Merged Alien Big Cats in the UK?

Ian said:
In May, police were sent to find a tiger that had been spotted in Southampton which turned out to be just a toy. The story quickly became a joke, but it also shows how our natural capacity to fool ourselves by making false connections leads to belief in woo-woo.

By the time HIGNFY made a joke about the police response, it was well known that it was only a plush toy (the story begins at 4:48): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPbQ3cAaVIM

However (at 6:16), the police department declared that "We sent some local officers and they confirmed they were looking at it and it was looking at them".

This is much like how Percival Lowell believed that he saw canals on Mars because he was looking for canals based on his understanding of Camille Flammarion's misinterpretation of the writings of Giovanni Schiaparelli. It is very easy for us to "see" what we expect based on our assumptions, and therefore we can lead ourselves to believe something that isn't true.
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The canals on Mars was wishful thinking.
 
"Mystery big cat" caught on video in New Zealand. Recorded commentary is NSFW.

It's no mystery. People everywhere think that housecats are some sort of huge panther or something.
 
It could be a large-breed housecat, like a Bengal or a Savannah. Or it might just be a big tomcat.

He estimated the rear paw-print in the snow as being about 10cm (4"). I just measured my cat's rear haunch/paw at about 5.25-5.5". He's a big boy, rescued from a stray mother as a kitten along with his entire litter. If he were walking through a couple inches of snow, he could easily have made prints that large. The spacing of the prints looks to indicate a slightly larger animal, but without proper measurement it's impossible to tell.

At any rate, that animal they photographed might not be anywhere near as large as they're making it out to be in the video.
 
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Putting aside the size... The cat is sort of trotting. You can see the rapid step cadence which is unlike that of a really large cat like a leopard, lion or cougar.
 
Too bad they didn't film it walking across the bridge. The fence might have told the truth.

Also, did I hear them say the creature was about 1 kilometer away from them?

Meaning a zoomed shot and perspective compression?
 
It's that unprecedented snow bounty, it screws up people's depth perception :D

This country has biosecurity laws so obnoxious I couldn't bring in a sourdough culture - not like the US with its 14000 (?) domestic tigers. I'd say there's a very shallow pool indeed of large-ish cats that would be available for any escape antics. And yes, it sure bobs along like a moggie.
 
But it doesn't even look big for a domestic cat. If they had seen my avatar cat Jasper they'd have to clean their underwear as they'd be convinced he was a saber-tooth cat! Never mind the size of Boris my maine-coon cat!
 
William Parcher said:
"Mystery big cat" caught on video in New Zealand. Recorded commentary is NSFW.

It's no mystery. People everywhere think that housecats are some sort of huge panther or something.
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That is officially hilarious. Especially when they get to the pawprints and they're small and close together and they still go on about how huge the animal was!

Rolfe.
 
Rolfe said:
That is officially hilarious. Especially when they get to the pawprints and they're small and close together and they still go on about how huge the animal was!

Rolfe.
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I can see two problems with that video.
1. When the cat is seen there is nothing to show how tall it is. If it came to a person you could assume the person was 180cm tall and the cat would be 10% of that height so the cat would be 18cm tall.
2. The footprints appear to show that the cat put its rear legs in about the same spot where the front legs were in the previous step. This would have made the footprints bigger. Hence their assumption was incorrect. If I saw the footprints I would assume that the creature only had two legs.
 
The two problems I see are that first the cat is trotting with a gait like a domestic moggie, not like a "big cat". So even if you're mistaken about its actual size, the gait is a dead giveaway that it's small. For what it's worth, I didn't see it as big even at the beginning of the video - my brain interpreted it as moggie-sized from the get-go. Possibly because of the gait and the general body shape screaming "pussycat".

Second, that trail of pawprints was quite obviously made by something moggie-sized. The prints are far too close together to be the trail of a large cat. It looks just like the trail my own cat made when he went out in the snow.

Rolfe.
 
At 30 secs the cat (it is clearly a cat) passes a white marker post of some sort. If they measured that, they would have a fair idea of size. Later it passed behind a kerb or wall of some sort. Same applies.
As for the prints on the bridge, the guy picks the biggest, most blurred, possibly doubled print and even then exaggerates it's size. The tracks certainly look like classic moggy to me- could be a biggish moggy, like a Maine Coon, but definitely a moggy.
 
I was looking at zooborns.com today, and they have pictures and video of a pair of Snow Leopard cubs born in June. There is even a closeup of a hind paw. I have a feeling if these tiny little big cats were romping through the snow, they would leave bigger prints than that "*********** enormous" cat did.
 
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