For all the advances in optics and camera technology over the last 20 years alone, there are two kinds of people who love blurry, low-resolution footage: UFO enthusiasts and people who are convinced the UK is like a cold, rainy Africa with big cats lurking in every bush and field.
To be a member of either group you’ve got to shut down critical thinking faculties, suspend disbelief and put faith in the highly improbable. (Or the impossible when it comes to people who insist little green men are zipping across the night sky in sleek ships that defy all we know about physics and aerodynamics.)
The UK’s big cat believers claim the country is home to a thriving native population of large felids. Some of them think they’re “panthers,” not specifying which species of cat they think is out there, while others claim jaguars, leopards or tigers are prowling the English countryside, spotted only fleetingly at the edges of fields or in the brush, and only by people who own two-decade-old Nokia flip phones with rudimentary cameras.
They believe a native, breeding population not only exists, but for centuries has eluded capture and avoided leaving compelling evidence.
The phantom cats have remarkable stealth abilities. They’ve never tripped a trail camera or appeared in a single frame of CCTV footage. Not a single tree marked for territory, not a single pile of cow bones picked clean by giant barbed tongues, not a single clump of panthera dung. Not even a hungry cub drawn into a village by the smell of barbecue on a summer night.
The reported sightings say more about human capacity for imagination — and how poor we are at estimating size over distance — than they do about the crypto-pumas and melanistic tigers some people swear they’ve seen.
When alleged big cats are spotted in the UK, they’re always seen fleetingly and from afar. When witnesses try to confirm what they’ve seen, the animals are gone.
“I was coming up to Jolly Nice from Oxford at around 7.50pm and the car in front of me was travelling at a steady pace. I looked to the verge of the other side of the road because I saw a bright pair of eyes low down. Upon further inspection, I suddenly realised there was a large outline of a low and stocky cat that was huge.”
That’s the testimony of a UK man who told the Stroud Times, a local newspaper, that he encountered a big cat a few minutes before 8 p.m. on Friday in Nailsworth, a town of about 5,600 people a little more than 100 miles west of London. His description mirrors that of others who say they’ve spotted large felids, mostly in the UK’s countryside and small villages.
The story’s headline reads: “Big cat expert’s verdict: beast spotted was a leopard.”
The expert in question is Rick Minter, an amateur biologist who has made UK big cat legends into something of a cottage industry by publishing books, hosting a podcast and frequently speaking to newspapers about the phenomenon. It’s not clear how Minter decided the animal in Friday’s sighting was a “black leopard,” but he’s said in previous interviews that he believes most alleged big cat sightings in the UK are leopards, with pumas accounting for most of the others.
Neither animal is native to Europe. Pumas range from South America to the American northwest and midwest, with isolated populations in places like Florida. Leopards are native to Africa and Asia, with ranges that overlap with lions on the former continent and tigers on the latter, mostly in India.
Some have floated the possibility that the mysterious felids are escaped pets who have successfully adjusted to the countryside. Minter says the evidence points to breeding populations.
If there are thriving populations, the cats would need to exist in numbers, with at least 50 on the extreme low end. If they’re escaped pets, the authorities would know.
Unlike the US, where big cat ownership was banned in the vast majority of states even before the recent Big Cat Public Safety Act was passed, owning a massive carnivore slash killing machine isn’t illegal in the UK. But owners have to register their animals, seek approval for the habitats and enclosures they’ve built, and submit to annual inspection.
There have been a handful of escapes over the decades and each time the authorities were able to capture or kill the animals, often tracking them via livestock kills. Pet tigers and leopards might be dangerous, but they’re still at a disadvantage compared to their wild brethren, meaning they go for the easy, guaranteed kills when they’re hungry. Nothing’s easier than a docile farm animal that’s never seen a big cat.
More recently, big cat hunters in the UK have tried to find more compelling evidence than a couple of blurry photographs of house cats out for a stroll. They’ve touted suspicious-looking pug marks, and in August 2022 found black fur on a barbed wire fence. According to the believers, a UK lab confirmed the fur belonged to a leopard, but there was no chain of custody, no documentation of how the sample was found and handled. Big cat experts remain skeptical.
Indeed, Oxford’s Egil Droge, a wildlife conservationist, points out that in places where big cats live, you don’t have to go hunting for evidence. It’s everywhere.
“I’ve worked with large carnivores in Africa since 2007 and it’s obvious if big cats are around. You would regularly come across prints of their paws along roads. The rasping sound of a leopard’s roar can be heard from several kilometres,” Droge wrote, noting that leopards in particular are not discriminating about what they kill and leave ample evidence of their handiwork when they’ve hunted.
Still, as improbable as the sightings are, the big cat enthusiasts of the UK have one up on UFO enthusiasts and hunters of cryptics like Big Foot, the Loch Ness Monster and the Jersey Devil: the creatures they’re looking for actually exist and may surprise us yet.
Pain In The Bud 
One looks like Bella… You are right, we have a whole set of conspiracy theorists about UK Big cats but its all a bit “blurry” as you say. I would love to believe its real and that they can be caught unharmed and returned to their natural habitat and simply left alone ( or better still never brought here in the first place). But as humans are involved the first position is “kill”. This man is doing at least some good, one of the ones I have visited and sponsor https://thebigcatsanctuary.org/
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I think it’s fun in the way the search for cryptids has fascinated people, but it’s really difficult to believe it’s possible for big cats to be on the loose for so long undetected.
As the conservationists mentioned, you can hear the roars of big cats echo for miles. In Jim Corbett’s memoir, he mentions how the villagers near Champawat knew the tigress was still in the area after killing a young girl because she sat near the road at night, roaring at the village.
Personally I think an escaped pet or two is more likely, but pumas only live about 12 years and tigers live about 20.
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My friend just saw a Peregrine Falcon in her garden.Two blocks away from me. I assume that is a rare sighting? She sent photo to experts at Wild Bird Fund.
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It used to be rare, but there was a major effort to save them, and peregrines began to nest on the Mid-Hudson Bridge, the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge and the Tappan Zee, then moved further south. They’re definitely in Manhattan so it makes sense that you’d see them in Brooklyn.
Cool fact: Peregrines are the fastest animal in the world, hitting a record 242 mph on a hunting dive. They hunt other birds.
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Funny how people do not mention birds hunting birds and blaming cats for all birds getting killed.My friend did see lots of bird feathers on the ground. And she knows it was not her cats. They have a cat cam inside where they can see what they do.
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The manager of my apartment building in St Paul, MN, came in one day and said that if people blamed my cat for killing birds, she had just seen a peregrine land on a chickadee on the bird feeder in the back of the house and fly away with it.
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They’re the alphas in the air for sure. I remember when they first started coming back from the brink of extinction and what a big deal it was when they were spotted nesting on the underside of the Mid Hudson Bridge. That was early 2000s.
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This is off subject but i do not know if i can contact you, if at all,privately. Brace yourselves. This is disturbing but pet owners must be warned. I was sent a petition from PETA. I am no fan of them since they do not think ferals should live. Anyway, cats and dogs are being held in cages for life as blood banks. Horrible abuse has been uncovered and the emergency vet hospital Blue Pearl in Brooklyn is involved in this crap. Among other places. I am familiar with Blue Pearl and people i warned, rescue organizations will no longer have anything to do with them. Not that they can afford them anyway.
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Here:
https://www.peta.org/media/news-releases/video-nearly-900-dogs-and-cats-bled-and-caged-for-life-at-blood-bank-tied-to-bluepearl-pet-hospital/
It’s so brutal I can’t even read the entire thing now.
Blue Pearl itself is the subject of some horrific stories online.
If the PETA stuff is true (and they do have video and other stuff backing it up) then the company needs to be shut down and the owners and staff sued and barred from this kind of work. Criminal charges too, if possible.
This can only happen if people have no regard for life and they believe there will be no consequences for their actions.
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I always hated Blue Pearl. My gut told me something about them. I guess this was it. Only time i went there is because i bought my clients cat per her instructions months ago. I showed her this and never again will she use them when they adopt another cat.One rescuer told me they knew about this.
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I didn’t get through the whole thing, just couldn’t today, but the stuff about them snapping up kittens from Craigslist ads is infuriating. People have to know NEVER to give cats or kittens away for free. Anyone serious about adopting will gladly pay a rehoming fee.
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Karma comes for them. She always does. Sooner or later…
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Any chance this will be shut down? It’s absolutely horrific!
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BEAUTIFUL cheetah. There are the Scottish Wilcats but they are domestic-cat-sized. When I was in my teens a black panther appeared before in the hills above the house we lived in. My Dad insisted it was a black dog but (Puleeze) I know the difference between cats and dogs. Had some interesting dreams for a couple of nights thereafter and my Spirit Animal has been with me ever since.
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Yeah when I was reading about the supposed big cat sightings there was mention of those Scottish wildcats and how they’re in danger of going extinct via cross-breeding with domestic cats. There’s an effort now to keep the populations separate to keep the wildcat DNA from diluting further. Might be a topic for a blog post down the line.
As for cats vs dogs, even if seen from far away, the second the animal starts moving you can tell. Cat gaits are so unique.
How do you know what your spirit animal is? Mine must be an egotistical chubby gray tabby cat.
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There’s a deep affinity where you just feel the connectivity. I dream about cats of all sorts quite often. Sometimes SHE is in them.
Yeah, the gait is what gave the big cat away. That and its tail.
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Saw this today and thought of our conversation
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lol look like a bodega cat needed a break from all the hard work of lounging and eating.
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I would not read it if i were you. And Craigslist is another garbage website.
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I support Arsenal
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I think it’s funny the way the Brits say that. “I support Chelsea, mate!” like they’re donating to a charity. Of course our sports culture in the US is weird too, especially how intense people get.
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