breeding population – Pain In The Bud

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.

Cheetah in London — “Pardon me, mate, could you point me toward Aldersgate Street?”

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.

Small Cats Looking Big — Photograph from a previous “big cat sighting.” It’s typical of the photos that surface with claims of leopards and pumas stalking the countryside. Blurred details and digital zoom make it difficult to gauge distance and scale.

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.

Puma at Buckingham Palace — “I’m originally from San Diego, actually, but the expat life suits me and the British are very tasty.”

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.

Tiger at a pub — “Oi, wanna have a pint and watch Man U vs Arsenal on the telly?”

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.

Our research team carried out field work in fife over the weekend off the back of a recently sighted big cat 😊 #fife #BigCats #bigcatsightings #bigcatsscotland #bigcatsuk pic.twitter.com/CeUjEXJto0

— Big Cat Sightings In Scotland (@BCSI_Scotland) October 24, 2022

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.

Shhhhh!

No one tell NewsCorp that “black pumas” don’t exist, pumas are native to the Americas, leopards are native to Africa and Asia, and a “black panther” is a color morph, not a species of cat.

A story from Fox News — prompted by a similar story in the UK’s Sun, part of the same Rupert Murdoch-owned media conglomerate — claims the British are “unnerved” by an “uptick” in sightings of cryptid big cats. The mysterious creatures are supposedly running rampant in the British countryside and in the suburbs, according to the article, which identifies them as black pumas, black panthers and black leopards.

Oddly, the story says the sightings are up significantly because there have been three “big cat” sightings in October, immediately before informing readers there are 2,000 such sightings in the UK every year.

Little Buddy and I are not exactly known for our math skills, but 2,000 sightings a year works out to 167 sightings per month, which is a lot more than three. Fifty five times more, in fact. So the story should really be about a dramatic dip in phantom big cat sightings, shouldn’t it?

What evidence does the Fox report cite for its breathless claim about big cats taking over the UK? A pair of grainy security camera videos, including one showing a “big cat sighting” at night, and the word of a “big cat sighting expert,” alternately called a “countryside expert” in other media reports, who by the way happens to be hawking a documentary on the sightings.

“It’s a crucial issue,” self-described wildcat expert Rick Minter told The Sun. “How do we come to terms with living alongside big cats in Britain?”

Pumas, also known as cougars, mountain lions, panthers and catamounts, are native to the Americas. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

For readers unfamiliar with the highest echelons of reputable journalism, The Sun is the UK’s foremost bastion of trustworthy reporting, a tabloid par excellence whose editorial staff are known for breaking stories about “crazed werewolves” and immigrants barbecuing the late queen’s swans when they weren’t running topless photos of models on Page 3. The Sun is owned by NewsCorp, the parent company of Fox News.

As for the two pieces of footage, one is the aforementioned blurry mess recorded by a home security camera at night, and shows a few frames of a cat’s behind and a tail as the felid walks out of the frame. The other is a blurry clip the credulous claim depicts a large cat feeding on a sheep. There’s no indication the figure is a felid of any type.

As far as we’re concerned, there are a few possible explanations for the sightings:

They’re former pets

India the tiger was found wandering the suburbs of Houston in 2021. In this photo, he’s enjoying life in his sanctuary’s large enclosure where he’s got plenty of room, stimulation, toys and even his own rock pool.

If there are indeed big cats roaming the British countryside and suburbs, they would have to be former pets of people who acquired them on the illegal wildlife market, broke the law by “importing” them into the UK, then broke several additional laws by keeping them as pets until the cats quickly grew and the owners realized keeping them is untenable.

Such situations aren’t unheard of, obviously, but they can’t account for a dozen big cats on the loose at any one time, much less more than a thousand as Minter claims.

More importantly, big cats who are taken from their mothers as days-old cubs, sold as pets and later dumped are universally confused, terrified and unable to fend for themselves. They end up roaming suburbia in broad daylight, like a nine-month-old tiger named India who was spotted wandering around the outskirts of Houston in 2021, sniffing out potential food in garbage cans because they don’t know how to hunt.

If these phantom big cats were former pets, they’d be spotted, captured and taken to sanctuaries within a matter of days.

They’re small wildcats formerly native to the area, like the Eurasian lynx

The problem is, the Eurasian lynx was extirpated from the UK about 1,400 years ago. There have been debates among conservationists about reintroducing wild populations to the British countryside — and to Ireland — but no concrete plans as of yet. Proponents say the lynx could be beneficial, keeping deer populations level without major human intervention.

Eurasian lynx adults can grow to about the size of medium dogs, so it’s possible they can be mistaken for “big cats” in blurry video, especially when perspective and/or lack of other objects makes it difficult to place their actual size in context. However, as with big cats, any Eurasian lynx spotted in the UK are likely to be former pets.

They’re housecats

bigkitty — This feral cat, a plain old member of the felis catus species, was repeatedly mistaken for a big cat in western Australia back in 2018.

If witnesses in the UK are mistaking house cats for big cats, they wouldn’t be the first.

Stories abound of little cats prompting “big cat” sightings, from Vancouver (a Savannah cat) to Scranton, Pa. (a missing house cat), to San Jose (a Maine Coon) and even Australia. (A feral cat.)

One wildlife ranger in Australia became so annoyed with fielding frequent big cat reports that he implored people to educate themselves.

“People need to get over the idea the cats are panthers,” wildlife ranger Tim Gilbertson told Australia’s ABC news. “It is just not on. They are big feral cats, at least 50% bigger than a house cat and they are powerful.”

The usual issues are in play here: Fuzzy security camera footage, night sightings, confused witnesses. You’d think there would be more phantom big cat sightings in the US, since pumas can grow to the size of jaguars and could be mistaken for lions, but people who live in areas where pumas range tend to know they’re around and what they look like. They’re also the definition of scaredy cats, reluctant to let humans spot them or get anywhere near them.

Frequently mistaken for a tiger: Buddy the Cat.

Ultimately, witness reports count don’t count for much, and not just because memory is malleable.

Thousands of people have reported seeing Bigfoot, chupacabras, the Jersey Devil and the Loch Ness monster, but those creatures are all firmly in cryptid territory.

There’s Occam’s Razor, and there’s common sense: For a primate species like Bigfoot to exist, for example, there would need to be a breeding population, enough prey for the creatures to feed themselves, and someone somewhere would have found remains at some point. (Bigfoot sightings go back to the days before Columbus set foot on New World shores, but it’s only been in the last century or so that the cryptid has entered the popular imagination via folklore and media.)

Likewise, if there are indeed 1,000 big cats prowling the British countryside, as Minter claims, there would be a breeding population, ubiquitous tracks and the remains of prey animals killed in ways consistent with big cat ambush techniques. Cats of all sizes are ambush hunters and have a distinct way of killing prey which is unlike other animals.

The UK’s big cat sightings should be treated more like the UFO sightings in the US and particularly around Area 51. They start with a kernel of potential truth — the existence of a secret base to test experimental military aircraft, or the possibility that big cats who were former pets have been let loose — which leads people to consider the possibility, then when they see something they can’t easily explain, they reach for the exceptional.

But as Carl Sagan famously said, exceptional claims require exceptional proof, and it’s no accident that things like UFOs, cryptid primates and phantom big cats only appear on the grainiest, blurriest and darkest footage.

My money is on domestic cats mistaken for their much larger cousins. Maybe Buddy’s been taking some transatlantic flights under my nose. I’ll have a little chat with him about it and ask him to kindly stop terrifying our friends across the pond.