The Beast of Exmoor.

[Pertinax]

As it was mentioned on the Black Leopard thread, what do folks reckon the beast of Exmoor is ?(or was- as you hear less about it nowadays.) I'm sure its been discussed on a previous thread so apologies for starting this one but I'm interested...

So are they Genuine or False claims?

If genuine, are they Leopard, Puma, smaller cat or wild cat/domestic cat hybrids? Has anyone seen any recent convincing film footage or photos? All these wild cats in photos & videos are always just a blur or too far away to tell what it is.

Comments?

 

[MARK]

These stories have been around for many years, they even had the British army out there looking for this (ghost) a few years ago!

 

[Chlidonias]

another thread on ABCs is here:

http://www.zoobeat.com/2/wild-big-cats-australia-14741/

as for video footage, photographs etc, I've seen lots of it from various places around the world and only a couple of examples were at all convincing (and then only poorly-so). In almost all cases the jizz is very unlike a big cat and very like a domestic cat. As for the "experts" sent out to investigate or to comment on footage, very often they are experts only in that they own a small local zoo or they once read a book about a lion (I'm just being facetious with that last one!). I know of one instance where the "expert on big cats" was the head of maintenance at the local zoo. There are numerous cases of ABCs being proved conclusively as being (eg) a persian cat, a half-bald mangy dog, even a brown paper bag! One set of hoax photos (from last year or the year before I think?) was of a plush panther toy.

Having said all that though I do actually believe there is substance behind the stories. Species of wild cat do turn up in the UK (either dead or captured alive), in the thread linked above I mention that about a quarter of all small cat species have had representative individuals found in the wild in the UK. The Dangerous Wild Animals Act provides a good reason for them being out there in the first place. And there are a lot of credible sightings and circumstancial evidence.

I'm quite open to the possibility.

 

[ZooMania]

The whole Big Cats in Britain theory confuses me. Im not sure wherever to believe if there are Big cats in the UK or not. I mean surely as these rumours have been dragging on since the 70's, there must be some sort of truth in there somewhere however there is no concrete truth in this and all the evidence pictures seem to be blurry or the apparent cat seems to be very far away.
I believe a few bodies of small cats such as Jungle Cats have been discovered in Britan and im pretty sure a Pumas was found aswell. Plus there's Lara the Lynx who was discovered in a London garden in 2001 and lived in London Zoo for a few years.

 

[Pertinax]

I've seen lots of it from various places around the world and only a couple of examples were at all convincing (and then only poorly-so). In almost all cases the jizz is very unlike a big cat and very like a domestic cat...... And there are a lot of credible sightings and circumstancial evidence.

That's exactly true too, in nearly all cases of film and photos that I have seen. Though in one very grainy video a quite bulky-looking 'big cat' lashed its tailed upwards as a leopard sometimes does and I don't think domestic cats do (in quite the same definitive way)

The point about the 'experience' of people who call themselves(or are called in as) 'experts' is a good one too. One person wrote a book about supposed 'big cats' living on the moorlands of south Wales and how she had even enticed them into her garden with baited meat. The photos in the book showed a large 'tomcat' of tabby type- even with white paws- virtually undoing all her 'evidence' in one single photograph.

But some years ago a genuinly experienced naturalist living on the fringe of Exmoor who had done detailed studies of the 'beast' claimed to have found portions of deers' carcasses deposited high up in trees- a leopard's 'cache'- as irrefutable evidence. This sounds far more likely as evidence to me but again, there's never been any further revelation.