What is your opinion on the apparent existence of big cats in the UK?
Posted by Skeleton200000@reddit | AskUK | View on Reddit | 35 comments
I’m not someone who can claim to have seen one in the UK countryside but this is very interesting to me.
Does anyone have any stories? Do you think we have wild big cats here?
Soda_Carno777@reddit
Maybe, but we found 2 lynxes that had been released in Scotland in a very short time so it's very unlikely
Tigertotz_411@reddit
Potentially the occasional one that has escaped from a private collection and survived for a few years. A breeding population though? Highly unlikely.
We live in a very densely populated country, yes they can hide well but there would be some evidence (camera traps, carcasses, DNA, roadkill).
News travels so fast I just cannot believe there wouldn't be more concrete photographic evidence.
Rickie_Cheese@reddit
There has been DNA proof, i believe, from fur caught on a barbwire fence. There are large areas of this country that are not densely populated, and big cat will seek these areas out. A big cat will hear a person coming a mile off and disappear easily. For decades, there have been sightings. Too many to be made up or imagined. I know there are grainy photos and videos claiming to be big cats but are suspect. But before too long, someone will get a good recording. Most people who see them say they freeze and don't think to get their phone out to film.
VisualPersonal9188@reddit
Hi everyone,
I’m a student journalist currently working on an article about big cat sightings in the UK countryside. I’m looking to gather stories, photos, or videos from people who might have encountered these animals.
If you’ve ever spotted a big cat or have any images or experiences you’d like to share, I’d love to hear from you! Please feel free to message me or comment below. Your contribution could help shed light on this fascinating topic.
Thank you!
Pickingnamesisharder@reddit
I found a very large paw print on Dartmoor once when younger, definitely bigger than a cats
ThatsMeWelshy@reddit
There's a few famished cougars in the Red Lion down by ours but apart from that I haven't seen any in the wild
Evening-Tomatillo-47@reddit
And what about cats? Ba-dum tsch!
Evening-Tomatillo-47@reddit
Yeah, my brother's cat is a right chonky moggy
bradpitt3@reddit
Is there really a big cat roaming the Lake District? - BBC News
_oOo_iIi_@reddit
Cat!
original_oli@reddit
That would be in Newww York CITEY
Dunnsmouth@reddit
You are Adam Scott Glasspool and I claim my £5.
Delicious-Cut-7911@reddit
People have private zoos and animals have escaped. Farmers have reported big cats stalking their sheep
quarky_uk@reddit
It is pretty much proven that we do have them.
Adamsoski@reddit
I remember when this came out there was a lot of scepticism.
See this:
So I wouldn't say it is actually confirmed since an expert in the field disagrees.
quarky_uk@reddit
Yeah good point. But also worth noting that he is sceptical of the lack of additional evidence, not the DNA.
Dazzling-Kitchen-221@reddit
It's not impossible. They're stealthy creatures more or less designed to hide and e.g. pumas could live quite well in the UK and we know there were ones kept in private collections etc in the 70s until it was made illegal.
Sociologically, it's quite interesting what society considers to be "acceptable" belief versus "crazy talk". There are hundreds if not 1000s of sightings - at least two people I know have credible claims to have seen one, there is one that was shot and stuff and put in a museum in Inverness, they've been caught on CCTV in back gardens, and we have DNA evidence. Yet it's still somehow classed alongside Nessie and UFOs.
I saw one once myself in the Southern Uplands of Scotland. It was a distance but I'm convinced it was a puma. People often claim that sightings are due to people seeing housecats and getting confused by the scale and all I can say is are they fuck. It was standing next to a stone wall and there was bracken and other things that gave a sense of size. It was grey-brown, Alsatian/large-dog size with a flat, cat-like face.
Training_Dance_3572@reddit
That description of what you saw sounds totally off to me.
Far more likely to be a lesser spotted haggis. They’re generally bigger than your typical uplands haggis, and the colour of the coat would match too.
Cute_Ad_9730@reddit
I say bullshit. If they were out there what are they eating? Sheep and all small farmed animals are counted and tagged. If rabbits and small animals the remains would be found. We don’t have enough truly wild land to hide a large carnivore without it leaving obvious traces.
LargeSteve69@reddit
Half eaten sheep corpses are found quite regularly in some areas. It's usually assumed to have died of natural causes and eaten by foxes, badgers and scavenger birds but that might not always be the case, especially if it happens over one night. I wouldn't rule it out personally
Another_Random_Chap@reddit
We now also have a massive population of deer.
CarpeCyprinidae@reddit
Well it's proven fact given that a lynx was caught alive in Scotland in 1980
Pippin4242@reddit
Well, I didn't think it made loads of sense, and I still don't really think it makes loads of sense, but I did see one with a witness about fifteen years ago in my village (Somerset). I'll see if I can find a writeup I did of it before and paste it here.
Pippin4242@reddit
I was walking the dog with my then-girlfriend, and we came over a small rise in the field behind my parents' place. A dun-coloured quadruped heard us coming, which we both agree we initially thought was a deer. You see deer there.
As it jumped over the hedge to get away from us, the tail appeared - and it was long and fluffy, thicker at the tip than the base. The moment it vanished we were both like "what the FUCK" and confirmed we'd seen what seemed to be a large animal out of place when we'd both thought it was a deer.
We agreed to not describe it, finish the walk, and go home and draw it, which was the most scientific thing we could think of to do. Both drawings showed a large cat about to leap, both with a long fluffy tail. They were both from the same odd angle, where we couldn't see the head properly and mostly saw the neck from behind.
We couldn't do much more with the info than that, but I've had two pieces of supporting evidence since. One is that over a decade later we went to the zoo together. It was quiet, just before closing time, when a thunderstorm started. We were the only people watching the cheetah as it became agitated by the noise. It flicked its tail up and turned away from us. We maybe bring up our big cat sighting to each other once a year at most? But both of us, right then, experienced exactly the same totally unexpected flash of recognition.
The other is better evidence, but I didn't get to follow up on it at the time and still haven't reached out. The local paper has a "100 years ago, 50 years ago, 25 years ago, 10 years ago" column based on their archives. And ten years after we saw a bloody cheetah in the village and told almost nobody, I saw a "10 years ago" bit saying that several yearling lambs in the next village - up the hill, the direction our cheetah had gone in - had been killed very unusually, by a large predator that nobody could identify.
erikofnorway1@reddit
As someone with roots in Somerset, do you mind sharing the name of the village. I’m very intrigued!
Pippin4242@reddit
It's a village in the Cheddar Valley, and the big cat went in the direction of Priddy
UnknownTerrorUK@reddit
I go hiking on either Dartmoor or Bodmin Moor most weekends. The biggest thing I ever see is Cows.
FakeNordicAlien@reddit
I’ve seen one. I live about five minutes from a big golf course, and past the golf course are woods and fields for miles. There’s a bus stop that I use sometimes just across the road from the golf course, with a sort of thin hedge made of trees separating it from the road. At 6 or 7am in autumn a few years back, I was waiting for a bus, and one ran out of the hedge, across the road, saw cars and humans, and turned and ran back into the golf course. I saw it for about ten seconds.
It gets misty here in autumn in the early mornings, so I didn’t see it perfectly, but I could easily tell it was a cat. I’m not sure what kind - cougar would be my best guess. It was brownish-blonde, about 2.5 feet tall at the shoulder. Soft-looking but in a sleek way, not fluffy like a lynx. Bobbed tail, which cougars don’t usually have, but that could have been docked by an owner or lost in an accident.
Cats (of all kinds) tend to love me, and I have basically zero self-preservation instincts - I belong to the “if not friend, why friend-shaped?” school of thought, almost against my will - so I guess it’s good there were cars around that early. I have a feeling that if there weren’t, I’d either be cougar meat, or more likely, take after one of the maidens in old American folk tales who get carried away by the catamounts and turned into one.
Charming_Persimmon52@reddit
I saw one come down a bank and cross the road in front of me before heading back up a bank on the opposite side of the road, one late summer evening about 25 years ago near the Brickhill/Woburn woods. I was so shocked at what I was seeing I stopped the car, got out and ran up the bank, but by the time I got to the top it was gone. I don't think anyone believed me back then and I doubt they would now, but it was something I'll never forget.
blackthornjohn@reddit
They're a definite, go to Google maps and select satellite view, searching for "cobtree Manor " it's an old zoo near Maidstone that released it's cats during the war when it closed, the more exotic stuff went to other zoos.
Now zoom out and look at the squillions of acres between the A20/M20 &A2/M2 i'm assuming they'd stay clear of them for the most part.
No, people wouldn't necessarily see them, after all I live in a house way bigger than a big cat and no one knew we'd built it and lived in it for 6 years
Crochet-panther@reddit
I’m dubious but willing to believe they could exist maybe.
But most sightings are clearly not true, for example two recent ones near me were shown to be a distant friends large house cat, she went to pick him up 😂
Normal-Basis9743@reddit
Not really interesting a story but…..
Years ago there were several sightings of a large cat in my highland village but I never believed them and one summer’s evening I took the dog for a big walk up the hills and Loch Sgeireach.
When I was approaching the loch, I saw what looked like a sleek black dog or panther (I know cheesey) watching me sat on a hillock. I stopped in my tracks and just stared at it while my dog got excited.
All I could think of was if I tripped or fell when I turn away would be it’s cue to chase me down.
I never told any one because of the absolute slagging any other witnesses had had before me.
LudaMusser@reddit
It’s been proven. Hair was found on a fence and dna on a sheep’s carcass
Vertigo_uk123@reddit
Yes we do. The wife has seen one up close (literally jumped at the window behind her). It makes sense. Up until the 70s big cats were legal pets. You could buy them at harrods. When they banned them a lot of people just released them into the wild. Obviously the original generation would have died by now but it’s very likely they met others and made small breeding groups. Remember they are masters of stealth and are extremely good at hiding. There is plenty of space. Shelter. And food around for them to go undetected for years. That’s without mentioning evidence such as deer carcasses found up in trees and other skeletons etc licked clean.
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