Maine Mystery Cat - Photograph *Update*

Photo courtesy of Mark LaFlamme to Cryptomundo.com.


Source
There's also a higher quality picture available on Cryptomundo.

The photograph was taken in Central Maine (near Sidney). At quick glance it looks a lot bigger than a domestic cat, but it's difficult to get an exact idea of height. Pumas (Mountain Lions) are not found (naturally) in Maine, but there have been a couple of reported sightings. Park rangers believe this is proof that Mountain Lions are native to Maine. (See the Wikipedia Cougar Article for the distribution map.) It's clear that the cat is far away from where it should be.

Personally I don't think it's a "full-blooded" Cougar - perhaps sub-species - because the face doesn't exactly resemble that of Mountain Lions...

Any Mountain Lion experts?

[edit on 5-7-2007 by Gemwolf]

To my untrained eye it looks more like a juvenile African Lion (female?). Head doesn't look quite right, but the build of the body does.

Edit: After looking at photos, it does look like a cougar more.

[edit on 29-6-2007 by pavil]

looks like a bobcat, juging by its build. Short, fast and weird.

Because of the way the light is showing on the back of the animal and the light on the surrounding is on the opposite side makes me believe this is a hoax picture. Two seperate photos put together. Does anybodyelse see what I see?

I don't think it's a hoak picture. It does look like a cougar. I have seen many cougars and the face does seem to be a little strange. Maybe it was the camera. I will have to look at it again. But it does seem to be a cougar.

Definitely not a mountain lion. Head and ears are the wrong shape.

My money would be on it being a large bobcat, maybe a bobcat - lynx hybrid.

Definately nowhere near being a lion.

That was me and my GF's first choice too. She even studies large cats.

I see that. Not to mention the quality of even the supposed 'high res' version is still crap. This looks like a combination of two different pictures. It may have been even drawn into it.

I'll chime in that the photo is genuine, but I suspect it's someone's pet that's gotten loose.

I knew someone who kept lions. A surprising number of folks have leopards, jaguars, and tigers (often illegally) that they raise. There are people who own cougars... so my guess would be a cat that'd been raised by humans and got inconvniently big or aggressive or both.

Cougar's not a bad guess.

I doubt if it's a fake. Why "fake" a mystery cat photograph? Why not just take a photo of a cat in it's natural habitat and say you took the picture in Maine?

Anyway, the following was commented to a newspaper:

Source

I'd say that is most likely an unaltered photo... however that statement is all but useless. It's takes what 2 seconds to drag and drop a photoshopped picture to your card reader.


The more I look at this photo it looks like it might have long hair, and assuming the rocks are of a size one could move them, and the size of the leaves. it might be a domestic breed called the Maine Coon Cat.

I'm sure the rule doesn’t apply to all cameras, because I know it's impossible to get anything from my PC to my camera. I suppose it wouldn't be impossible if you had a card reader... Err... What was my point again?

LoL!! @ Maine Coon Cat ...

It is definitely NOT a Bobcat, or a Maine Coon Cat. Anyone who has actually seen either one of these knows that instantly. It is far too large for either one and it is the wrong color as well. It looks like a cross between a native Cougar and an escaped lion.

Maine Coon Cat

Bobcat

Why the blue? Its burning my retinas for gd's sake

And why do pictures of everything even remotely mysterious always have to be so BLURRY? How hard is it to take a decent shot at a cat thats standing still?

In a way this helps the credibility of all the blurry bigfoot pictures. I mean if people cant take a good shot of a friggen cat, no wonder all the bigfoot pictures are so terrible.

I think it's a good picture. The animal is well exposed in the sunlight, identifibly a cat of some sor, no blurring of where the cat ends and the tree begins, etc...

I wish all bigfoot photos where like this!

One question I have is why everybody is assuming that this cat is cougar sized or bigger? There is no defintive point of size refrence in this picture other than trees and rocks. Both of those vary wildly in size and shape.

I'm going to have to go with an ordinary bobcat. They're not as big as a cougar, but they're bigger than what most people think.

First off, we don't have a good scale for the photo. To my eye, it looks about the size of a medium dog. Large for a bobcat, definitely too big for a housecat - and it's too muscled to be a housecat anyway. As for coloration, the Lynx species, including bobcats, have a high amount of variation in their coloration.

Now regarding the lion / cougar crossbreed idea... No. First off, neither species are native to Maine. While it's plausible, if not probable, that the eastern subspecies of the cougar is still extant in Maine, the odds of them happening across a lion (and living) are pretty far out. Then we have the problem that the two species aren't related, beyond both being felines. The cougar (Puma concolor) is related to such cats as the jaguarundi, kodkod, ocelot, and the extinct "american cheetah" - a group of South American cats removed from both the large cats (Panthera) and the small cats (Felis, Lynx) by a sizable margin. The lion is a large cat - Panthera leo. Unrelated to the cougar beyond being a feline carnivore.

To shorten it down, saying a cougar and a lion had a litter together is about the same as saying humans can produce offspring with bush babies because both are primates.

On the other hand, both the bobcat and Canadian lynx have ranges in Maine. The creature in the photograph is a stocky-bodied creature with a thick, rough coat, and what appear to be cheek ruffs - qualities represented by most species of Lynx. If we had a better-quality photo, I'm almost certain we would see ear tassels and spots.

If you really need to go crypto on this cat, somebody's escaped / released Eurasian lynx fits the bill almost perfectly - large, well-muscled, tawny fur, stocky but sleeker than the Canadian lynx, and generally less of a plush coat. I'm still putting my cash to one of our domestic Lynx species.

There was a lot of talk about this beastie when I lived in Maine in the 70's and 80's. There are also other photos.

The situition is a lot like it is down here in Virginia (and Florida and a lot of the east coast states) mountian lions, cougers, panthers, no matter what you call them, were common throughout the North American wilderness (and yes they were native throught the mountainous parts of the east including Maine) when the first settlers arrived but they were systematically wiped out... in most places on the east coast by the first part of the 20th century. Or, that was the official story except regular reports surface of sightings like this one. There were a couple sightings here in Va. last year and I think one in Florida.

Its kind of the same with the Ivory Billed Woodpecker. It was supposedly wiped out but sightings presist suggesting that there are still a few breeding pairs out there, But, short of having a dead specimen in hand; there are going to be skeptics and naysayers. And given their obvious rarity, who wants a dead specimen?

Give me a living mystery anyday.

[edit on 5-7-2007 by grover]

I want to add that I think that there is no porblem with the scale...I would say the animal is about the size of a large dog say a rotwieller. Also juvinelle mountain lions often have spots on their coats, not to mention the fact that the species has a lot of variation in its coat color; after all a panther is just a mountain lion/puma/couger etc with a black coat, not a different species.

[edit on 5-7-2007 by grover]

Guys, look at a picture of a cougar and tell me that that face isn't within the range of normal mutations for that majestic animal.

en.wikipedia.org...

The only thing that seems off to me are the way it hunches down from the shoulder as it were... the psoture reminds me more of an African lion than it does a mountain lion.