A January 1999 Guardian Article on Britain's "Big Cats"

 This article is now 26 years old. I just thought that I would reprint it here as I am mentioned which, of course, gives this article credibility😄

Why on earth some idiot decided that the 'expert' opinion of psychologists was needed when they are not field naturalists and probably do not know a Blue Tit from a Great Tit I have no idea.  If it gets their name in print they love it and makes them seem relevant.

Analysis of the number of cats believed to be in the UK at the time are likely way too high; that subject has been updated and posted on this blog.

Beast in all of us

This article is more than 26 years old

From Bodmin to Gobowen, they lurk menacingly on the fringes of society. But do they exist in the shadows of our hedgerows or the shadows of our mind? Paul Evans tries to separate myth and fact about big cats that have stalked on the wild side for centuries

The Guardian Wed 7 Apr 1999 02.06 BST

Have you seen The Beast? Thousands say they have. Larry Parkes saw it on a bright sunny morning two weeks ago. He was walking his dog in meadows outside Gobowen, in the north-west corner of Shropshire, when two "black panthers" emerged from trees less than 200 yards away.

Parkes describes one as the size of his Great Dane and the other about the size of his collie. "They stood in the field for about 30 seconds," he says. "I could see their yellowish eyes. You could tell they were not dogs by the way they looked and moved. When they took off they loped, like in slow motion, very loose limbed. They were jet black, with long thick tails. I watched them for two to three minutes until they disappeared over the brow of the hill."

Local police checked the area, but they found nothing. Stories like this, which make local news around the country, are just the tip of an iceberg of sightings which usually go unreported. If they are to be believed, there must be many big cats inhabiting Britain.

Larry Parkes's panthers came as no surprise to Terry Hooper, who runs the Bristol-based Exotic Animals Register, which collates and analyses eye-witness and forensic data.

He says this is consistent with similar sightings over a couple of years of a panther with young moving between west Shropshire and Wales. According to Hooper's register, there are 140 melanistic (black) leopards or panthers, 130-140 pumas or mountain lions and 80-100 lynx at large in the UK today. And this, he says, is a conservative estimate.

Scientists say there is not enough concrete evidence to support claims of such populations of large feline predators. After months of research, the Ministry of Agriculture dismissed "The Beast of Bodmin Moor" as non-existant.

Dr Tony Mitchell-Jones, mammal specialist for English Nature, says: "You can't deny that people believe genuinely in these sightings, and you don't like to call them liars, but if big cats were around in numbers, we would have evidence in the form of droppings and prey remains, and we don't."

The burden of proof is back on to the witnesses. Dr Christopher French, a psychologist, says: "Psychological research shows that memory and perception are constructed so that we see what we expect to see." French maintains that, like the acceptance of the stereotypical alien following the film Close Encounters, the repeated reports of big cats have gained sufficient cultural acceptance to become a "contagion".

Another psychologist, Dr Susan Blackmore, says there are evolutionary reasons why our visual systems are honed for survival and interpret images as possible predators. "The ‘panthers' are a cultural phenomenon," she says, "inhabiting a cultural environment." As such, she thinks they are memes - stories or ideas analogous to genes, replicated by their telling and which take on a successful life of their own.

The Beast in Britain is certainly an old story. The Leicestershire legend of Black Annis, or Cat Anna, which survived into the beginning of this century, told of a big black cat which hid in an oak tree and pounced on its victims to suck their blood. Annis links back to the Celtic Annan, goddess of May-eve hare hunts, transferred to Easter Monday, who was both nymph and hag.

Not far away, in Castleton, Derbyshire, the ancient celebration of the Garland King on May 31 has a horse rider in a cage of flowers re-enacting human sacrifice to Taranis, the Gaulish death goddess.

Twenty years after her book, Cat Country, claimed there was an as yet undiscovered big cat native to Britain, Di Francis is still convinced the scientists have not been looking hard enough. She believes the usual account of the presence of big cats are a consequence of the 1976 Dangerous Wild Animals Act, which established stringent licensing of wild creatures. Many owners of exotic cats released their pets into the countryside and it may be these which are now breeding in the wild.

But, claims Francis, this does not account for the high numbers of big black cats sighted - melanistic forms are uncommon in nature - and does not explain frequent reports of big striped and silver-grey cats.

Meanwhile, as most public discussion on big cats is confined to the realms of cryptozoology and the paranormal, for many British farming communities, The Beast has again become a symbol of menace.

In the Somerset Mendips, Terry Dimmock has issued a contract to assassinate the Beast of Axbridge. The panther-like creature seen regularly on his farm is, he claims, responsible for the deaths of many lambs. He is angry that he has to deal with a problem created by the authorities which, he says, either deny the cat's existence or are deliberately concealing the truth.

But what is the truth? "Science has such prestige," said the philosopher Mary Midgeley on the radio recently, "that other truths are not accepted."

The truths of people such as Larry Parkes seem to have little worth in the discourse surrounding the big cat phenomenon. It is here that the faultlines between science and the vernacular experience of nature begin to widen. In this gap, a less governable, more animistic interpretation of nature emerges, testing the boundaries of what we are willing to experience. To some, the presence of the "panthers" is a blessing.

The question may be not do they exist, but how do they exist. We have projected so much of our dreams, anxieties, stories and theory into the environment that the world around us has become a magic-eye picture. To celebrate The Beast is a denial of thousands of years of our history, throughout which we have struggled to control wild nature and bend it to our will.

Now, like wolves, which are said to appear when European society is in turmoil, the big cats are prowling the margins of the millennium, watching the fabric of history weaken.

The habitat of Britain's Beast may be as much social and cultural as it is ecological. But whether myth, meme or menace, as the big cat phenomenon becomes more cryptic it reveals more about ourselves and our world.

Signs of an Exotic Cat Kill

 

Tigers, Regular Leopards and Lions -They ARE In The UK?

 The question was raised as to why we do not get reports of "regular" coloured leopards, tigers or lions in the UK.  

Well, first you have to know whether you are dealing with a "big cat" (panther) report. There are certain locations in the UK where you will find what UK police wildlife officers dubbed "Hooper cats" -this is all detailed in Red Paper 2022 Vol. II "Felids".  

I heard from a man who, along with his assistant rebuilt/repaired stone walls on farms in the countryside; he had been doing this and had seen some odd things over the years. He telephoned me one day while building a wall about what he and the assistant had seen the day before.

Re-building a section of stone wall the builder was alerted to a large black cat on the other side of the wall not too far away and it seemed to be doing something. They watched and it ran off with a dead rabbit -they assumed it had hidden the rabbit at some point. I checked my map and the sighting area was bang smack in the middle of a "black cat hot spot" which I always thought was odd as a leopard moves around a large territory.

I asked whether the builder knew what a panther or puma looked like but got the immediate response of "Yeah, but this was neither of those.  He told me "It looked exactly like a well muscled black domestic cat quite long legged" At that I thought "another wasted 20 minutes on the phone!" but he added that it was larger than any domestic he had seen and he had seen a few very large tom cats. I asked how big and he estimated that based on the size of the rabbit and how close the cat had been "It was the size of a whippet dog".

By that time in the 1990s I had heard "as big as a whippet" from the area as well as other parts of the UK -one where a police wildlife officer as well as local fire crews all knew of similar cats in a certain location.  They passed the word around about my interest and "Hooper cats" became a thing. Large feral cats can be and are reported as panthers or pumas and there are other medium sized exotics we know of in the UK also reported as such. There is a reason why talking to observers often took 30 minutes to an hour.

"Regular" patterned leopards. Back in the late 1990s I received a report from a naturalist that a person driving through an area was shocked to see what they described as a leopard running across a field from trees to a hedgerow. "Yellow with a pattern on it". I logged it but I have a saying: people see woodlice and report armadillos.  

A week later someone I was working in spoke to a motorist who told them that they had seen a leopard -"very light with pattern on it" near the road he was driving on. Rather nonchalantly I asked "where?" and found it was less than a quarter mile from the previous sighting. 

That was it. Never heard from again so an escapee re-captured or shot by someone?

"Lionesses" crop up a lot. I've had cryptozoologists try to hoax me with "a photo from Devon" (even Cornwall) showing a lioness not faked just grabbed from obscure sites. I have also been involved in advising police in Kent, Essex and Surrey during "lion hunts" and in each case a lot of money was wasted employing alleged "big cat hunters" (they weren't) and helicopters and man power. Reports were from within well known puma sighting areas. From my archives going back to the 1800s we have never had in the UK a wild living lion in the UK.

Tigers. Again, in the mid 1990s I had a police force contact me as a fork lift truck driver (in a locked cab) had reported a large tiger attacking his fork lift truck. Made no sense to me why a tiger would do this but...  Then there was another report some distance from the 'attack'. After that nothing. An escapee re-captured but by whom no idea. A wild living tiger would soon be noticed due to live stock losses because unlike puma or leopard which are content with wild fowl, rabbits etc, tigers have a bigger appetite.

I have dealt with melanism in pumas on this blog so search if you are interested. Most puma imported to the UK historically came from South America where melanism is known in pumas but rarely seen.  Again, with black panthers they are imported from areas where melanism is prevalent and bred for being black.  

In the Red Paper I noted  other exotic cats we know are in the UK and which explained some of the unusual "puma" reports we received.

With almost 50 years of doing this work I do wonder why British "Big cat" groups never get in touch?

LIONS OF THE EAST (Mystery Big Cats Cryptozoology Documentary)

The Last Puma In Vermont?

 "There is no need to be concerned or troubled. Tigers do not live here"

Last words of 45 years experience wildlife hunting and trapping expert 2 hours before being killed by a tiger.

Above: a life wasted and a human (c)2025 respective copyright owner

It is almost as though all the work of Helen McGuiness and the Eastern Cougar Foundation just never existed. According to Vermont History Explorer

 https://vermonthistoryexplorer.org/the-last-catamount-in-vermont

"Some people say they have seen a catamount in the woods.

"Catamounts are large wild cats that are also called panthers, cougars or mountain lions. The last catamount killed in Vermont was shot in 1881. This catamount is on display at the Vermont History Museum.

"On Thanksgiving Day in 1881, a boy named James Cadwell was hunting in Barnard. He noticed tracks in the snow and started following them. After awhile, he saw what had made the tracks – a huge panther! Cadwell asked Alexander Crowell, a hunter, for help.

"After they tracked the animal, Crowell shot the panther twice. First he shot the panther in the leg with a shot gun. Then he grabbed a rifle from another hunter and shot the panther in the head.

"Why did Alexander Crowell shoot the catamount?

"In the wild, catamounts ate deer and other animals. But in the 1800s, farmers had cut down many trees and turned forests into farms. Without the trees, there were not as many deer as before. The catamounts started eating sheep that lived on farms. The farmers and hunters killed the panthers to protect their sheep.

"After Crowell shot the catamount, he had his picture taken with the animal. People could buy pictures of the huge animal. After he was stuffed, the catamount was taken all over Vermont for people to see. For 10 cents, people could see the monster panther! Later on, the catamount was given to the museum. Come visit the catamount when you are in Montpelier.

"Some people say they have seen catamounts over the years. There are many more trees in Vermont now than there were 140 years ago. There might be more places for catamounts to hide. But scientists have not found any proof of catamounts in Vermont.

Above: the face of extinction (c)2025 respective copyright owner

"If there are catamounts in Vermont, it is illegal to shoot them now. Catamounts are endangered animals."

Well, let's be honest the answer to the question "Why did Alexander Crowell shoot the catamount?" is for fun on a boring day. He couldn't even kill it outright.  It is the same mentality existing today; bring wolves back from extinction. Kill. Bring back from extinction ad infinitum. 

According to Vermont Public https://www.vermontpublic.org/vpr-news/2018-01-24/its-official-feds-declare-the-catamount-extinct

It's Official: Feds Declare The Catamount Extinct

Vermont Public | By Howard Weiss-Tisman

Published January 24, 2018 at 12:46 PM EST

 

"The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says there is no evidence that the catamount is still roaming in the Northeast, and the federal agency has officially removed the large cat from the federal endangered species list.The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service made a determination in 2015 about the eastern puma — commonly known as "the catamount" — and opened up the opportunity for public and peer comments.

"This week the federal agency issued its final rule declaring that the eastern puma is extinct and took the animal off of the Federal List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife.

"Vermont Fish and Wildlife Commissioner Louis Porter says even though the federal designation comes as no surprise, it does require a moment of reflection.

"Any time you have to acknowledge that a subspecies or a population has disappeared, you know, that's a failure that we have to face up to and acknowledge," Porter said. "Our mission is to protect all species in the state and make sure that they aren't eliminated. The federal government has a mission of doing the same on a national scale. And so it is a somber, although not unexpected, development."

"Once a specific animal is removed from the endangered species list and it is determined to be extinct, states can consider reintroducing other members of its species into the wild.

"In a press release from the Center for Biological Diversity, conservation advocate Michael Robinson called on states in the northeast to consider bringing large cats back.

"We need large carnivores like cougars to keep the wild food web healthy, so we hope eastern and Midwestern states will reintroduce them," Robinson said in the release. "Cougars would curb deer overpopulation and tick-borne diseases that threaten human health." 

"Porter says there have been no talks with nearby states to reintroduce western cougars into the wild here.

"It's not something we are considering or thinking about. A predator of this size can be involved in a lot of conflicts with people, or with livestock, so there's a potential with any predator of this size to have conflicts with humans," said Porter. "The territory that they need and the conditions they need would be difficult to find in Vermont. They need large pieces of unbroken land to roam."

 "Porter also says the catamount remains protected under Vermont law, even though U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has removed it from the federal endangered species list.

 "The eastern cougar once roamed across the eastern U.S. and Canada. However the last catamount that was killed in Vermont was shot in 1881, and one killed in Maine in 1938 was the last killed in New England.

 "There was a cougar killed in Connecticut in 2011. But wildlife officials say the animal was most likely from South Dakota, and it traveled across the country, through New York state, before it was hit by a car on the highway about 70 miles north of New York City."

Above: the puma on display (c)2025 respective copyright owner

Pumas have been seen in and around U.S. cities and like coyote they are becoming more urbanised because humans have built on their territories (so clearly the coyotes and puma are to blame). I think the jokes and ridicule that comes with sighting puma even in areas where they once existed and anecdotal evidence shows that they still occur, is protecting them to some degree. However, officially recognising that puma are seen in an area (as part of their overall territory) help-s people be "puma aware" in their work and recreation.

That same ridicule has helped exotics in the UK to have a steady, almost unhindered existence -even though locals have known for several generations that they are out there. I would be more worried about gun, crossbow and bow carrying morons out in the countryside than any puma.

Cat Sightings, Black Puma and Reading Nonsense

 Just to make a point since most people get things wrong or do not know what was going on behind the scenes.

"Felicity" the Cannich puma captured in the early 1980s was not a solitary puma.

As noted in my book (Red Paper 2025) I was in regular correspondence with Arthur Cadman a well known naturalist as well as a man involved in the planning of many post World War II forests in England and Wales. Arthur had been observing a group of pumas for several years and told me in a letter that an older female in that group was getting old and he thought she might be shot or tapped "soon" -and he was.

"Pumas are solitary animals" is not necessarily a correct statement. Two pumas from Wales that were under study met up frequently and not just during breeding season. Puma can live happily together if they have to and if they grew up in captivity together they tend to stick close and their offspring will learn from that behaviour.

We see rescued puma living together peacefully (4-5 in a group) with no conflict even when a new member to the group is slowly introduced.

One of the first modern era (1970s) sightings of a puma on the Welsh borders was by a nurse who use to love visiting the puma at Chester Zoo. She wrote to me back in the early 1980s that she was in no doubt that what she observed very close to (she called her young daughter back to the car over safety concerns) on a family day out was a puma. However, she was mystified by the smaller "Sphynx-like cat that was spotted" that came up behind the puma. I sent her a photo of a juvenile photo with no information and she identified it as the smaller cat -Chester had never had young puma.

That was pre 1976 and the semi mythical release of non native cats in the UK.

Puma were kept as pets by house wives -in the 1920s there was the Surrey puma hunt one night for one that had broken loose. That account I came across while trawling through newspaper archives for something else -I double checked the date as "A Surrey Puma Hunt" sounded more 1960s/1970s and I thought I had the wrong newspaper and date!

Puma have been in the UK since America was a colony and fauna was sent to England. However, most puma originated from Central-South America including black ones. That is significant in that we know that there are black puma in the UK and all of the experts (X=the Unknown and "spurt" is a drip under pressure) will tell you black puma are more likely in Central and South America. This despite all the hunting and other books pre 1900 (that they have never read because dogma is easier to recite) giving matter-of-fact accounts of black puma in North America. These are all dismissed (again without going to the source) with the Knowledge of Idiocy as being mistaken identifications "they saw an escaped leopard" or "It was a jaguar". You see, people who have hunted local animals for 'sport' or have observed them since childhood such as native tribes are dumb and have no idea what they have seen and killed because they are not sat in a comfortable chair with a PhD in spouting dogma.

One senior zoologists was within 100 yards of one in good lighting conditions and checked every diagnostic feature -this man had also been involved in work studying puma in Canada so he knew what one looked like.What did a biologist say in response? "Oh he saw a leopard but dismissed that idea because he didn't want to think of those being in the UK so said puma". I repeated that response and the zoologist was quite willing to go over his sighting and qualifications with the biologist. He even gave his phone number. FOUR times I tried to get the biologist to contact the man but an excuse every time. I later learnt that he was a "MAFF/DEFRA expert witness" and as we all know MAFF/DEFRA do not believe in these sightings (even by their own people).

Not everything started in or after 1976 and what you read online (does anyone read books now?) or in the old cryptozoology books including Janet and Colin Bord and their Alien Animals book along with those by Di Francis are often quoted or referred to as being factual. They are not. The nicest thing that I can write about the Bords book is that it is cryptozoological/supernatural "faff" with the odd fact. Francis I spoke to a number of times and her knowledge of any type of cat can be called poor or eccentric at best.simply regurgitated inaccuracies for the most part.

We are dealing with cats that have adapted and do not act 100% like the cats of the forests and plains that feature in documentaries. Making a map of sightings when many sound like mis-identifications or fake does not help. These cats are not confined to one small geographical era and that just does not seem to get through to people.

************************************************************

MAFF -=Ministry of Agriculture. Fisheries and Food DEFRA its successor -Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs

Before I am criticised for not writing "pumas" as a plural: The plural of puma is pumas, though puma can also be used as a plural form, especially in formal writing or when referring to the animal as a general species (like 'sheep' or 'deer'). Most commonly, you'll see and hear pumas when talking about multiple individuals. 

Large Cats Killing Sheep Is Far From A Modern Occurrence.

 

For my research work -whether canids or felids- I have read hundreds of newspaper archive reports and I have the eye strain to prove it.  During my work as a consultant to UK police forces (1977-2018) or even working with farmers groups I was always able to tell a sheep that was victim of a dog attack. Canids attack a certain way and are messy and when more than one dog is involved they are noisy. 

I never once heard "it was a pack of dogs killed it and only 100 yards from the house!" and believed it. The sheep never made a distress noise? The excited dogs never yapped or barked and all within 100 yards of a house in which sat four people having coffee with the kitchen door open as it was a warm night?

A point needs to be made that farmers know they are not going to get any insurance money for a dead sheep if they say "It was killed by a panther/puma". They may have seen the cat around and I know at least two insurance agents as well as members of the National Farmers Union who have sighted a large cat on a property. The kill may be very cat-like BUT who are you going to call in to prove it? How much will it cost? And as insurers do not recognise "big cat attack" as being covered by a policy a farmer would lose out.  One farmer told me in the 1990s that his insurance agent knew it was a large cat that attacked and killed and then consumed some of it but he gave the farmer a knowing wink and completed the insurance paperwork: "Yes, definitely a sheep savaged and killed by a dog, right?" Was that true? I eventually learnt that it was and that it happened in other parts of the country -it was 'dog attack' and get compensation or insist it was a big cat and get none.

One farmer in the 1990s (in Wales) had a flock of "common old sheep" but had also invested in a flock of expensive (apologies if I get this wrong as sheep are not my speciality -and a Google search had AI respond that it was an outdated racist practice!) black faced sheep (Surrey?). It was always the expensive black-faced sheep the puma took and he knew that he would get no compensation.

People calling themselves 'experts' (after 50 years I would not even call myself an expert!) will tell everyone that a cat (leopard or puma) will simply select a sheep and kill it. Anything involving more than one dead sheep would be dogs or "some mystery animal".  Large cats can and do kill more than they can eat -possibly due to starvation/lack of wild prey (instinct is to kill and have a cache of food for later). China TV on 16th  February, 2017 showed footage of a snow leopard that entered a sheep pen and killed  38 sheep and days later another killed 13 goats. Leopards and even puma have been known to do likewise.

For these reasons every report is read to ascertain whether how sheep were killed is mentioned. Faces bitten, torn and so on is usually a good indicator of a canid -a fox is a domestic cat sized animal and despite what hunts want you to believe they do not take down sheep.

If you look at this report  out of 900 sheep 15 were killed or injured out and "what looked like a large black 'dog'" was sighted and shot at -there was a similar event of sheep killed by a mystery "black animal" at Edale in Derbyshire in the 1920s. The method of kill etc was typical of a leopard (Red Paper 2022 Vol. II: Felidae) .  This is from Mearns Leader - Friday 02 August 1946

Interesting in that there are parallels with Bodmin in the 1980s in this article from the  Lincolnshire Standard and Boston Guardian - Saturday 17 August 1912. One of the Royal Marines dug in watching a field of sheep told me he and his pal had a boring night but after dawn when they stood up and turned around some hundred yards away was a sheep that had been killed and partly eaten. They had heard nothing.

The "shoulder and the throat have been "pulled out" which almost sounds like a leopard Leicester Evening Mail - Monday 05 February 1934

Sadly, it is far too long ago to look for new details -or any witnesses!  No report of a post mortem examination (it should be noted that few farmers can afford to pay for PMEs and that official PM services will not touch any such animals and when they do "it is always dog" (the veterinary pathologist added: "it may have all the hall marks of a cat kill and a large cat may have been seen but it is still a dog attack!").

The below photo shows the throat wound and how the shoulder of this sheep (in Africa) has been ripped completely away.  I knew two zoologists who wanted to see whether they (combined) could rip off a sheep's leg. They found that even after they "partially butchered" it they could not tear the leg off).

As for where these cats might come from; looking at a map it is quite clear that a lot of historical/modern cat territories are centred in old hunting territory or near to stately homes. We also know that a lot of hunt masters released (it is on the public record) jackals, wolves and coyotes to hunt in England and Wales. In fact, in the mid 1800s one Devon Hunt Master had to stop the release of a wolf to hunt after local protest -whether the wolf was released anyway we have no idea. "Local dignitaries" had a great deal covered up by fawning newspaper editors. 

We also know that anyone who wanted to could keep an exotic pet and this went on for hundreds of years until the Dangerous Wild Animals Act 1976 (the false "mass release" date for exotics so often quoted by people who have no idea).  There were private menageries in back gardens, private estates and even the odd railway station. In the Red Paper 2022: Felidae and the self contained Red Paper 2025 Wild Menagerie -Britain's New Native Species I include a report from a magazine in the 1920s that I came across quite by accident on a Surrey Puma escape.

Hunts or estate menagerie/exotic pet escapes -a lot of choice and when you consider how common escapes of animals including wolves, gorillas, kangaroos et al were from travelling menageries and even how such animals simply vanished as the travelling shows closed down there is even more choice!