ksbluesfan
Graduate Poster
- Joined
- Jan 13, 2007
- Messages
- 1,376
Merged Alien Big Cats in the UK?
- Thread starter mummymonkey
- Start date
JoeTheJuggler
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Jun 7, 2006
- Messages
- 27,766
By the way, my cat is pretty darn big. His spine is like a slinky, though, and I know he can stretch out longer than he is when he's sitting. I just measured him while he was sitting on my lap (he hangs over--my lap isn't big enough). Measuring along the top, from his nose to the point where his tail starts he's 23" long. His tail looks proportionately short. It's just under 11" long.
Although he started out identical to his sister (at about 4 weeks old), he's now well over twice her size.
See jhunter's post number 25. My guy too is seldom silent. He likes to stomp on my stomach when I'm lying down and he's running from one point to another. I think he just gets a kick out of hearing me go, "Ooof!" When he's running from one end of the house to the other on my first floor, I can hear him when I'm in the attic.
Although he started out identical to his sister (at about 4 weeks old), he's now well over twice her size.
I thought occams razor is more likely to tell you that if you hear the pitty-pat of feline paws see your doctor, you have developed hyper sensitive hearing
See jhunter's post number 25. My guy too is seldom silent. He likes to stomp on my stomach when I'm lying down and he's running from one point to another. I think he just gets a kick out of hearing me go, "Ooof!" When he's running from one end of the house to the other on my first floor, I can hear him when I'm in the attic.
Akhenaten
Heretic Pharaoh
Apology to the Clan MacPherson
Everyone who took part in the MacPherson motto quiz did better than the fool who started it.
The only excuse I can think of is that Arthwollipot used his laser vision somehow to make me type "glaive" instead of "glove".
I have teh dumb. Winners - please share the internets out amongst yourselves.
/derail - puss now back on tracks
Cheers,
Dave
Everyone who took part in the MacPherson motto quiz did better than the fool who started it.
The only excuse I can think of is that Arthwollipot used his laser vision somehow to make me type "glaive" instead of "glove".
I have teh dumb. Winners - please share the internets out amongst yourselves.
/derail - puss now back on tracks
Cheers,
Dave
Lucian
Illuminator
- Joined
- Jan 26, 2009
- Messages
- 3,257
Well, I've spent some time today measuring my cat and my friend's cat. The data are in, and I can say conclusively . . . that PetSmart should market the tape measure as a cat toy. Seriously, how the hell did you manage to measure your cat? Did you knock him out first? I didn't get any reliable measurements, but the cats had a wonderful time.
Our cats walk quietly enough, but when they're chasing each other, it sounds as if the annual wildebeest migration has made a detour through St. Louis.
rjh01
Gentleman of leisure
There is a large population of wild domestic cats in Australia. These are cats that escaped from shipwrecks and dumped cats. They are generally bigger than ordinary cats. Their main diet consists of rabbit and native animals.
Foolmewunz
Grammar Resistance Leader, TLA Dictator
Moggie?
I love learning a new word. Can some of you guys clarify, for me? Is that like what we call an "alley cat" in the USA, e.g. a stray of mixed lineage? Or is it just a domestic cat (e.g. pet) of no specific breed?
And that one definitely looks like a "moggie". A big one, but yer regulation kitty cat, nevertheless.
I love learning a new word. Can some of you guys clarify, for me? Is that like what we call an "alley cat" in the USA, e.g. a stray of mixed lineage? Or is it just a domestic cat (e.g. pet) of no specific breed?
And that one definitely looks like a "moggie". A big one, but yer regulation kitty cat, nevertheless.
Akhenaten
Heretic Pharaoh
I'll speak for the Aussies. This will end well.
"Moggie" is almost completely synoymous with "domestic cat", as is "puss". Most Australian cats answer to a falsetto "Puss, puss, puss!"
"Alley cat", I believe, has the same meaning in Australia and the USA.
Cats living wild in the bush are just called "feral cats" (in colonies sometimes, known as clowders), Wild domestic cats living in urban areas are also referred to as feral, but less commonly. Plain old "Stray cat" would be the more common term in town.
We also use the term "kitty", spelled as you have, although I had, up to now, thought that it was spellt "kitteh" in the USA. The usage is equivalent, in any case.
I agree with your analysis of McPuss, FWIW.
Cheers,
Dave
PS Cats are cool.
Last edited:
rjh01
Gentleman of leisure
Ref http://www.petuniversity.com/cats/becoming-a-cat-parent/selecting-a-breed.htm
This site is implying that a moggy cat is a mixed breed cat.
This site is implying that a moggy cat is a mixed breed cat.
Akhenaten
Heretic Pharaoh
I'll go along with that too, as a "rule-of-thumb". Good point.
Most people would, I think, where a purebred is concerned, say "Ooh look! A Siamese!" or "Burmese have no brains."
Still, it would be common to hear someone who is looking at a purebred Chinchilla asking, "What kind of moggie is that?"
Thanks rjh
Last edited:
Rolfe
Adult human female
Not really. A moggy is a domestic cat of NO especial breed. Not one produced by cross-breeding existing breeds. On the contrary, the existing breeds have by and large been line-bred from particular moggies.
So you really can't call a Maine Coon or a Norwegian Forest Cat a moggy.
Rolfe.
Foolmewunz
Grammar Resistance Leader, TLA Dictator
Okay, so a mixed and indeterminate lineage housecat in other words. Sort of the equivalent of a mut when talking about dogs.
Feral cats I knew about. And then there are strays and alley cats - which are either moggies who got out, or descended from moggies who got out (or unpleasantly - were thrown out/abandoned), as most of us who live in cities know.
Sort of like "mongrel" or "mut" when talking of doggies.
Feral cats I knew about. And then there are strays and alley cats - which are either moggies who got out, or descended from moggies who got out (or unpleasantly - were thrown out/abandoned), as most of us who live in cities know.
Sort of like "mongrel" or "mut" when talking of doggies.
Akhenaten
Heretic Pharaoh
Michael C
Graduate Poster
A Moggy is a Real Cat. See Terry Pratchett's "The Unadulterated Cat".
“Many Real cats are instantly recognizable. For example, all cats with faces that look as though they had been put in a vice and hit repeatedly by a hammer with a sock round it are Real Cats. Cats with ears that look as though they have been trimmed with pinking shears are Real cats. Almost every non-pedigree un-neutered tom is not only Real, but as it hangs around the house it gets Realer and Realer until one of you is left in absolutely no doubt as to its Realness."
Rolfe
Adult human female
I'm interested in this. As a veterinary pathologist I occasionally have to investigate livestock deaths involving teeth-marks. Last year we had a spate of stuff happening near here, including two ewes with their throats torn out, a lamb with a fatal bite to its flank, and a young ewe with a huge lump taken out of one leg. I wish I could post a picture of that last one because it was very dramatic, but it would probably be judged too gruesome. Of course we thought about the "big cat" possibility, and indeed one of the ewes was brought to us by a policeman with that specific question.
However, the conclusion was "big dog". In each case the bites were more typical of canine jaws. Also, the modus operandi was almost always a single bite, with the carcass found otherwise unscathed - that is, not actually eaten. The ewe with the leg bite and two of the lambs were still alive when they were found, and in one case the perpetrator appeared to have run wild round the field killing several lambs but then abandoning the carcasses and moving on to catch another one. This had all the hallmarks of an animal that was not killing to eat to live.
The number of carcasses brought in with significant amounts of meat missing was exactly zero. In total, though it was enough to get concerned about, there were only six or seven incidents over a period of many months. My conclusion was large domestic dogs intermittently sheep-worrying.
If there is a feral big cat, or even more so, a breeding population, I want to know what they're eating. I absolutely accept that some carcasses might be completely scavenged and disappear, but central Scotland is a well-farmed area and farmers do know how many sheep and lambs they have. Nobody has reported unexplained disappearances. Even if some carcasses were completely disappearing, I would expect at least some to be found part-eaten. It's the law that all livestock have to be inspected at least every 24 hours, and most farmers comply with that (and then show up here with the casualties when I'm already busy....)
We did have one strange case where a set of sheep bones was brought in, however these were clearly the work of human hands, with bones having been sawn and meat sliced off cleanly with a knife. They'd been lying around for a while, but weren't much gnawed, showing that a stripped carcass doesn't just vanish without trace.
Sheep and lambs are very vulnerable to this sort of predator. I fail to see how something like that could live entirely on wild animals, small rodents and the like, and if it ever does get a lamb, then somehow the carcass vanishes entirely leaving no trace. I'm really pretty confident that there's nothing like that living wild round here, because the evidence just doesn't stack up.
Helensburgh? There's more scope round there because it is on the edge of some relatively wild country, but my reservations above still apply. All the land is farmed, with sheep and cattle, and even the hill sheep are shepherded fairly closely. Farms which do have a problem are not slow to shout about it. Further north, some farms lost a lot of lambs to Sea Eagle predation this year, and there were articles in the farming press and bitter recriminations against the Sea Eagle conservationists. I have enormous trouble believing that the farms round Helensburgh are supporting a puma, and nobody has noticed any untoward losses.
There has been some speculation that the animal is a Labrador, but I saw the film on the TV news and I don't think so. The way it walks along the actual rail is not canine, it's feline. I just agree that it's probably not that big.
All-black specimens of the big domestic cat breeds are unusual, and most of these are long-haired. I think the picture is of a shorthair. Scottish wildcats are tabby. My first thought when I saw the film was the same as most people here. Big black mog.
I had a similar experience a few years ago when cycling by a canal. I looked across the canal at an open field, and seemed to see a black panther walking across it. I did a double take, and realised that it was just an ordinary black cat, not even especially huge, but sufficiently far from any clear size comparison markers that I'd been misled. If the cat had vanished after my initial sighing I could easily have been left with the impression I'd seen a panther.
I think the size comparison markers in the video are deceptive. It's a single-track railway (though probably normal gauge), and it's not as wide as it looks. Even watching the clip, sometimes it did look like a normal cat. I think the position was just conducive to a bit of a trompe l'oeil effect.
Domestic cats (which it probably was) have a fairly small range. I would suspect enquiries round the area would turn up someone with a big black pet cat.
Now, about the horse. A few days earlier, a horse was found mauled near Ayr. Some "expert" said they thought this was the work of a big cat, probably a puma.
I want to know what the "expert" was smoking. (Actually, I'm guessing about the identity of the expert, but I think he may have been the guy who declared that an obviously dog-killed hare I'd examined might have been hit by a car. Yeah, a car with teeth? So yes, vivid imagination at work perhaps.) The same thing applies, only more so. The Ayrshire countryside round there is intensively farmed. And, this is the biggie, our Ayr investigation centre is only a few miles from where the horse was found. I flat guarantee that if farmers round there were experiencing livestock losses suggestive of a big cat on the loose, we would know about it. The only possibility would be a recent escapee, and I sort of think something like that might have been reported missing.
And just to squash the conspiracy theorists, Ayr isn't that far from Helensburgh as the crow flies, but it's quite far enough to make the two incidents entirely unrelated. Especially as there is a sizeable body of water separating the two places (the Firth of Clyde), and the only way to get across is either to cross the Erskine Bridge or trot right through Glasgow city centre.
The puma thing was just someone with a vivid imagination not thinking clearly. For goodness sake, just phone Auchincruive and ask if there have been any other suspicious livestock losses in the area before you come out with that one, why don't you? And the video clip was a big black mog.
Rolfe.
However, the conclusion was "big dog". In each case the bites were more typical of canine jaws. Also, the modus operandi was almost always a single bite, with the carcass found otherwise unscathed - that is, not actually eaten. The ewe with the leg bite and two of the lambs were still alive when they were found, and in one case the perpetrator appeared to have run wild round the field killing several lambs but then abandoning the carcasses and moving on to catch another one. This had all the hallmarks of an animal that was not killing to eat to live.
The number of carcasses brought in with significant amounts of meat missing was exactly zero. In total, though it was enough to get concerned about, there were only six or seven incidents over a period of many months. My conclusion was large domestic dogs intermittently sheep-worrying.
If there is a feral big cat, or even more so, a breeding population, I want to know what they're eating. I absolutely accept that some carcasses might be completely scavenged and disappear, but central Scotland is a well-farmed area and farmers do know how many sheep and lambs they have. Nobody has reported unexplained disappearances. Even if some carcasses were completely disappearing, I would expect at least some to be found part-eaten. It's the law that all livestock have to be inspected at least every 24 hours, and most farmers comply with that (and then show up here with the casualties when I'm already busy....)
We did have one strange case where a set of sheep bones was brought in, however these were clearly the work of human hands, with bones having been sawn and meat sliced off cleanly with a knife. They'd been lying around for a while, but weren't much gnawed, showing that a stripped carcass doesn't just vanish without trace.
Sheep and lambs are very vulnerable to this sort of predator. I fail to see how something like that could live entirely on wild animals, small rodents and the like, and if it ever does get a lamb, then somehow the carcass vanishes entirely leaving no trace. I'm really pretty confident that there's nothing like that living wild round here, because the evidence just doesn't stack up.
Helensburgh? There's more scope round there because it is on the edge of some relatively wild country, but my reservations above still apply. All the land is farmed, with sheep and cattle, and even the hill sheep are shepherded fairly closely. Farms which do have a problem are not slow to shout about it. Further north, some farms lost a lot of lambs to Sea Eagle predation this year, and there were articles in the farming press and bitter recriminations against the Sea Eagle conservationists. I have enormous trouble believing that the farms round Helensburgh are supporting a puma, and nobody has noticed any untoward losses.
There has been some speculation that the animal is a Labrador, but I saw the film on the TV news and I don't think so. The way it walks along the actual rail is not canine, it's feline. I just agree that it's probably not that big.
All-black specimens of the big domestic cat breeds are unusual, and most of these are long-haired. I think the picture is of a shorthair. Scottish wildcats are tabby. My first thought when I saw the film was the same as most people here. Big black mog.
I had a similar experience a few years ago when cycling by a canal. I looked across the canal at an open field, and seemed to see a black panther walking across it. I did a double take, and realised that it was just an ordinary black cat, not even especially huge, but sufficiently far from any clear size comparison markers that I'd been misled. If the cat had vanished after my initial sighing I could easily have been left with the impression I'd seen a panther.
I think the size comparison markers in the video are deceptive. It's a single-track railway (though probably normal gauge), and it's not as wide as it looks. Even watching the clip, sometimes it did look like a normal cat. I think the position was just conducive to a bit of a trompe l'oeil effect.
Domestic cats (which it probably was) have a fairly small range. I would suspect enquiries round the area would turn up someone with a big black pet cat.
Now, about the horse. A few days earlier, a horse was found mauled near Ayr. Some "expert" said they thought this was the work of a big cat, probably a puma.
I want to know what the "expert" was smoking. (Actually, I'm guessing about the identity of the expert, but I think he may have been the guy who declared that an obviously dog-killed hare I'd examined might have been hit by a car. Yeah, a car with teeth? So yes, vivid imagination at work perhaps.) The same thing applies, only more so. The Ayrshire countryside round there is intensively farmed. And, this is the biggie, our Ayr investigation centre is only a few miles from where the horse was found. I flat guarantee that if farmers round there were experiencing livestock losses suggestive of a big cat on the loose, we would know about it. The only possibility would be a recent escapee, and I sort of think something like that might have been reported missing.
And just to squash the conspiracy theorists, Ayr isn't that far from Helensburgh as the crow flies, but it's quite far enough to make the two incidents entirely unrelated. Especially as there is a sizeable body of water separating the two places (the Firth of Clyde), and the only way to get across is either to cross the Erskine Bridge or trot right through Glasgow city centre.
The puma thing was just someone with a vivid imagination not thinking clearly. For goodness sake, just phone Auchincruive and ask if there have been any other suspicious livestock losses in the area before you come out with that one, why don't you? And the video clip was a big black mog.
Rolfe.
Marduk
Banned
- Joined
- Apr 26, 2009
- Messages
- 10,183
Hi Rolfe
there were big cats loose in the UK,
Big Cat Data
Regional Breakdown Big Cat Data Colour analysis
South West 21% Black 1319 – (64%)
South East 16% Brown / Sandy – 421 – (21%)
East Anglia 12% Lynx Type – 237 – (12%)
Scotland 11% Others – 75 (3%)
West Midlands 9%
East Midlands 9%
North West 7%
North East 7%
Wales 5%
Ireland 3%
Big Cat Sightings County ‘league table’ (between Jan 03 & March 04)
Scotland 231
Kent 141
Yorkshire 127
Wales 102
Devon 100
Cornwall 96
Lancashire 86
Ireland 82
Lincolnshire 80
Somerset 69
West Midlands 64
Gloucestershire 64
Essex 62
Suffolk 59
Norfolk 54
Sussex 50
Cumbria 47
Wiltshire 44
Dorset 42
Oxfordshire 39
Cambridgeshire 34
Shropshire 33
Hampshire 28
Leicestershire 27
Northamptonshire 26
Staffordshire 26
Derbyshire 24
Buckinghamshire 24
Herefordshire 23
Surrey 21
Warwickshire 19
Worcestershire 19
Northumberland 18
Berkshire 16
Cheshire 15
Nottinghamshire 10
Bedfordshire 7
London 7
Middlesex 6
Isle of Wight 5
TOTAL 2052
quite a lot of Animals that apparently don't exist which were all spotted during a 15 month survey, which lasted from January 03 till March 04.
http://www.britishbigcats.org/press_releases/Big Cat Evidence Gets Stronger.doc
there are currently two schools of thought, they both agree that the big cat phenomena started overnight when the 1976 wild animals act made it impractical for ordinary people to own their own big cats, this forced three choices
1. donate animal to zoo
2. have animal euthanized
3. open the back door and say "shoo"
that a large number of cats were released into the UK countryside is not disputed, not even by the government, what happened to them next is
1. the big cats succesfully bred with each other forming large populations of naturalised pure bred big cats who know better than to show themselves around humanity
2. the smaller varieties of cats mated with ordinary housecats creating a hybrid which is naturally melanistic (black) and larger than domestic cats
whats known for sure is that the life expectancy of most big cats
Lions 10 years
Puma 13 years
Lynx 10 years
makes their presence unsustainable without procreation
once the idea that black panthers became fixed in the national consciousness in the late 70s anyone seeing a large black hybrid will immediately think "panther" and report it as such
but consider really, option 2 is far more likely and that type of animal would not predate domestic livestock anyway, they are far too small. I don't think its unreasonable to assume that anyone finding the rotten carcase of a 4 foot long hybrid cat is going to think its anything but a dead housecat. You as a vet will know that the large and stocky appearence of most housecats is a result of their fur and not their build.
2052 sightings in a 14 month period made on the whole by people who are familiar with the usual wildlife and who have nothing togain by making it up, its not like claiming you saw the mother ship from Alpha centauri overhead on your way home from the pub is it, and I don't expect that the Royal Marines would be called out twice by the government at dartmoor to hunt for something that isn't there. Even if 1% of these sightings is genuine then there are 20 unknown felines running around out there
lets just hope they don't evolve like this
and finally
the government does admit that there are big cats loose in the UK
or they wouldn't be publishing lists like this
http://web.archive.org/web/20061210...de/vertebrates/reports/exotic-cat-escapes.pdf
checkout the last 6 which represents 1/5 of the total, 6 animals that were captured, shot or found dead which have no known origin
theyre out there, any way you want to look at it and its not like theyre attacking children
http://www.yowiehunters.com.au/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=376
right ?
there were big cats loose in the UK,
Big Cat Data
Regional Breakdown Big Cat Data Colour analysis
South West 21% Black 1319 – (64%)
South East 16% Brown / Sandy – 421 – (21%)
East Anglia 12% Lynx Type – 237 – (12%)
Scotland 11% Others – 75 (3%)
West Midlands 9%
East Midlands 9%
North West 7%
North East 7%
Wales 5%
Ireland 3%
Big Cat Sightings County ‘league table’ (between Jan 03 & March 04)
Scotland 231
Kent 141
Yorkshire 127
Wales 102
Devon 100
Cornwall 96
Lancashire 86
Ireland 82
Lincolnshire 80
Somerset 69
West Midlands 64
Gloucestershire 64
Essex 62
Suffolk 59
Norfolk 54
Sussex 50
Cumbria 47
Wiltshire 44
Dorset 42
Oxfordshire 39
Cambridgeshire 34
Shropshire 33
Hampshire 28
Leicestershire 27
Northamptonshire 26
Staffordshire 26
Derbyshire 24
Buckinghamshire 24
Herefordshire 23
Surrey 21
Warwickshire 19
Worcestershire 19
Northumberland 18
Berkshire 16
Cheshire 15
Nottinghamshire 10
Bedfordshire 7
London 7
Middlesex 6
Isle of Wight 5
TOTAL 2052
quite a lot of Animals that apparently don't exist which were all spotted during a 15 month survey, which lasted from January 03 till March 04.
http://www.britishbigcats.org/press_releases/Big Cat Evidence Gets Stronger.doc
there are currently two schools of thought, they both agree that the big cat phenomena started overnight when the 1976 wild animals act made it impractical for ordinary people to own their own big cats, this forced three choices
1. donate animal to zoo
2. have animal euthanized
3. open the back door and say "shoo"
that a large number of cats were released into the UK countryside is not disputed, not even by the government, what happened to them next is
1. the big cats succesfully bred with each other forming large populations of naturalised pure bred big cats who know better than to show themselves around humanity
2. the smaller varieties of cats mated with ordinary housecats creating a hybrid which is naturally melanistic (black) and larger than domestic cats
whats known for sure is that the life expectancy of most big cats
Lions 10 years
Puma 13 years
Lynx 10 years
makes their presence unsustainable without procreation
once the idea that black panthers became fixed in the national consciousness in the late 70s anyone seeing a large black hybrid will immediately think "panther" and report it as such
but consider really, option 2 is far more likely and that type of animal would not predate domestic livestock anyway, they are far too small. I don't think its unreasonable to assume that anyone finding the rotten carcase of a 4 foot long hybrid cat is going to think its anything but a dead housecat. You as a vet will know that the large and stocky appearence of most housecats is a result of their fur and not their build.
2052 sightings in a 14 month period made on the whole by people who are familiar with the usual wildlife and who have nothing togain by making it up, its not like claiming you saw the mother ship from Alpha centauri overhead on your way home from the pub is it, and I don't expect that the Royal Marines would be called out twice by the government at dartmoor to hunt for something that isn't there. Even if 1% of these sightings is genuine then there are 20 unknown felines running around out there
lets just hope they don't evolve like this
and finally
the government does admit that there are big cats loose in the UK
or they wouldn't be publishing lists like this
http://web.archive.org/web/20061210...de/vertebrates/reports/exotic-cat-escapes.pdf
checkout the last 6 which represents 1/5 of the total, 6 animals that were captured, shot or found dead which have no known origin
theyre out there, any way you want to look at it and its not like theyre attacking children
http://www.yowiehunters.com.au/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=376
right ?
Last edited:
JoeTheJuggler
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Jun 7, 2006
- Messages
- 27,766
My big guy is a fraidy cat. The tape measure spooks him (as does pretty much everything including his own shadow), so I used my forearm (from my elbow to the tips of my fingers) and then used my other hand sideways to get the remainder, then I measured those two things on me.
shawmutt
Squirrel Murderer
- Joined
- Jan 17, 2009
- Messages
- 2,037
FWIW, the "big cat" story is a bit of local woo woo as well, as hunters claim to have seen mountain lions in this and surrounding states. Some folks get really upset about the issue, and it's got all the trappings of a conspiracy theory.
For example, see: http://www.huntingpa.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1263505&fpart=1 from a local hunting forum I frequent.
For example, see: http://www.huntingpa.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1263505&fpart=1 from a local hunting forum I frequent.
William Parcher
Show me the monkey!
- Joined
- Jul 26, 2005
- Messages
- 27,487
Those are dead or captured. What about now?
Similar episodic sighting phenomenon with Bigfoot in North America.
They have figures and evidence for this? Is it just assumed or what?
Are there any confirmed records of lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars or pumas presently living in the UK wilds? Any?
This is what the Bigfooters say.
What? Where is the government's confirmatory evidence that big cats are currently living in UK wilds? The list itself does not represent the "government admitting".
The last 6 are not big cats. Big Cat = lion, tiger, leopard, jaguar and (sometimes) puma.
Arisia
Graduate Poster
We hear occasionally about catamount sightings here in New England as well. Unless they find scat or a carcass with confirmed large feline bite marks (or at the most extreme, a catamount carcass), most of the Fish and Game folks are very skeptical. It would be nice to have a large predator back in the region as a natural control to the burgeoning population of large game animals (moose and whitetails), but I don't see that happening.
Rolfe
Adult human female
I'm not disputing that there have been incidents where non-domestic species have escaped in Britain. What I am disputing is the evidence of anything significantly larger than a domestic cat maintaining a population in the wild, or that anything large enough to prey on livestock could remain undetected for more than a few days or (at the most) weeks after escaping.
That second one isn't entirely implausible, because of course feral cats exist, and of course they maintain populations in the "wild". Cats of that size are not going to go after livestock, they are going to get birds and small rodents. My question on that one just echoes another thread here. Where are all the road kill? Maybe some bodies have turned up and I'm just not aware of them, however if there are no reports of dead individuals being found, I'm sceptical of their existence. If on the other hand they're nothing more than black moggies at the top edge of the size range, so are not being recorded as anything special, well, that isn't anything very special. Interesting from a genetics point of view, but no more.
I don't think we're actually disagreeing with each other on that. And if you want to postulate that the cat in the video from Helensburgh is of that nature, then I'm not going to argue. (I'm not going to agree either until someone does some DNA analysis of a body, though.) It's just "some feral cats exist which are larger than average, and black, because they have a little bit of exotic cat in their ancestry courtesy of an escapee in the 1970s" isn't really a very newsworthy item.
So, about the bigger ones. That top photo is a cracker, and this is a famous case, but it happened in Cannich for God's sake! A better place to remain feral in would be hard to find. It's the back of bloody beyond. And even so, there were a string of reports for four years (from the 1976 act) and she was then captured. If a cat like that gets noticed even in a wild and remote area north of the Great Glen, then it's hardly going to be sneaking around Ayrshire under the radar.
The jungle cat in Shropshire is still quite small, and just proves what I was saying. If they are there, you find the road kill. But that wouldn't have been preying on livestock, and in fact there is no evidence it wasn't a recently escaped illegal "pet".
The leopard cat was found on the Isle of Wight. So where did it come from? I would start looking among people living on the Isle of Wight! How long had it been there? No idea, if we don't know where it escaped from. Probably not long. Recent escapees are always a possibility, and if people have been keeping things illegally, they may not report them. This thing was still small enough to have been secretly kept in domestic premises after all, it's not as if a wildlife park had lost a specimen.
You make my point for me. Anything big enough to prey on livestock isn't going to lurk unnoticed for long. The day I have 15 mauled corpses on my hands in a two-week period, is the day I'm absolutely convinced there's something out there. That day is not today, however. Also, if it was killing a sheep a day, where had it been before that two-week period? Another recent escape, clearly.
Recent escapee. No mystery.
In London. How long do you think that had been on the loose? Answers in hours rather than days are more likely to win the jackpot.
I've had a look at this, in fact a closer look than you have it seems.
The first two look like the same animal recorded twice, and it's our friend the leopard cat from the Isle of Wight. As I said, probably a recently-escaped illegal "pet", not reported missing for obvious reasons.
The next one is the London one. I really, really hope you're not suggesting that there is a breeding population of lynx established in London.
The last one is the Shropshire one you mentioned above. Small cat, no reason it couldn't be a recent escapee.
So we have only two left, both leopard cats. Small, again. One in Devon and one in the south of Scotland. Twenty years ago. And again, no reason to think they were anything other than recently escaped illegal pets.
You have totally failed to convince me that there is anything of that sort breeding in this country, or anything other than the occasional illegal exotic pet getting out and either coming to grief or being recaptured.
No, you have no evidence that "they're out there". And that last link is just another story along the same lines as the mauled horse. Pure conjecture.
In spite of the 1976 act, some people will still continue to keep exotic cats. And sometimes they will get out. And the miscreant won't necessarily report this, and when the animal is either found dead or recaptured they will still keep quiet for obvious reasons. (That was one omission in my original post - while of course a legal zoological collection would report an escape, an illegal "pet" might well not be reported.) This is the simple explanation for all the cases you cited. Your information also highlights that when something big does get out, dead sheep are a pretty obvious giveaway.
Beyond that, hey, some feral cats alive now might have a little bit of exotic cat in their ancestry, and these may be larger than average and black. Well, stone the crows!
Rolfe.
That second one isn't entirely implausible, because of course feral cats exist, and of course they maintain populations in the "wild". Cats of that size are not going to go after livestock, they are going to get birds and small rodents. My question on that one just echoes another thread here. Where are all the road kill? Maybe some bodies have turned up and I'm just not aware of them, however if there are no reports of dead individuals being found, I'm sceptical of their existence. If on the other hand they're nothing more than black moggies at the top edge of the size range, so are not being recorded as anything special, well, that isn't anything very special. Interesting from a genetics point of view, but no more.
I don't think we're actually disagreeing with each other on that. And if you want to postulate that the cat in the video from Helensburgh is of that nature, then I'm not going to argue. (I'm not going to agree either until someone does some DNA analysis of a body, though.) It's just "some feral cats exist which are larger than average, and black, because they have a little bit of exotic cat in their ancestry courtesy of an escapee in the 1970s" isn't really a very newsworthy item.
So, about the bigger ones. That top photo is a cracker, and this is a famous case, but it happened in Cannich for God's sake! A better place to remain feral in would be hard to find. It's the back of bloody beyond. And even so, there were a string of reports for four years (from the 1976 act) and she was then captured. If a cat like that gets noticed even in a wild and remote area north of the Great Glen, then it's hardly going to be sneaking around Ayrshire under the radar.
The jungle cat in Shropshire is still quite small, and just proves what I was saying. If they are there, you find the road kill. But that wouldn't have been preying on livestock, and in fact there is no evidence it wasn't a recently escaped illegal "pet".
The leopard cat was found on the Isle of Wight. So where did it come from? I would start looking among people living on the Isle of Wight! How long had it been there? No idea, if we don't know where it escaped from. Probably not long. Recent escapees are always a possibility, and if people have been keeping things illegally, they may not report them. This thing was still small enough to have been secretly kept in domestic premises after all, it's not as if a wildlife park had lost a specimen.
You make my point for me. Anything big enough to prey on livestock isn't going to lurk unnoticed for long. The day I have 15 mauled corpses on my hands in a two-week period, is the day I'm absolutely convinced there's something out there. That day is not today, however. Also, if it was killing a sheep a day, where had it been before that two-week period? Another recent escape, clearly.
Recent escapee. No mystery.
In London. How long do you think that had been on the loose? Answers in hours rather than days are more likely to win the jackpot.
I've had a look at this, in fact a closer look than you have it seems.
The first two look like the same animal recorded twice, and it's our friend the leopard cat from the Isle of Wight. As I said, probably a recently-escaped illegal "pet", not reported missing for obvious reasons.
The next one is the London one. I really, really hope you're not suggesting that there is a breeding population of lynx established in London.
The last one is the Shropshire one you mentioned above. Small cat, no reason it couldn't be a recent escapee.
So we have only two left, both leopard cats. Small, again. One in Devon and one in the south of Scotland. Twenty years ago. And again, no reason to think they were anything other than recently escaped illegal pets.
You have totally failed to convince me that there is anything of that sort breeding in this country, or anything other than the occasional illegal exotic pet getting out and either coming to grief or being recaptured.
theyre out there, any way you want to look at it and its not like theyre attacking children
http://www.yowiehunters.com.au/index...o_pdf=1&id=376
right ?
No, you have no evidence that "they're out there". And that last link is just another story along the same lines as the mauled horse. Pure conjecture.
In spite of the 1976 act, some people will still continue to keep exotic cats. And sometimes they will get out. And the miscreant won't necessarily report this, and when the animal is either found dead or recaptured they will still keep quiet for obvious reasons. (That was one omission in my original post - while of course a legal zoological collection would report an escape, an illegal "pet" might well not be reported.) This is the simple explanation for all the cases you cited. Your information also highlights that when something big does get out, dead sheep are a pretty obvious giveaway.
Beyond that, hey, some feral cats alive now might have a little bit of exotic cat in their ancestry, and these may be larger than average and black. Well, stone the crows!
Rolfe.
Last edited: