. An other-worldly finish to their day.
 
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