The Mysterious Big Cats

one of my mates has seen one very close one of the black ones, i have also seen close up camcorder footage of what looks like ocelot/lynx... bigger than a cat but smaller than a lion, panther, lepoard..

i think they are pet cats that have been turned loose..

how many people go missing a year in yorkshire?

I believe in cats also, the largest I had ever witnessed was simular to what Jagd, said. It was a 40+lb feline that was not wild but very lazy.

jagdflieger's point about escaped animals is fascinating. certainly in East Anglia ( east of England) there's a nasty creature called a coypu that roams around, and I've heard some strange tales of minks, of all things, that have escaped from fur farms: minks apparently are completely vicious.

I have seen tracks around a little town in far western KY. Around the town of Cuba. People that live there have seen black panthers ( only about 3 or 4 tiems in 30 years of living there) but have heard them at night howling and fighting with coytoes.

Stand corrected.

To answer the question, why hasnt anyone been killed by the big cats? One, big cats, even here out west, still tend to avoid people. We have #loads of cougars here, and even with such a large population of them, there are hardly any reported deaths of them. Cougars in kentucky would not be so odd, since it is the same continent, and animals sometimes migrate, such as the coyote. Even jaguars, native to central america and mexico, could very well migrate here in small numbers since thier home territories are being destroyed, so they move away further to find better food. Jaguars have been spotted in border states like arizona and California.

Big cats in the UK are possible too, from zoo or circus escapes. Since in order to develop and naturalize there, they must be able to find suitable mates. if only one escapes, it cannot reproduce on its own, thus, it will live out its life, eat what it can find, then die. since its time in captivity probably traumatized it, it will steer clear of places with many people, and try to break for less populated areas. Since they are not escaping in numbers big enough to find mates and make more kitties, they probably wont have a population explosion.

board censor? It will allow "#er" but will edit out s*h*i*r*t as shirt...

A few months ago, I remember a man in the North East (Maine, I believe) was attacked by a cougar which he was able to kill with a knife. In spite of the grade B western movies, cats such as panthers and cougars rarely attack people unless the cat feels threatened or is extremely hungry. Except for pack animals such as wolves, predators do not normally attack animals that are larger than them. (For example a pride of lions in Africa will always avoid a herd of elephants.) A full grown man weighs 160 - 180 pounds, he is still bigger than a 100 pound cougar. Also animals have learned to stay away from man (he can kill at a distance), the predators which survived over the years were the ones who kept their distance from humans. However the biggest cause of animals appearing where in new environments is still man (like that total idiot who brought carp to the USA).

Too many of our family and friends have seen Australia's big black cats to doubt their existance. We also have no doubt they arn't just feral domestic cats.

I've revived this thread because of two random conversations in the last few days when two different people mentioned their 'experience' with our local 'Big Black'.

Both these people had their sighting and hearing within the same 1/2 mile block that we had a mare have her foal ripped out of her. Both these people were also actually stalked.

The sightings around this area are not uncommon and more land is being developed as residential but rather than move out and away, at least one seems to be getting bold.

Now one of these people went out to rescue his cat from a feral Tom Cat, but found it wasn't what had been hanging around, and it wouldn't be chased away, but roared and inched closer to reveal it was a big black cat.

The other person, in the company of a friend, was followed across the paddocks for at least 20 minutes, with the big black cat keeping no further than 20 feet away, and at one point followed them from the branches of a row of trees overhanging their heads.

Both these bold behaviours, combined with far less sheep and lambs in the area and more families of young children, got me wondering whether we aren't getting close to adding another member to Australia's list of 'killer fauna'.

In the UK the the Dangerous Wild Animals Act was introduced in 1976, it was originally introduced as a private members bill due to the public response and concerns regarding the the keeping of dangerous pets, especially big cats.

In the 1970's in certain higher social circles (i.e. people with no brains and lots of money) developed a fad where people would strive to own bigger and more exotic pets. Public concern grew as certain people started introducing large carnivorous cats into their homes and gardens. An effort to control this lead to the Dangerous Wild Animals Act.

Seeing as owners had to dispose of their pets after the act was passed, the zoo's found themselves swamped with requests to take on these large carnivorous cats. In the end they refused to take any more, as a result the large cats had to be put down.

A number of owners admitted to releasing their illegal pets into the wild rather than have them killed, although it's unknown whether they would have survived and bred from 1976 up until this day.

I've heard of several attacks by ABC's (Alien Big Cats, sometimes also known as Phantom Cats) on humans here in the UK, leaving said persons with severe lacerations. I've also heard of a dog being mauled to death by one, unfortunately I cannot find any sources on this. There are also lots of mutilated sheep in Devon which are said to be a result of the Beast of Bodmin Moor, another ABC.

Edit: Eek! Grammar!

Edit: Found a reliable source for the dead dog here. It mentions armed police hunting the culprit. I've also heard of the British Army being mobilised in Devon or Wales to hunt them down too!

[edit on 27/1/2006 by FactoryLad]

Yes, the big black cats are widely known of along Australia's eastern seaboard. NSW national parks even launched an investigation because of repeated public appeals for action - not sure of the official outcome of that yet - I'll track it down later.

I live in NE NSW and believe I have sighted large black panther like cat on our land - at night from a distance of some 30 metres. The cat appeared to be about 150 cm long and standing some 100 cm tall at the shoulder. It passed quickly in front of our car but was most distinctive because of its long panther like tail - so different from feral or domestic cat - far more powerfully built.

Feral cats always revert to tabby like morphogenetic field representation - not black.

Indigineous lore has extensive reference to large panther like cats that they maintain are the physical form adopted by discarnate spirit entities when they wish to manifest on this physical plane. Interestingly Mayan/Aztec cultures also shared this view of jaguars but we have never had black cats in Oz so where do our elders know this from???

We have black panthers in Northest Oklahoma and Northwest Arkansas running all over the place. I have many pictures back home that I have gotten from cameras set up in the woods on my property. They do sound similar to a woman screaming. And are also known to carry off cattle and actually drag them into the trees while they eat them.

Hey all

Well i live in a place called hatfield in the UK to clarify I go to uni there just in case anyone knows the area you'll know what i mean

Any way coming home from my girlfriends house one night in my car I have to drive through some countryside areas as she live in wheathampstead and as i was driving down a road i saw a rather large cat thing run into the bushes i never saw the head or anything just mainly the body.

It looked like the size of a cheeta but black and it was just getting dark. when I told my girlfiend this she told me that once when she looked out of her window late one night in the field at the back of her house she saw a big black cat and always thought she imagined it.

About a week later on the local news or in the paper i can't remember which, the police were asking for all sightings to be reported. strange eh

Well the black cats have been seen in Okla., one got filmed from one of the news choppers out of OKC near El Reno.

As a kid in eastern Okla. I have heard several people telling of the black cats and mountain lions. I heard one scream one night, that scream will make stuff run down your leg.

The jaguar ranged into KS at one point in time.

Roper

Roper, what part of eastern Okla are you from? I am from Westville, a small town at the intersection of 59 and 62 highways on the Ark state line near Tahlequah....I am of course in the Navy now, but I grew up there. Anyway, I have several black panthers on video and on film taken in the woods on my property.

Back in the 70's when all the hippies and dope-heads had tigers, lions and panthers as mascots, pets, curiosities and guard dogs, a new law came about in england, stating that everyone owning a big cat must kill it. Nobody did, they just released them into the wild... "Free willy!!"

So you had about 1000 big cats running around, and in england it's a mild climate, cats have fur, there are plenty of rabbits, dumb fat ground living birds, and sheep.

Cats interbreed, and are adept at hiding... couple of decades later, england is full of a new indigenous species of wild big cats. So there you have it. Wanna specualte that perhaps the ALIENS or the GOVERNMENT planted them? Go ahead...

Damn straight

Christian IX, only problem with your inbreeding call is that the genetic profiles (especially the chromosomal count) do not match across the big cat species and the few that can crossbreed (eg lions and tigers) produce sterile offspring. Why are the sightings of black panthers - where are the lion or tiger sightings???


In Oz we have not had the exotic pet history of the Northern Hemisphere and we too have many "panther" sightings.