I am now sorting through the 12 inches/ 30 cms thick stack of index cards pertaining to the Exotic Animals Register (EAR) and came across a few photographs of interest.
Take a look at this: it's what we call "scat" from a puma.
Now here is more puma scat.
So why might puma "poop" be of interest? Well, over the years people ask about things such as "British mystery cats" or the "British Big Cat". There is only one member of the Big cat family in the UK and that is the leopard -melanistic and regular. The Puma is a member of the Medium sized cat family. Let's not go into lynx and jungle cats!
Anyway, one of those photographs of Puma scat above is from the United States....the top one. The other is from Wales.
In all my time running the EAR I got "cat hairs" that did not look like they came from cats and DNA analysis showed that I was right: fox, cow and bull mainly. Scat we had similar problems with and I used to ask people ("big cat hunters" as they liked to call themselves) to describe what they had and break the pieces up. Fox scat most people have never seen but if you open up an "odd" piece of poop and it has fruit and bits of vegetation in it the chances are it's from a fox.
DNA tests have been carried out on hairs and scat and proven to be leopard or puma -and lynx. The thing is that most of those "I want to get on the band wagon and in the media" 'experts' keep samples they have or throw them away because they do not realise DNA is not a ten minute test nor is it free! There are also very good plaster casts of large cat prints I've seen but they never get forwarded for analysis.
But, yes. We has poop.
Take a look at this: it's what we call "scat" from a puma.
Now here is more puma scat.
Anyway, one of those photographs of Puma scat above is from the United States....the top one. The other is from Wales.
In all my time running the EAR I got "cat hairs" that did not look like they came from cats and DNA analysis showed that I was right: fox, cow and bull mainly. Scat we had similar problems with and I used to ask people ("big cat hunters" as they liked to call themselves) to describe what they had and break the pieces up. Fox scat most people have never seen but if you open up an "odd" piece of poop and it has fruit and bits of vegetation in it the chances are it's from a fox.
DNA tests have been carried out on hairs and scat and proven to be leopard or puma -and lynx. The thing is that most of those "I want to get on the band wagon and in the media" 'experts' keep samples they have or throw them away because they do not realise DNA is not a ten minute test nor is it free! There are also very good plaster casts of large cat prints I've seen but they never get forwarded for analysis.
But, yes. We has poop.
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