I had to reference some old correspondence the other day pertaining to the EAR and Devon reports of "big cats". There was correspondence from Nigel Brierly who authored the 1989 book They Stalk By Night subtitled "The big cats of Exmoor and the South West".
Nigel appeared in the press and TV items about British 'big cats' regularly and along with naturalist Trevor Beer was one of my main contacts in Devon and Cornwall. Hailed as an "expert in hair analysis" and identifying various cats from this work I made a note that if any hairs came my way I would ask Nigel to look at them.
Then, out of the blue, I was sent some hair samples from a close quarter sighting of a lynx in Wiltshire. Nigel said that he was more than willing to take a look and offer an identification. So I bagged up the hairs and sent them recorded delivery and awaited Nigel's analysis. A week later I got a phone call from him followed by a letter stating that the hairs were from "A Eurpean lynx".
So I went to the file and then stared in utter disbelief. The lynx hair samples were still in the file. At the time things were quite hectic and I had asked someone to move the hairs and this is where the great blunder happened. Hair tufts from my cat, George, had been bagged and I had not double-checked before inserting my covering note and posting. George was a big fluffy cat but definitely not a lynx!
So what could I do? I was not too embarrassed to admit that I had made a mistake but it could embarrass Nigel so I decided to keep quiet and, after all, it was a private exchange between the two of us. What I did was re-send the actual lynx hairs and suggested that they were unrelated to the first samples.
A week later I received a phone call from Nigel who asked whether I had any more of the hair samples? I asked which ones (fearing he realised my first mistake) and was told the actual lynx hairs and so explained that he had all three hairs. "Oh dear" was not the reply I expected and I soon found out that somehow the hairs had "been misplaced" and was told he would search again. The hairs were never found.
Nigel at work c mid 1980s
It was this exchange that made sure that I double and triple checked any material evidence and clearly marked everything. It also made me decide that I would hold on to any evidence until a certified lab could be involved. When I asked a zoologist how easy it was for a cat hair to be misidentified under a microscope for a lynx hair I got a very strange look and a comment about the identifier that I'll not repeat.
I began to wonder about all the hair samples Nigel had analysed and identified as coming from various cats such as lynx, puma and leopard -how accurate were those identifications? As it turns out the ones I could trace back supposedly came from different species of cat observed than the hair ID gave.
Looking at Brierly's book again and seeing plaster casts of dog tracks identified as 'puma' tracks, etc I no longer get the sinking feeling I used to. It's what I have come to expect from "credible" 'big cat' experts" and when you remember that there is a colour photograph in the book of a 'big cat'....
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You look at it and see that it is clearly 100% a fox. There is not the slightest doubt. I have a couple hundred or so similar in the Fox Photo Data Base. It is a fox. The book itself (I have a signed copy) is seen as a much sought after classic on the subject but going through the pages again there is so much misleading information that it ranks alongside the work of Di Francis.
Later of course we had police and others submit hairs to certified labs and came back with Panthera pardus (leopard) identification, etc. The problem is that if you are not a naturalist but an hobbyist then almost anything will appear to be evidence -even cat and dog prints and hairs. I learnt a long time ago to never guess at an identification or cause until the actual evidence has been examined by experts in the field and a conclusion drawn
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