Maine Mystery Cat - Photograph *Update*, page 1

Photo courtesy of Mark LaFlamme to Cryptomundo.com.

Lewiston, Maine’s Sun Journal’s morning edition for Friday, June 29th, will be breaking the story of a new sighting and photograph of the following Mystery Cat.

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]

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:

John Goodine of Fairfield, ME
Jun 29, 2007 11:19 PM
Our lab at Elm City Photo processed this image straight off from his digital camera chip with no enhancements other than to lighten it. This was the best shot in a series of 4 or 5. Manipulated photos are generally brought in to us on CD roms or on USB Mass storage devices and not on camera chips as was this image. Hopefully we will be seeing more of these beautiful animals in our forests someday. Keep your cameras ready.

Source

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

Originally posted by groingrinder
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

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.

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...

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