British big cats#Proven captures and remains

{{Short description|Reports of large non-native feline sightings in Britain}}

In British folklore and urban legend, British big cats refers to the subject of reported sightings of non-native, wild big cats in the United Kingdom. Many of these creatures have been described as "panthers", "pumas" or "black cats".

There have been rare isolated incidents of recovered individual animals, often medium-sized species such as the Eurasian lynx, though in one 1980 case, a puma was captured alive in Scotland.{{Cite web|last=Strachan|first=Graeme|title=Big cats: The hunt for the puma caught roaming the Highlands in 1980|url=https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/nostalgia/2591020/big-cats-the-hunt-for-the-puma-caught-roaming-the-highlands-in-1980/|access-date=2020-10-30|website=Press and Journal|date=28 October 2020 |language=en-US}} In 2025, four Eurasian Lynx were discovered in Scotland.{{Cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/jan/09/two-lynx-released-loose-scotland-scottish-highlands|website=The Guardian|date=9 January 2025 |language=en-UK |title=Two lynx on the loose in the Scottish Highlands |last1=Scotland |first1=P. A. }} These are generally believed to have been escaped or released exotic pets that had been held illegally, possibly released after the animals became too difficult to manage or after the introduction of the Dangerous Wild Animals Act 1976.{{Cite news|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-19397320|title = Essex lion: Charting the big cats of Britain|work = BBC News|date = 28 August 2012}}

The existence of a population of "true big cats" in Britain, however, especially a breeding population, has been rejected by experts and the British government owing to a lack of convincing evidence for the presence of these animals.{{cite news |last1=Wilding |first1=Mark |date=14 April 2019 |title=On the trail of Britain's wild big cats |work=The Guardian |url=https://www.theguardian.com/global/2019/apr/14/britains-big-cats-are-pumas-running-wild-or-is-it-our-imagination |access-date=19 September 2022 |quote=A spokeswoman for the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) said: “Neither Natural England nor Defra have received any credible reports of wild living or breeding big cats in Britain in recent years. Defra is not currently engaged in any work related to the management of wild big cats in Britain and has no plans to do so.”}}{{cite book |last1=Franklin |first1=Adrian |title=Anthropology and Cryptozoology |publisher=Routledge |year=2016 |isbn=978-1315567297 |editor1-last=Hurn |editor1-first=Samantha |chapter=Far from the madding crowd: Big cats on Dartmoor and in Dorset, UK |quote=According to recent accounts by social scientists and environmentalists (widely supported by scientists and governmental agencies), most claims and beliefs about the presence of so-called ‘alien big cats’ (henceforth big cats) in Britain are largely imagined fantasies, social constructions and media-driven hysterias (Buller 2004; 2009; Monbiot 2013).}} Supposed sightings made from a distance have been largely written off as domestic cats close to the subject being misidentified as a larger animal sited farther away,{{cite news |last1=Hambling |first1=David |title=It's a lion... no it's a cat |url=https://www.theguardian.com/science/2001/jul/19/highereducation.education |date=19 July 2001 |newspaper=The Guardian |access-date=3 September 2015}}{{Cite web |title=The mystery of Britain's alien big cats |url=https://theweek.com/articles/444317/mystery-britains-alien-big-cats |access-date=2023-07-04 |website=The Week |date=25 August 2014 |language=en}} with one folklorist considering such sightings of creatures to be little more than a "media artifact" driven by British journalistic practices in the 1970s and 1980s{{cite journal |last1=Goss |first1=Michael |date=1992 |title=Alien Big Cat Sightings in Britain: A Possible Rumour Legend? |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1260889.pdf |journal=Folklore |volume=103 |issue=2 |pages=184–202 |doi=10.1080/0015587X.1992.9715841 |jstor=1260889 |issn=0015-587X}} while another described it as the result of a situation where "media-generated interest encourages rumour, misinterpretation, and exaggeration".{{cite book |last1=Simpson |first1=Jacqueline |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iTcdvd1iRXsC&q=exmoor&pg=PT17 |title=A Dictionary of English Folklore |last2=Roud |first2=Stephen |date=2000 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-210019-1 |language=en}}

File:Felis silvestris silvestris Luc Viatour.jpg (Felis silvestris silvestris), the Scottish population of which is the only wild cat species known to live in Britain.]]

Reported sightings and attacks

= Folklore and historical stories =

A medieval Welsh poem Pa Gwr in the Black Book of Carmarthen mentions a Cath Palug, meaning "Palug's cat" or "clawing cat", which roamed Anglesey until slain by Cei. In the Welsh Triads, it was the offspring of the monstrous sow Henwen.{{cite web |title=Arthur and the Porter |url=http://www.maryjones.us/ctexts/bbc31.html |access-date=28 July 2009 |website=Celtic Literature Collective}}

The New Forest folktale of the Stratford Lyon tells of how John de Stratford pulled a giant, red, antlered lion from the ground at South Baddesley in the New Forest in the year 1400. The story is first recorded in the marginalia of an 18th-century bible. In the late 20th century, sightings of the lion were recorded in the vicinity of the Red Lion Pub, Boldre.{{Cite book|title=History of the Red Lion Boldre|publisher=Christopher Tower Reference Library|author=Lyndhurst|date=1989}}{{page needed|date=September 2021}}

William Cobbett recalled in his Rural Rides how, as a boy in the 1760s, he had seen a cat "as big as a middle-sized Spaniel dog" climb into a hollow elm tree in the grounds of the ruined Waverley Abbey near Farnham in Surrey. Later, in New Brunswick, he saw a "lucifee" (Canada lynx) "and it seemed to me to be just such a cat as I had seen at Waverley."{{cite book |last=Cobbett |first=William |title=Rural Rides |publisher=Penguin |year=2001 |isbn=978-0-14043-579-5 |location=London |page=204}}

= Contemporary claims =

Since the early 2000s, there have been several claims by individuals in different parts of the UK of having suffered attacks by supposed big cats, though to date there is no substantive evidence proving these were in fact attacks by a non-domestic species of cat. Such claims include that of an eleven-year-old boy in Monmouthshire,{{cite web |date=25 August 2000 |title=Police 'big cat' warning |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/895643.stm |access-date=2 June 2012 |work=BBC News}} a man in southeast London,{{cite web |date=22 March 2005 |title='Big cat' attacks man in garden |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4370893.stm |access-date=2 June 2012 |publisher=BBC News}}{{cite news |last=Davenport |first=Justin |date=22 March 2005 |title=Hunt for 'beast of Sydenham' |newspaper=Evening Standard |location=London |url=https://www.standard.co.uk/news/hunt-for-beast-of-sydenham-7249671.html |access-date=27 October 2020}} a 74-year-old woman in the Scottish Highlands,{{cite news |date=29 December 2008 |title=Expert tears into cat conspiracy |work=BBC News Online |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/highlands_and_islands/7802874.stm |access-date=28 March 2020}} and a man in Cornwall.{{cite news |date=18 January 2019 |title=Man swiped at by 'panther-like' big cat in Cornwall |work=itv.com |url=https://www.itv.com/news/westcountry/2019-01-18/man-swiped-at-by-panther-like-big-cat-in-cornwall/ |access-date=15 September 2019}}

Phantom big cats have also formed the basis of several local urban legends within the United Kingdom where unexplained animal deaths, typically livestock, would be blamed on such imagined creatures, such as the Beast of Bodmin Moor{{Cite web |title=HI-tech search for Beast of Bodmin |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/518673.stm |access-date=2023-06-16 |date=13 November 1999 | work=BBC News}} and the Cotswolds Big Cat.{{Cite news |last=Morris |first=Steven |date=2012-01-16 |title=Cotswolds big cat speculation mounts as second dead deer found |language=en-GB |work=The Guardian |url=https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jan/16/cotswolds-big-cat-deer-dead |access-date=2023-07-04 |issn=0261-3077}} The search for physical "evidence" to support these claims has typically been found to have far more ordinary and less sensational origins. In the case of the Beast of Bodmin, when a skull found in the River Fowey was presented to the Natural History Museum as proof of its existence, it was found to have been cut from a leopard skin rug,{{cite book |last1=Regal |first1=Brian |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=c6PACQAAQBAJ&pg=PA21 |title=Pseudoscience: A Critical Encyclopedia |date=2009 |publisher=ABC-CLIO |isbn=978-0-313-35508-0 |page=21 |language=en}} while in the case of the Cotswolds Big Cat, the only predator DNA that was found was of foxes.{{Cite news |title=No evidence for Cotswolds 'big cat' |language=en-GB |work=BBC News |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-16849307 |access-date=2023-06-16}}

==== Beast of Exmoor ====

One particular instance of note of this phenomenon is the "Beast of Exmoor" (sometimes referred to as the "Exmoor Beast"). While stories about the Beast of Exmoor originally surfaced in a similar fashion to other local "big cat stories", with sightings of the creature reported as early as 1970, the story came to national prominence in the United Kingdom in 1983 when a South Molton farmer named Eric Ley claimed to have lost over 100 sheep in the space of three months, all of them apparently killed by violent throat injuries.{{cite web |last1=Channing |first1=Iain |date=2016 |title=Post-PACE: Police and Policing in the South West Timeline |url=https://pearl.plymouth.ac.uk/handle/10026.1/14214 |publisher=University of Plymouth |page=3 |language=en}}[https://theweek.com/articles/444317/mystery-britains-alien-big-cats "The mystery of Britain's alien big cats", The Week, January 8, 2015] The claim that these livestock had been killed by a mysterious beast led to "nationwide interest", with the Daily Express offering a substantial financial reward for video footage of the creature, while the government took the unusual step of deploying a team of Royal Marine snipers to hunt down (and presumably kill) the creature.{{Cite web |title=Big cats in Britain: in pictures |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatpicturegalleries/9504485/Big-cats-in-Britain-in-pictures.html?frame=2321896 |access-date=2023-07-04 |website=www.telegraph.co.uk| date=4 September 2012 }}

Despite extensive media coverage and both professional and amateur hunting for the creature, which in one unfortunate case saw a cryptozoologist having to be rescued after spending two nights stuck in his own trap,{{cite book |last1=Monbiot |first1=George |title=Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life |date=2017 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |location=Chicago, IL |isbn=9780226325279 |page=54 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CC-OBAAAQBAJ&dq=%22beast+of+exmoor%22&pg=PA54}} no large cat has ever been positively identified to explain such incidents as the 1983 livestock slayings, with them now being attributed to other causes such as large dogs.{{cite book |last1=Eberhart |first1=George M. |title=Mysterious Creatures: A Guide to Cryptozoology |date=2002 |publisher=ABC-CLIO |location=Santa Barbara, CA |isbn=1576072835}} Despite the lack of evidence, the Beast of Exmoor persists to some extent in the public imagination; alleged sightings continue to be reported occasionally around Exmoor long after an escaped exotic pet (such as a leopard or puma) would have died,{{Cite web |title=Pumas and cougars guide: what's the difference between them, where do they live and what do they eat? |url=https://www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts/mammals/facts-about-cougars/ |access-date=2023-07-04 |website=Discover Wildlife |date=16 March 2022 |language=en}}{{Cite web |date=2021-04-15 |title=Leopard Fact Sheet {{!}} Blog {{!}} Nature |url=https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/blog/leopard-fact-sheet/ |access-date=2023-07-04 |website=Nature |language=en-US}} while one national newspaper reported a found carcass alleged to be the Beast of Exmoor that was later identified as a dead seal.{{cite book |last1=Monbiot |first1=George |title=Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life |date=2017 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |location=Chicago, IL |isbn=9780226325279 |page=56 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CC-OBAAAQBAJ&dq=%22beast+of+exmoor%22&pg=PA56}} Beyond these rumours regarding the creature itself, it has been posited by one journalist that the lasting legacy of the urban legend may be as a mythological base that real-life wildlife stories such as the Emperor of Exmoor can reference.{{cite journal |last1=Charles |first1=Alec |title=Deer departed: a study of the news coverage of the death of the Exmoor Emperor |journal=Journalism Education |date=2012 |volume=1 |issue=1 |page=56 |url=https://journalism-education.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/1-1-Deer-Departed.pdf }}

Proven captures and remains

File:Felicity Inverness Museum.JPG (Puma concolor) was captured in the wild, in Inverness-shire, Scotland, in 1980. It is believed to have been an abandoned pet. It lived the rest of its life in a zoo. After it died, it was stuffed and placed in Inverness Museum.]]

File:Hayling Island jungle cat.JPG (Felis chaus) killed by a car on Hayling Island ]]

A Canadian lynx shot in Devon in 1903 is now in the collection of the Bristol Museum. Analysis of its teeth suggests that prior to its death, it had spent a significant amount of time in captivity.{{cite news |last=Morelle |first=Rebecca |author-link=Rebecca Morelle |date=25 April 2013 |title='Big cat' Canadian lynx was on the loose in UK in 1903 |publisher=BBC News |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22263874 |access-date=30 April 2013}}

In 1980, a puma was captured in Inverness-shire, Scotland, and was subsequently put into the Highland Wildlife Park zoo, being given the name "Felicity". Zoo director Eddie Orbell concluded that the animal had been tamed and might not have been released for long, noting that it enjoyed being tickled.{{cite news |last=McAllister |first=Bill |title=Was it really a leopard that was spotted? |newspaper=The Inverness Courier |url=http://www.inverness-courier.co.uk/Opinion/Bill-McAllister/Was-it-really-a-leopard-that-was-spotted-06052011.htm |access-date=3 September 2015 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150924035808/http://www.inverness-courier.co.uk/Opinion/Bill-McAllister/Was-it-really-a-leopard-that-was-spotted-06052011.htm |archive-date=24 September 2015}}

On two separate occasions, jungle cats have been found dead after being hit by a car, with the most accepted theory being that these are individuals escaped from private ownership.{{cite news |last=Naish |first=Darren |date=17 March 2013 |title=Meeting the Hayling Island Jungle cat |work=Tetrapod Zoology |location= |url=https://tetzoo.com/blog/2022/3/23/meeting-the-hayling-island-jungle-cat |access-date=16 June 2023}}

In 1996, police in Fintona, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, shot a cat. It was reportedly a caracal, a medium-sized wildcat species found in Africa and Asia, although a police report described it as a lynx.{{cite web |title='Big cat' sightings (FOI request) |url=http://www.psni.police.uk/big_cat_sightings.pdf |website=Police Service of Northern Ireland |access-date=3 September 2015 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140403001742/http://www.psni.police.uk/big_cat_sightings.pdf |archive-date=3 April 2014}}

In a well-reported 2001 case ("the Beast of Barnet"), a young female Eurasian lynx was captured alive by police and vets in Cricklewood, North London, after a chase across school playing fields and into a block of flats. It was placed in London Zoo and given the name "Lara" before ultimately being transferred to a zoo in France to breed.{{cite news |last1=Hewett |first1=Chris |title=What became of the 'Beast of Barnet'? Times Series investigation reveals Cricklewood lynx Lara's legacy lives on |date=11 March 2014 |url=http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/news/11068162.What_became_of_the__Beast_of_Barnet___Times_Series_investigation_reveals_lynx_s_legacy_lives_on/ |website=This is Local London |access-date=19 January 2015}}{{cite news |first=Sean |last=O'Neill |date=9 May 2001 |title=The Beast of Cricklewood is caged |newspaper=The Daily Telegraph |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1329632/The-Beast-of-Cricklewood-is-caged.html |access-date=1 September 2010}} The captured lynx was found to be only 18 months old, although considerably larger than an average domestic cat.

In 2006, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has published a list of predatory cats typically kept as exotic pets that they know to have escaped in the United Kingdom, although most of these have been recaptured.{{cite web |title=Reports received by Defra of escapes of non-native cats in the U.K. 1975 to present day |url=http://www.defra.gov.uk/wildlife-countryside/vertebrates/reports/exotic-cat-escapes.pdf |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061210055808/http://www.defra.gov.uk/wildlife-countryside/vertebrates/reports/exotic-cat-escapes.pdf |archive-date=10 December 2006 |website=Department for Environment, Food, & Rural Affairs}}

On 9 January 2025 two lynx were captured after being sighted in the Drumguish area, near to Kingussie, Scotland. They were put in quarantine at Highland Wildlife Park with plans to transfer them to Edinburgh Zoo. The lynx are believed to have been illegally released, given their tameness and bedding was found in a nearby layby.{{Cite news |last=Brooks |first=Libby |date=2025-01-09 |title=Two lynx captured after being illegally released in Scottish Highlands |url=https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jan/09/two-lynx-captured-after-being-illegally-released-in-scottish-highlands |access-date=2025-01-10 |work=The Guardian |language=en-GB |issn=0261-3077}} The following day, two more lynx were spotted in the same area and believed to be linked to the first two.{{Cite web |date=2025-01-10 |title=Two more lynx spotted on loose in the Highlands |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz6pxdxe4j9o |access-date=2025-01-10 |website=BBC News |language=en-GB}}