The Mystery of Britain's Alien Big Cats
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- Опубликовано: 14 окт 2024
- There's every possibility that big cats have been seen and exist in the UK, the most famous of which is the Beast of Bodmin. Is it really possible for big cats to live in England? Let's explore the credibility of those claims.
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About the guy with the mini lion...my best friend used to have a pomeranian named Wolfgang, and she would occasionally get him groomed to where he looked like a mini-lion. Went with her once to walk him while he was thusly groomed, and the amount of double-takes we got from people was astounding 😂
I knew someone who did this to her cat. It was a bit unnerving, particularly as the groomer also left a little tuft at the end of the tail
Normal pets being mistaken for wild animals are definitely a thing. There's tons of "wolf sightings" where I live who just turn out to be huskies or norwegian elkhounds, and I can think of several other dog breeds (or large cat breeds) that could easily be mistaken for big cats (cane corso comes to mind...)
@@Mhidraum there’s a post of a woman holding a skinned “wolf” (it was clearly and huskie) and bragging about how she killed a wolf
@@Mhidraum- Without an object of known size right next to a distant animal, people can make mistakes estimating size and distance.
@@sarahwatts7152 Lion cuts on groomed cats is pretty common. We have one who enjoys it in the summer, though being the one who does the shave, his limbs aren't clipped nearly as far down as a professional, and I tend to leave at least half of his tail in a style more reminiscent of a unicorn (lmao).
There's an entertaining story from my local area around Nottingham in the UK about the brilliant laxness of exotic animal laws back in the day. The police had to order a pub to lock the doors and keep serving until 4am because a bear escaped from the scrap yard. Apparently the front desk of the police station was inundated with calls from angry wives asking why their husband was late home, absolutely wasted and talking about a bear
This is the absolutely most UK thing I've read today and I love it.
If the scrapyard owner was amongst the legal lock in crowd, I'd say his mates thought he was a legend for letting Boris loose just so they could all have a lock in.
A few months ago I found a large albino tarantula sitting under the radiator in my (UK) bedroom, about 2 or 3 feet from my head where I sleep. It most likely came from a local person who was known to use her home as an abandoned exotic-pet depository.
It scared the Bejeesus out of me. I'm afraid I gassed it with fly spray, which I regret a bit. I guess we all have our preferences. If it had been a snake I would have treated it like a fluffy bunny.
🤣🤣🤣🤣 love that lol
Where the women told to make some tea?🤣
I was doing some reading about Yellowstone and the book talked about what happened when they reintroduced wolves. I think they called it ‘the psychology of fear’. Left to their own devices deer will eat everything: grass, shrubs, low hanging branches, they’ll strip it all bare. But if they are aware that a large predator might be hiding in the underbrush they’ll change their habits to leave those areas alone, which creates habitat space for smaller animals which increases the biodiversity a given area can support. It’s true that humans have to be very careful around large predators, but when they’re missed from an ecosystem there’s an add-on affect.
i live in Montana and yes it helped the park but they used Alaskan grey wolves which are bigger and the park inst big enough for the wolves, their territory is big so with multiple wolf packs that causes them to leave the park which gets them killed because they kill livestock like they should have taken a different approach im tried of random shit fuckin with wild life laws or the wild life but doing what we do rn ist helping like the park is half closed because of flooding last year and it will flood this year most likely
Let the wolves eat livestock. Not like farms don't have a glut of animals. We do not need all the meat we process.
@radaro.9682
Though I agree, taking livestock affects a predators natural behavior hunting habits and exposes them human contact.
Neither is desirable for a predator.
@@damenwhelan3236 My point was to allow them to take whatever animals they want and NOT react to it, therefore eliminating the human contact risk. Whether it changes predation behaviors or not if a farmer wants to keep herds in wolf territory they owe the creatures since the farm takes up what would be hunting ground otherwise. The human is the intruder. Allow nature to react to us without retaliation is my point. If we are going to keep herds near predators we might as well accept lost animals as a tithe to nature. Changing behavior is expected when the environment changes. Animals that don't change don't adapt. And the risk from human contact is we react with violence. That's the issue. Our violence. Not the predation of wolves.
Thats ridiculous. That's like saying give up X amount of your money every month. No one's doing that. Not to mention wolves we're reintroduced into the area. They hadn't been there for a very very long time. Then someone decided they should bring them back. It's not the ranchers fault and it's not the wolves fault. It's the idiots that thought they should bring them back.
Big Cats can travel thousands of miles here in the US. A mountain lion shot in Chicago about a decade ago was traced back a population in Montana. One was spotted in Springfield, IL a few days ago.
This would explain the distances in the UK that they are seen. The UK is pretty small compared to the range these animals can travel. The UK is also pretty densely populated, so it would explain the high number of sightings.
While you are right about pumas traveling (particularly adolescents), the midwest has its own resident population of pumas. The DNR just tried to hide it from city people for decades by quoting this excuse. It's a standing "don't ask don't tell' situation among wildlife officers, and when a puma turns up hit by a truck or whatever, they just take a report and stuff it in a file cabinet without alerting any media etc.
There are small breeding populations as near to Chicago as the southern Wisconsin coast and Danville and Springfield Illinois. Before the suburbs got so crowded, they were as near as the Fox River valley in the 1970's. In the 1990's there were a known pair in Champaign county near the U of I.
The game and fish commission used to swear up and down that we didn't have mountain lions here in Arkansas, despite being well within the range of places that they definitely live. We had one on our property when I was growing up. Iirc it's been just recently that officials admitted that there are probably mountain lions around here. Those of us who spend a lot of time in the wilderness already knew...
There's mountain lions in Ontario Canada....
As an American, I can safely say that I've DEFINITELY heard about British Big Cats many times before. Further proof that Simon was actually raised in complete isolation in a research lab, created for the sole purpose of being an Internet factboi 😂
My absolute favorite drinking game is "what random common knowledge is Simon completely unfamiliar with today?" My favorite was definitely hello kitty.
And tho I feel kinda bad being amused by the knowledge gaps of a guy who was raised in an insane religious cult, it is an incredibly reliable way to get drunk lol
@@micahfoley9572 Is the religious cult thing a joke? I had never heard that before. It sounds probable but it also sounds like a joke I am not getting because I am dumb. If I am dumb go ahead and roast me
@@sagathestoryteller7920 it is, I heard him mention it in one of the DtU episodes. Can't remember which one, but i think it was one of the big impenetrable ones, like LDS or JW or something? Don't quote me tho.
And I would never roast you for asking an honest question. I find it quite admirable. :)
@@micahfoley9572 Thank you very much! I just know how some people can be when a joke is taken seriously. I think I have been waiting to watch those cause I watch a lot of the DtU episodes at work
@@sagathestoryteller7920 I totally do the same thing. It's such a great place to store your mind while your body is occupied with a mundane task.
I once had a woman tell me she witnessed a blue squirrel in the trees outside and she wanted me to go look. I ridiculed her, refused to look and told her she was crazy. A week later my Grandma tells me about how my grandfather had been catching and releasing squirrels and painting them different colors with spray paint so he could determine if they were finding their way back. I never told the woman. Sometimes crazy stories are true!
hahaha!
Bro… please say sike 😂😂😂😂😂
When I was a kid, I found some florescent spray paint in the shed, so naturally, I flipped rocks and gave anything underneath a blast of bright green, yellow or pink paint. A few days later, my mate next door, told me there was a 'poisonous pink' spider in his bedroom. I told him he was crazy, but I knew the truth! 🤣
Gas lit that woman like a stove
@@richardtherichard26 it's not "sike." It's "psyche." Like "psyche out." Which means messing with someone's mind. Why don't people understand that? Fucking "sike" isn't a word!
My favorite "Big Cat" sighting in the UK was the one in Oldham where it turned out to be a life-size stuffed tiger that someone had left, but they only realized after surrounding it with armed police. This apparently happens quite regularly.
I’ve posted that 🤣🤣🤣
Im from Oldham 😂 when was this ?
I grew up in Wales, when in school we had multiple sightings of a big cat which eventually caused the army to be stationed in nearby fields and a search helicopter fly over to look for it. I’d also have dismissed it as hearsay but a number of mutilated sheep turned up in fields and it caused enough concern for the military to take it seriously. The theory about the dangerous animals act holds up quite well- there were a number of manor houses in my area and owning exotic big cats was very popular among the upper classes through the 60’s and 70’s. It’s widely speculated that they were released into the wild when the dangerous animals act came into force. I can’t say I’ve ever seen one myself, but I can attest to the fact that the sightings are taken seriously and as the numerous cats that have turned up (escapees from illegal breeders or otherwise) show, that’s probably not a bad thing.
If they had of seen it and their marksmen shot and killed it, we'd never know.
I think I need to put it this way, Simon. I worked for an Ornithologist. One of the stories he told me was of a farmer who wandered into a Forest Service office and got into an argument with a scientist about the Ivory Billed Woodpecker. The scientist told him he couldn't possibly have seen one because they were extinct. The next week the farmer came in with dead one in a garbage bag. If you saw how wild pumas act over here in neighborhoods, you might be a bit more open minded.
I love watching Simon being slightly annoyed at every hint of something paranormal or non-sensical, it's the sole reason I watch this show, love it.
As he always debunks them,me too!
Congratulations
This is exactly why this is my favorite of Simon's channels
How to get on Simon's bad side: mention Aliens.
How to get on Simon's good side: mention Cocaine. Allegedly.
yet he still propagates the nonsensical fear for wolves among his listeners... He should do a bit more background checking before making such an ignorant statement.
The big cat sightings were much more of a thing in the late 80s to mid 90s. A popular theory was that they were exotic pets who had escaped or perhaps been released due to the owners becoming bored or unable to handle them. It’s possible that Simon never heard of them because I recall him saying he was born in the late 80s. The TV news reports and feature documentaries on the cats stopped in the mid 90s due to a concentrated search on Bodmin moor which turned up empty. Some kids pranked the authorities with a skull from a tiger skin rug, then the interest seemed to drop off. By the time Simon would have been old enough to hear about things on the news and remember it, the reports would have stopped.
They are still reported, just mostly in local papers. Chester had a sighting a couple of months ago as did Cabridge. No one really cares on a scale large enough to justify national news picking it up, but it averages about 2000 reported sightings per year nation wide. (And that's reported sightings that can't be explained as anything else such as a large dog or optical illusion.)
I remember those sightings and jokes then.
In that case, I think Simon was lucky he wasn't eaten by an alien cat.
Having said that, I'm about the same age as Simon and remember these reports. Regional news (Meridian) still carried them for a while afterwards so I guess it depends where people lived. They had all wound up by the 00s though.
Were they escaped/released big cats following Thatcher making it the owners responsibility to find a zoo to move their exotic animals to or they be put down, this would make sense as the last of the cats would have died from old age by then.
I heard a story from a traveller that when the dangerous animal law was brought in, he was hired to drive a lorry up to the Highlands from somewhere down south and release the animals in the cages within somewhere remote. So up Glenurquhart (near where Felicity the puma was apparently found) he let them go. Apparently they included a few pumas, black panthers, lynx and a tiger.
The amount of times in this episode that Simon is saying one thing while the pictures are saying he is completely wrong is hilarious.
I live in Yorkshire and there is a couple that when spoken to will openly admit releasing their big cat into the wild once it became illegal to keep them. While I agree there isn't a breeding program out there, i definitely think that there are a couple still out there.
It was very thrilling as a kid walking home through the woods with your friends, worrying about the leopard coming to kill us. 🤣
So why do you think there are any out there, if they aren't breeding? They must be breeding!
That couple must be well old if they had a leopard 50 years ago
@@BezoomyKoshka-ip4dz oh god! 70 year olds! 😂
Sad to think how many people seem to have forgotten your excellent folk traditions about the Black Dog, who is a Faerie creature of course, but does haunt the Moors - along with Cathy and Heathcliffe of course!
old comment but exactly!! just did a letterpress project last fall regarding the Church Grim, and how some people like to call Laika (first dog in space) the Church Grim of space for humanity in space, even if she isn't a big shaggy black dog, like a lot of Church Grims are said to be. It's fascinating to learn about that sort of history, rather than christian/catholic/protestant/whateverthefuck stuff and colonization and whatever
Yes indeed! 🙂👍
@@thederpypikachu9873"The Church Grim of space." Basically because they sacrificed her. 😏 Poor Laika.
Heathcliffe was a knobend.
9:30 Cecil was kinda like the mascot of the reserve or something of that nature. The lion was an icon so when they killed him it was a big deal. It wasn't that the dentist killed a lion- it was that he killed THAT lion
They had to lure the Lion out of a wildlife preserve with carcasses! Definitely not cricket! 😏
I know a few very level headed, skeptical people who SWEAR they have seen a "big cat" while out in the Peak District. It's also "common knowledge" in Derbyshire that there was a big cat collector who before she passed away, released several of her collection into the wild. When she passed away and the relevant services came to collect the animals, many weren't there, missing documents, wrong documents etc etc There was also a very well known local pet shop that was infamous for selling exotic animals. I remember distinctly going into said pet shop and seeing crocodiles, chips, leopard cubs and at one point they had a bonified LION cub. I remember going in as a teen and the owner was casually bottle feeding the lion cub while sat by the cash register. There was a lady who lived close to me who would walk a WOLF around on a lead.... If there's a loop hole in the law, people will always find a way to exploit it.
As for what they're eating; badgers, foxes, Hedgehogs, deer. etc etc. Badgers are pretty large! And you'd likely be unbothered seeing a dead badger or deer. 🤷♀️
I certainly think there are SOME loose ex-pet big cats in the UK. I breed and rescue African pygmy Hedgehogs and the sheer amount I get in that wild Hedgehog rescues find, thinking they're UK Hedgehogs before realising they're actually Pygmy hedgehogs that shitty owners have released rather than rehome or take to the vet. The same goes for the Lesser and common Hedgehog Tenrec, they've been found loose in the UK countryside and due to their ability to Torpor they just go to sleep over winter, our climate is great for them.
Hi there, I know a bloke, didn't believe in 'supernatural stuff' but told me this in the mid 90's. He was driving home at dusk (not dark enough for headlights though so good visibility) with his son and a large black cat jumped into the road ahead of him and then crossed the road and went through the hedge into the opposite field. He said it was over a metre long, large head, sturdy body, long thick tail, typical puma. This was between Welshpool and Llanymynech in mid Wales. He seemed really shocked and after talking a couple of locals, a few local farm workers had seen it too.
I live next to the Peaks and just really, I couldn't see it. The Peaks are absolutely tiny by geographic standards, absolutely teeming with people and farms and big cats like leopards have hunting ranges over hundreds of kilometers. There is no way a Big Cat would survive in the peaks for long without a big encounter with hikers/people and the peaks would be littered with clearly big cat killed agricultural animals.
Something I learned quickly about the UK moving here, is British people don't understand how truly tiny this country is compared to the ranges and homes of these animals (Asia/Africa), or how big these animals actually are. Something else is that Feral Cats can get massive, we're talking 20kg, 2-3 feet+ in length.
Every photo I've seen of a "big cat" in the UK has definitely been a large feral cat.
That said, there has absolutely been escapees of big cats (I def remember stories of escaped lynx) and other exotic animals, but they're generally caught pretty quick.
If you want fun exotic animals that actually do have breeding populations in the UK, Tanuki and Wallabies.
Skirting the law is the reason things like the F1 Savannah exist. Had to resort to artificial insemination in order to breed a house cat with a wild cat the offspring of such was half wildcat and half registered breed with paperwork. Then they kept breathing the offspring with the wildcats until they were almost entirely wild cat again but because at one point they were registered domestic cats these 99% wildcats are perfectly legal here in America at least.
Yes, he hasn't done his research, they're a reality, released from people who bought them as pets then couldn't handle them or released them when the law for keeping dangerous animals changed in the 80's. There's plenty of footage on RUclips of them and even footage of one recently hit by a car in Scotland. Likewise, I know a shepherd who chased one off his land in North Yorkshire, nit the kind of guy to tell porkies or mistake a house cat or labrador for a puma - an old, sharp, honest as they cone farmer. I've personally seen a Lynx on Ilkley moor too, 10 yards in front of my car, as I was setting off after a walk, in broad daylight, it was unmistakable due to the long tufts on its ears, like nothing I've seen before or since.
The mistake here is placing them as a folkloric occurance, there's nothing folkloric about animals released into the wild. Cats are extremely sneaky and, even if big, a black cat walking down a hedge-back or traversing its territory using woodland bordering streams will be virtually undetectable. Out on the moors - millions of acres and almost no-one looking - unless you stumbled right over it you'd never see them - most people don't even look up from their phones today and wouldn't notice an elephant walking across the landscape.
Bit irritating this as its approached as some kind of weird mystery when it's not remotely mysterious - just a fact of modern life - silly people want pets that they can't handle - they end up as strays... and big cats live 30-40 years.
@@KironVB Ranges of cats on the Savannah are going to be exponentially larger than a big cat released from being a pet that got too big and is then surrounded by unguarded livestock... which is what this is - that animal's behaviour will be different. If farms weren't guarded and fenced off against cats in those places the cats would loiter around where the food is - they travel for a reason - hunting - if they have game nearby, they will eat it.
I know the peaks and would say you're over-estimating your eyesight r.e spotting an animal that doesn't want to be seen - a black cat prowling down the back of a hedge or wall is going to be VERY hard to spot unless you are actively looking for it - they are built to avoid being seen, they move slow and smooth so as not to catch the eye. Likewise, streams bordered by woodland make easy corridors which are generally unpopulated and only rarely observed. If it was to stray close to a footpath of habited area (it happens, they are seen often by reputable sources - one was hit by a car in Scotland recently, there's proof online) it will hear you first and hide itself. Would you notice a black cat standing still in long grass or undergrowth? - not unless you look right at it and are expecting to see it, I'm sure of that, you don't see what you don't expect to see and a black cat behind some brush in Britain may as well be invisible.
I live in Portland, Oregon, and here in the Pacific Northwest, we do have big cats. We call them mountain lions or cougars. They're BIG. Light brown/blonde, heavily muscled with thick tails. Human encroachment on their territory forces them into town, and forest fires (a particular problem in the last few years) have them and other wildlife wandering into our back yards. A couple of years ago, in Springfield, Oregon, a cougar wandered into downtown, and crashed a kid's birthday party. The partiers all ran into the house, the cat ate the cake and punch and wandered off again. The Dept of Fish and Wildlife eventually found it, and put it down. I heard about it because my granddaughters live about 2 blocks away from where the party was held, and they were freaked out and wouldn't play outside for weeks. We've had big cats in suburban areas here- they keep a pretty close eye out for them. Once they start eating pets, F&W hunts them down- It's not far from Spot to Timmy, and they don't take risks. We also have raccoons and coyotes here in the middle of town. We once had a bear cub wander in and climb a tree at a bus stop. IIRC, they darted him and released him in the woods.
I used to live in Seattle, and my front yard had a lot of bushes and trees in it. My dog would go crazy every now and then, and I thought it was because of the raccoons. It turns out that there was a cougar in my yard, and it had to be tranquilized and relocated. It was tagged, and it kept coming back into town, so they had to keep moving it farther and farther away from the city. When my parents lived in Grants Pass, OR they had a bobcat who gave birth under the front porch. Everyone had to used the back door until the cats moved on, because mama was super protective!
Here in West Virginia we have a few black panthers. A lot of people call them mountain lions also. I'm surprised there's enough of them to keep up the population. I've never seen one myself, but a co-worker had one on video out on a reclaimed surface mine site.
I live in Washington state and have been fortunate to see a cougar and bobcat in the wild. They're super elusive and I'm sure each encounter was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. How cool to have a cougar crash your party?
@@AllTheHappySquirrels Ummm, I don’t think that would be *EVEN REMOTELY COOL* to have a cougar crash my child’s birthday party. Would it be a cool story to tell afterwards, if everyone survived? Absolutely! I don’t think there is a single person on this earth who has had a cougar crash a birthday party who was thrilled with the experience, though.
@@jacobnorth4772 well, yeah, assuming everyone survived. But I could just be a weirdo who would fondly remember my brother who got eaten by the cougar at my birthday party. 😄
I moved from London to an area halfway between Exeter and Plymouth (Mitcham on sea) on the boarder of Dartmoor. I believe the village is twinned with Royston Vasey. I had been warned of some big cats in the area. And there's a lot of cats here. And some of them are f-ing massive, and they are clearly domestic cats, but certainly not bigger than a main coon cat.
Anyway I took my dog (pictured on my profile pic) for a walk at night. And here when there's no light pollution or a moon. There's points when you can't see your own hand in front of your face. My dog was not fazed by much, and was very ballsy. So pitch black, around 11;30 pm walking along a path (near where the inspiration for the main character in hound of the Baskervilles is buried ) in pitch black, my nerves are going mental, but I'm ok I got my dog, with her light up collar..... she will take care of anything that comes. Right?....... Nope. I had walked 20 odd metres past the gate. She refused to move. I call her. Nope. Again. Nope. And again. Nope.
I walk back to get her, (she never disobeyed me, so something is not quite right). I get to her. Tell her to heel. She did for about ten paces. Stopped, sat and refused to move and go any further. Ok if she is spooked, now so am I. We turn to head back, and she went back to her normal obedient self.
Do I believe there's big cats on the moor? I don't disbelieve it. Have I seen one? No. Could one survive there? Yes.
The fact that my dog got freaked out, is possibly my biggest hint there is. As I said my dog was ballsy. A couple of times I had to recall her from going after badgers on Wimbledon common. She wasn't a dog to back down.
I've been binging these videos. These are the sorts of stories I've always been fascinated by. I'm so glad you have this channel and such great writers for it
I thought I saw one at the treeline once, in a "why's that labrador moving like a collie" way, wrote it off as mistaken identity, then a week later my dad found half a dead sheep up a tree. 🤷♀
Labradors & collies ain’t cats!
@@Russia-bullies the one time I saw a mountain lion in the wild my mind first identified it as a tall, lanky dog like a Great Dane - but then the disproportionate hind legs forced me to admit what I was actually seeing. I gasped and it immediately took off down slope and was quickly out of sight.
@@Russia-bullies Course not, but it was a large sleek black animal moving low to the ground in a stalking behaviour. If you've seen working collies herding sheep, the movement is similar to cats hunting. That was the start point of the sequence of thoughts that led to 'panther??' and then I dismissed it coz I was driving.
@@Russia-bullies thank you for sharing your knowledge, who would've thought?
Captain Obvious doing his work smfh
"up a tree"!! That's 'big cat' behavior, all right! My cats routinely hunt, and they've *never* taken anything up any of the trees here. They just leave the remains laying around!😱😶
There are definitely big cat sightings in Australia. They are either related to stories of escaped panthers from small zoos, or just colonies of giant sized feral cats. And yes, there are definitely some giant sized ferals here, I have a pet who's a rescue from one of these colonies, and he's twice the size of a usual cat (not over weight). There are 100% cats bigger than my Louis out there too.
my cat is a big feral too! found him in the bush in an area with a fair few "big cat" sightings.
@@decorticate I found my Louis as an under sized, underweight kitten of approximately 3 weeks old. He was in a garden area not far from a national park area with a sizable feral cat problem. I'd heard the cats were big, but I didn't think I'd end up with a cat larger than some terriers. 🤣
Our big cats are eaten by Drop Bears....
Hence where the Penrith Panthers got their name.
There's so many rabbits now, there's no way big cats wouldn't thrive.
Of course that's just replacing your ecosystem instead of protecting it, but I suppose it's better to have a working ecosystem than an entirely rabbit based one.
I can say that there certainly was at least one big cat in Britain about 30 years ago, because I saw it with my own eyes.
Family holiday in Wales, my dad was driving, my mum and I were on the passenger side. There was a break in the trees and we looked down the slope on our left hand side. There was a couple of seconds silence and both my mum and I shouted "Did you see THAT?"
We had both seen it, clearly and unmistakably. It was a puma stalking up towards a sheep from behind a large rock. It was about the same length as the sheep, tawny colour and a black tip to the tail. There is no chance whatsoever that this was just a normal cat. Unfortunately we were unable to find anywhere to stop safely and look back.
I fully understand that some will believe this and others will not and will say we were mistaken, imagining things etc. I'm sorry to say that I have no evidence whatsoever to prove my story, but I will swear on whatever you want me to swear on and I would take a lie detector test (which would be useless if I truly believed I saw one, naturally...). I know scientific method and I know that my story is not admissible evidence. I fully accept that many of you will be justifiably sceptical and that's frustrating, but fine. I would be willing to question my sighting more if my mum had not seen it too. You are welcome to your doubts, but I have none at all. We really DO know what we saw that day.
Big cat, or midget sheep 🤔
I believe you, there was a lot of animals being abandoned in the hills after the law was changed.
I grew up near Edinburgh and it was pretty much accepted and local knowledge there were 1 or 2 Pumas or similar in the Pentlands. I’m sure the old veterans from the local barracks will have a story to tell as they were up there training all the time.
There is a guy in Edinburgh who was still walking his commodo dragon through the town a few years ago, I don’t know if he still does 😂
Many of them. Diferend types .. around Luton, Dunstable, st Albans, Harpenden, Ivinghoe, Prince Rughsborough..also in Kent and Surrey. I know what i seen. I know very good wild life, animals etc some i seen even from 5 metres or in the midle of day on empty muddy field. I know location where going to hide for sleeping and i seen hunt on patagonian mara . But this stupid ram will say they also not exist in England...
..and another think..what with DNA test ? 99.9% not enough ??
I own a pedigree Maincoon. She escaped from her carrycase one day on the way to the vets. The short version after posters and social media she ended up living in the local woods for just over one year before happily being found. Not a big cat but still bigger than most of the other wildlife.
I love those cats. They're gorgeous and have really genial dispositions.
I had a non pedigree one that weighed 28 lbs! They get huge. And it was vicious to anybody but me too 😂 my guard cat.
Hey, Simon, you should do the Jersey Devil. Lots of weird 19th century legends and folklore to debunk.
Being from New Jersey I am impressed with how as a state we all know our cryptid is fake and yet we made him a worshipped sports mascot just in case we're wrong.
A lot of people use the "Where are the remains," thing. But I live in an area where there are coyotes everywhere, like hanging out on your patio checking out your new Ring doorbell cam, even, and I've never seen there remains in the woods where I take my dog walking. I mean, he would find them. So that doesn't actually mean they don't exist, it means they're sneaky.
My husband and I joke that squirrels are immortal. I've never seen a dead squirrel that wasn't hit by a car. There are thousands of squirrels in my neighborhood alone. Source: my dogs inform me every time they see one. If someone asked me, do you have any proof, have you ever seen a dead squirrel? I'd be able to honestly say I haven't.
@@bboops23 I absolutely agree with you and the original commenter. My yard is FULL of rabits. Everytime I go out to mow I have to take a stick and walked pop].around my yard poking the ground looking for rabbit nest. On average there are 3 or 4 nests. The adults are always running all over. In the three years I've lived here, not once have I gotten home from work and there wasn't a rabbit or two in my driveway. Younger ones like to live under my porch steps and eat the weeds in my garden, they like clover apparently.
Not once have I ever found a dead one though. ]
On my parents property there was a fox some years ago living in a pile of tree branches and other tree pieces, only know this because the dogs would bark at it and we’d look and see it walking the hundred or so feet from the tree line to the pile; never investigated the pile out of respect to it but it probably moved elsewhere because of the dogs.
I love that this was recorded months ago probably - but 2 weeks before it was released;- there was a HD video of a Panther feasting on a sheep in the middle of the Derbyshire Dales :D
It's a cow looking forward
Was there an exotic animal collector in your area?
@Rikmos well, there are more tigers in the US state of Texas than the amount of their wild population, worldwide-so I wouldn’t call it too big of a stretch for there to have been a secret UK Joe Exotic who had a kitty run away. Ah, America
"The Australians wouldn't need to make up stories about imaginary deadly species" - some guy who's never heard of a Drop Bear.
I'm from NZ I've heard a lot about this. I remember a UK town about 15 years ago had about 150 sightings (or something like that, it was a decent number, worth taking seriously) of a lion in one day. I watched the it on the news and I'm pretty sure they saw a lion, just about the whole town rang the police.
This was a really fun episode and, as always, I'm super impressed by the thoroughness of Ilze's document research.
I remember this story in the news being reported as an escaped zoo animal, and it seemed feasible to me as someone from a Surrey town with a sizeable population of wild parakeets descended from escaped pets…
And the Surrey Puma...
I live in the upper peninsula of Michigan. And the "authorities" have said there are no big cats up here for over 100 years. And after hundreds of sightings and a few pictures they still said there are no big cats. Then a few years ago a guy shot one and called the local paper. Now they admit there are big cats here.
Probably Western Mountain Lions moving in because there aren't any wolves to compete with outside of Isle Royale.
More likely a meth heads “pet” that got away. I knew a couple morons that had mountain lions in the 90’s and they would get off the wire lead from time to time and disappear for a few days only to return with a carcass. Every now and then someone will see one and refuel the debate if they are wild or not. With what I know I’m betting they are not wild around my area.
Also in the UP - there's tons of trail cam footage of mountain lions and Ojibwe have had stories of them for a very long time.
We're also talking about the same DNR offices that said we don't have moose, either.
That’s what they keep saying in New York too, but there are occasional sightings, mostly in the mountains. A decade or so ago, my grandma swore she saw a mountain lion near the house on the family farm. No one believed her until she convinced my uncle to go check the area and he found giant paw prints…
It’s the same here in Maine, people will claim that they saw cougars but the authorities dismiss their claims as mistaking another creature as a cougar.
I believe more recently they have admitted to the possibility that there are cougars in Maine.
Super well known UK phenomenon, I'm surprised this is the first Simon heard of it.
You must be new to the WhistlerVerse 😂
I promise, you're in for much more!
I’m from the uk and I’ve never heard of them either…
Edit: I’m from Leeds, right next to the moors…
Loved the "Snatch" reference 😂😂 cheers to your editor 👌🏾😂 "Boris? What'you doin'ere?"
Around 1940s rich Brits were buying big cats from explorers, 1960s they were made illegal, nobody put anything in place to rehome the cats, so people just released them.
It’s seemingly getting more commonplace whereby farmers are finding animals that have been eaten by something bigger than any animal we have in the UK, so sheep have been found eaten in tree tops. I think a dead big cat cub was found recently too. So it’s looking more like there are actually big cats in the Uk
A interesting video. I've heard about the UK 'Big Cats'. My opinion has shifted from 'no' to 'possible'. 😺
For anyone visiting the USofA: No matter where you are, there is the possibility that we have a critter that could eat you! Black bears, grizzly bears, alligators, wolves, and cougars (aka mountain lions/panther/puma) are out there. Had several cougars and a black bear spotted this spring in my area. Police even killed one cougar that started to stalk them.
PS - don't mess with moose or the north american bison (aka buffalo) either.
Yuuuuup. The wolves are actually far less dangerous than a moose or buffalo, and big cats are BAD news. Happy we have em, but I had a Great Dane as a kid entirely because there was a huge male mountain lion and several females who shared a territory with him where I grew up. We also had black bears. The wolves are super unlikely to attack though - just don’t be a dick and they’ll leave you alone. Bison and moose can be testy though - don’t ever approach them. There are videos of people’s cars getting knocked into or people being impaled.
I actually had a cat that was a cross between a bobcat and a house cat...he was huge...The veterinarian absolutely loved him. he was thick he had a head like a softball, but he was such a big baby. 😺
Had a friend with a pet bobcat ....................
I wanna meet the parents
Simon: everyone who thinks they’ve seen a big cat is imagining things
Also Simon: I once saw a guy walking a lion.
🤣
Yes. Australia does have big cat stories. It was on the news a few months ago.
We also have *sightings* of the extinct Tasmanian Tiger. Sometimes even in mainland Australia.
My local Herts Natural History Society did actually report annual sightings of possible big cats. I have at least one volume of their annual reports from the Recorders for each wildlife class that had a chapter on big cat sightings. This was at a time before many people had mobile phones or internet access though. There was also a big cat rescue charity in the area too. I never doubted that there were spoilt rich kids out there in the commuter veldt who would let their latest fad pets go 'free' when they got fed up with looking after them.
I can also vouch for the fact that to the human pyche, out for a country jog at night in the lanes, a deer in the rutting season sounds exactly like a lion, and greatly improves one's circuit time! :)
The origin story to the cats I heard was they were escaped from zoos/private collections during the Blitz in WWII, I think? But yea the MaineCoon is massive, I’ve had three and I had the landlord called on me multiple times for housing “illegal big cats” because some people can’t tell the difference between a domestic cat and a lynx/bobcat apparently
Wouldn't people move these precious animals to some country etstate to protect them from the bombing of cities? Also the winters during the wars were incredibly cold. Could an exotic wildcat escape in 1940 and actually survive three winters with temperatures reaching as low as -25 degrees or more?
This I can believe. I once read that there are more tigers being held in zoos/private collectoins in the state of texas than are alive in the wild. I wouldn't doubt some of these sightings are of people's illegally owned pets. The owners aren't reporting them missing because owning one in the first place is illegal
I think Simon's appreciation for nature from a very safe distance preferably indoors is showing a bit here. It's perfectly reasonable for a population (let's say around the 80's, when many exotic cats could have been released) to sustain itself for multiple generations without actually founding itself as a species long-term. Big cats are very solitary (besides lions) and are not as fierce as they're made out to be no matter how capable they are. I grew up in a place where deer and mountain lions are abundant. Deer are just rats with hooves, and that goes for reproduction as well. Nothing about a small cat population would make a big dent in their population. Also, mountain lions (pumas) are unbelievably hard to see. My whole life was spent out in the forests, and I saw 3 in person briefly in the wild over those 20 years before they promptly got spooked and ran off. However, in my area, if you are out for just 40 minutes, statistically at least one mountain lion has spotted you, you just never saw or heard it. Mountain lion spottings and attacks are quite rare, and the most common attacks are lone bikers because their speed and hunched position make them look like prey. Otherwise, they're quite bothered by people and will go out of their way to avoid coming near you even if that means passing up food. I think the best evidence that there are NOT big cats in Britain would be no one reporting women screaming bloody murder at night (their mating call really sounds like a woman screaming) and a lack of tracks, as tracks are a lot more abundant than an abandoned kill, attack or dead body would ever be.
I agree, he feels like he's straining against the idea and the scepticism is palpable. I don't think anyone was claiming we had our own species of big cat here for example but he kept bringing that up as if it disproved the whole thing.
Agreed, this guy is clueless.
Australia definitely does have big cat myths. The Blue Mountains Panther being one of them. Escaped from a private zoo or circus are the usual origin stories for such tails in Australia.
There is also the "Kenthurst Panther" myth around the Kenthurst, Dural and Galston Gorge areas on the southern side of the Hawkesbury River. It has a lot of commonalities with the Penrith Panther myth.
As an aside, Australia has has a huge feral cat problem. These are the descendents of domesticated cats that have escaped their homes and resulted in cats that are 4 to 5 times the size of domesticated cats. It is believed that these are the actual inspiration of the 'panther' myths.
I was going to comment about the Lithgow Panther! I’m sure there was even a high profile sighting a couple of years ago… or a Buzzfeed article.
The Gippsland phantom cat in Victoria.
Supposedly one or more cougars that were mascots of WW2 US servicemen, who released them into the wild while stationed here.
*tale
@@isabellrose yeah I realised as soon as I hit post. But I didn't bother editing it.
If I'm remembering right, there was a couple escapees from Zoo's that are still on the loose now. They were never found. There's been no attacks to people but I haven't seen anything to say they were ever found. So yes. There is most definitely big cats on the loose in the UK. I think 1 was a panther and the other was another black cat
"for the rest of this tale we'll be using the word allegedly"
Simon: my favorite word? I'm down. Wait what why
😂
Simon, the case of Cecil the Lion was most definitely NOT like the black rhino. Cecil was a good natured and much loved by all the employees lion, who was illegally lured out of the sanctuary by ppl claiming to arrange legal big game hunter trip, Cecil was drugged to be a sitting duck, then killed by a US dentist, who still needed several shots with his crossbow, still couldnt finish off Cecil, so the "guides" (read: criminals) had to finally shoot Cecil and put him out of the excruciating pain.
Cecil was a threat to no1, and his murder was very much that - a murder deliberately purpetrated for huge profit, that took days for them to set up to find him alone and lure him away and drug him.
There's multiple different sources that show that the guy had legal hunting permit for a lion. I've also not seen anything that even remotely references the lion being drugged. Lions aren't an endangered species so they wouldnt fall under the same restrictions as the black rhino, and just because an animal isn't a threat doesn't mean you shouldn't hunt them. Deer are killed all the time and pose almost no threat to anyone
Deer gore people, stomp em out. Jump off bridges onto people n cars, jump in front of cars. Saw my cousin get knocked out by a deer.
Dude deer very rarely intentionally attack people or even gore them. And vehicle hitting deer is basically down to over population and them just not necessarily knowing what vehicles are
I regularly catch and kill stray cats for fun
Am I a murderer?
Yeah most people don't realize how hard a deer can punch before it's too late.
I'm from Australia and I've heard of this! Simon just proving how sheltered he is again 😂
I’m South African and I’ve heard of this too 😂
Not to mention the black panthers roaming the Blue Mountains. Knowing people who swear they’ve see them. Seems to be everything Simon thinks is fake, ends up being real.
‘If the space cats come, they’re gonna be so advanced.’
I assume Simon has never watched red dwarf. 😁
😂👋👋
Aw smeg....
They will be advanced, in clothing! Smeg...
Ah that was awesome!
I’ve seen one in north east Essex. My friend on a local farm has a paw cast for the mud outside their house.
I've definitely seen a big cat in broad daylight! Back in July 2001 my friends and I were camping down in and around Cornwall & Devon. We were staying at a campsite near Redruth, we left to head to Newquay around 9.30am, and whilst driving down a dirt track from the campsite we came face to face with a big cat that was as long as our car was wide, tanned in colour with prominent tufted ears, it looked like a Lynx of some sorts...in our stunned amazement we completely forgot about the Porsche designs Konica camera sat on the dashboard until the cat suddenly hurdled over the 7 foot high hedge and disappeared into a field towards some woods. We were all stone cold sober and my 2 friends sceptics to say the least but we all know what we saw 22 years ago, and to this day no one will persuade us we were mistaken, not even you Mr Whistler
Did you get a chance to pet it and stroke behind it's ears?
I love how Simon goes from “no cats are there” to “there’s only a few” to “well, they’d neuter them, right” to “well, they exist, but only escapees”. Poor factboi will never be able to go camping again.
He lives in the Czech Republic. Why would he be camping in England?
@@richardtherichard26 whats funny is there are definitly loose cats in the czech rep, where as in the uk its still very questionable if theres any out there at the moment lol
@@jessgunn6639 last sighting was 2021
@@johnr797 a possible sighting isn`t a definite animal, where as they actually catch them in the czech rep.
@@jessgunn6639 yeah that's fair they're sighted more than they're captured. I was just commenting on your comment.
I have myself seen one of the "great black cats." Back in the late 90s, my companion and I were on a lightly wooded track heading toward Madron Well in Cornwall; I was walking in front. As we came around a turn in the track, I saw a large black cat, perhaps 8-10 metres ahead of me. It was about the size of a German Shepherd dog, and had a long tail, which it was lashing. I could not tell if the ears were pointed like a wild-cat's, or rounded like a leopard's, for they were flat to its skull in annoyance. Within about a second, the cat picked up something - a rabbit, perhaps? - and slipped off the track into some thick bushes. The trackway was rather dry, with trodden grass underfoot; there were no tracks. This was in early afternoon.
My favorite part is Simon absolutely just ignoring the Harry Potter references 😂
The script: "Before we call people crazy for imagining things that aren't there"
Simon: "whoops-a-daisy"
Lol!
Probably accurate. A handful of escapees over the years combined with a lot more misidentifications could easily add up to these numbers of sightings. After all, the illegal pet owner is much more likely to have a poorly made enclosure for the animal, and definitely not going to let anyone know it escaped. Also for the noises, people get very surprised when they find out what noises various animals can really make, especially foxes.
I have definitely heard of "The Beast of Bodmin Moor" and "The Exmoor Beast" not for over a decade though, I think its not that well known but its also not totally obscure either.
The creature is probably dead of old age by this point. you're not going to hear about it any longer if it died.
When I was a teenager I saw a big black cat on holiday in Shropshire it was definitely a panther in a field. Chris Pacham did do a program on the escaped wild cats of Britain. 😻
I'm from a small town in Durham in the UK, we definitely have a local rumor that comes around every 10 or so years of a black panther roaming about in the woods. Funny to see a new generation of kids grt scared by it each time
Excellent video, you present so well!
Simon if you ever decide you need a theme song it should be Ozzie Osborne singing: We're going to ride the crazy train!!! 😆😆
Adders are very much still a thing in the UK. One slithered across my foot once. I have never set foot in that particular patch of grass again.
Popping off in the comments: I live about an hour drive from Dartmoor, while I have never seen a big cat on the moors I have heard tales of them since childhood. Though my grandfather claimed to have seen a black dog taller than a man at it's shoulder with glowing red eyes.
Hound of Baskerville, nice
My primary understanding of this isn't that there is a small population of big cats in England, its that there is a handful of escaped big cats in England that we can't find and seem to be surviving pretty well......there may not be a species but that's kind of like not being scared of serial killers in your area because you know there probably aren't more than a few
It's the fact that we never find the damn things. That's what's so unconvincing about it all. No physical proof.
heard of a few sightings around Ayrshire. Our family has basically always stayed in the countryside. I can remember seeing something around a field away in the 80s and i swear it was a panther, but being a young boy at the time I've never been fully sure, but a few members of the family have mentioned sightings at various times over the years, and a couple of them in particular they were determined it wasn't just a big house cat but something far far bigger.
love the Dancing lion not to mention the other dancing cats you had❤ so cute so funny.
I figured this big cat in the UK stuff out. These are pets of visitors who have come to check out the UK. You know the cats have to be let out once in a while to stretch their legs after a long space flight. This is where there name Alien Big Cats comes from. I know Simon will love this answer.
As Simon was reading all those epic titles for the creature at the beginning, my black cat Derp jumped up next to me; she seems pretty smug that someone has FINALLY come up with some worthy names for her! 😂
Well say hi to Boris for me.
ketchy the fairy kitty.
Where I live in the US, we have cougars/mountain lions. We’re not sure how many there are, but there’s enough area to hide in and deer to eat, to keep a large population alive. We had one in our yard that was enormous. I reported it to Fish and Wildlife, and they told me it was a bobcat and I’m a city person and I don’t know what I was looking at.
The cat had the extra-long tail you discussed.
We have a similar issue with brown bears. We report them, and F&W denies it because they don’t want people to panic. I guess we’ll be nice and calm when a bear shows up to eat everything in the bird feeder.🙄
Shorter, I think governments deny this stuff so they don’t have to do something about it.
It's the same here in Louisiana. We have black bears here but if you the game wardens they said it was probably a dog or something 🤦🏻♀️
The black bear is literally on our license plate here.. they also say the same for wolves.. they just coyotes.. and cougars are just big Bobcats. There's a massive difference between coyote and wolves.. their size. They treat us like we stupid. We even sent a cassette tape recording of the cougar screams. Never heard anything back.
They keep denying the existence of these bears,cougars and wolves like we are stupid. Smh
@@jrmckim We had rumors that there was a black bear roaming around the village over the hill from here. You know, the good old trash can buffet. People would look out the window, flip, and call Fish and Wildlife, who told every. single. person. it was a large dog.
Then a guy took a photo of - by golly! - a black bear eating his wife's petunias, and posted it all over the place, and sent the image to Fish and Wildlife.
Their answer? Nothing. They've ignored us every since.
Same story in Massachusetts
yep. In Arkansas we've been told by the Game and Fish Comission that we don't have panthers.
But we do. We may not have many but we do have enough that they are sighted and filmed often. the reason why the G&F denies the claims is because of the lands they are found on. They'd have to protect the animals or find them for removal. Either or. So simply saying "nope. WE have no evidence" is easier.
@@elidames6889 they are pets that got away. Fing meth heads. There are no breeding populations in Missouri or Arkansas. A den of baby lions is easy to find for any hunter or trapper and the evidence of cubs will remain in the den for decades.
Blood of kings... Was that a Highlander reference?! Epic film!
I grew up in Yorkshire, and I can confirm I've heard a similar story a few times since I was a kid. The story that I heard was that a big cat escaped a zoo years ago and has managed to evade capture since whilst staying alive by hunting livestock.
However I believe that if there was such a cat, then there would be a lot more stories about missing or mutilated cattle. as such it may of been a true story 100+ years ago and has almost certainly since died
Bam!
There it is - the only plausible version. You'd think modern zoos would kind of notice their panther going missing and maybe tell the public about it. This is pure folk myth.
This story was covered by another Brit-based web site, but Simon puts his own informative and unique twist on the tale. I'm starting to look upon the large tabby across the street with an aire of suspicion. Simon, there are a lot of "boring" places in the States. My grandparents told me of the so-called legendary "Black Dog" and "Lion of Exmoor." Many thanks, Simon. Poor Cecil the Lion 😪
I grew up in a rural town in Nottinghamshire. Think really rural, the school in the 90s was 100% white, there was one shop within 5 miles. We had one of these big alien cats. People saw it loping around, there was panic for a couple of days. Turned out the local baronet (I kid you not) had decided to think about starting a private zoo. With no notice to anyone. And this was as recent as the 90s!
Cecil the lion was part of a research project, and some rich dentist was part of a hunting club, and shot Cecil (who was clearly radio collared), to win a trophy. And unfortunately Cecil died slowly and painfully.
That's what I had read. He just didn't care.
Cecil was also illegally baited to get him off the reserve so he could be shot.
That rich dentist was led by local guides to that lion and was told to shoot it.
And just to be clear, if people like the rich dentist didn't pay 10's of thousands to hunt certain animals, the locals would hunt them to extinction. Their whole economy is based off the money of those few rich people. The reason they don't have to hunt those animals for food anymore, is solely because they are able to sell the right to hunt a few of the older animals that need to be put down anyway.
The money they make is what allows the animals to be protected. The reason those animals aren't extinct today, is in large part due to those rich people.
People like you ruined that dentist's career and shut down the practice he spent his life building.
@@NG-VQ37VHR You do know photo safaris are a thing, right? Rich people can pay just as much money to have locals guide them to a lion, and simply observe them and take photos. A lion can be viewed and photographed hundreds of times, however they can only be killed once. A dead lion can't make more lions.
Also, hunters tend to target the biggest and strongest, as they make better trophies.
about 25 years ago me and a group of friends came across a big black cat (maybe a jaguar) it was sat high up on a roof of a farm building we was 200m away moving through a long grass field but it was unmistakable what it was so we gave it a very wide birth....... we didnt report it just told a few people that didnt believe us haha but there have been other sightings in my village with one person apparently finding footprints in their garden i did not see them for myself just heard about it, i was about 14/15 at the time
My friend John saw a ABC in Faversham. At the time he was still working as a copper. He had a hypothesis regarding how they got round without being seen. Basically they used the rail tracks throughout Kent.
Normally I would think something like this to be ludicrous in the U.K. However, last Christmas holidays I trekked up a hill behind my town with a mate of mine in the south west. It had recently snowed and made the climb even more slippery and dangerous. We got to the top and there were paw prints in the snow the size of my hand and looked exactly like a large cat’s paws. There’s no reason a dog would be up there as it’s a steep climb and no accompanying footprints alongside the paw prints. We looked around and basically thought “What the actual ****?” And ran away. I still have no idea what made those prints but certainly would like to. I don’t know, food for thought I guess!
I grew up in rural Canada and seeing big cats and bears is not unexpected especially when camping. A few years ago, a friend woke up to a horrible noise in his backyard. He looked out and saw a raccoon and cougar fighting under his window. He got a picture of it. We grew up knowing that we had to be careful especially at night. I could tell you more stories, especially of the bears.
"a raccoon and cougar fighting"
That's one badass raccoon. Who won?
racoon and cougar fighting .....................lol lol lol lol lol
As a cat lover, I don’t think I’ve ever said “awww” so many times in one video.
All those cats were so cute!
Bengal and Savannah cats are becoming popular. They can get as big as a medium size dog. There's videos on here of people walking them like dogs.
Talking about the territory of big cats, a mountain lion was caught in Connecticut that had originally been tagged in Yellowstone over a thousand miles away.
Adders are very common in the UK especially around the New Forest, so much so that Oddstock Hospital in Salisbury has a dedicated anti-venom and treatment ward specifically for adder bites and other potentially venomous critters around the area.
18:13 Well the Polish military had a bear. (His name was Wojtek and he served with the 22nd Transport Company’s Artillery Division in the Polish 2nd Corps. His story is actually pretty well documented. He was found as a cub, nursed like a baby on condensed milk; grew up living among the soldiers as they trained; served with them on the front lines during the Battle of Monte Cassino, clearing away empty ammo crates and used artillery shells as the soldiers fought. He was known to drink beer with his humans and eat the still-lit cigarettes they gave him. After the war he was sent to live with other retired Polish fighters in rural Scotland, where he enjoyed the good life until his death in 1963.) There is also fairly compelling evidence that this practice of troops adopting local fauna (both domestic and otherwise) and keeping them as mascots to boost morale was a lot more common than one might think.
Both the US and UK militaries have given honorary titles to all sorts of animals - from dogs, goats, and horses to elephants and antelopes (the Dutch even have a penguin as a brigadier). So its not at all impossible to think some soldiers in, say, North Africa, the Middle East , or India may have come across some abandoned big cat cub, tried to bring it home, and eventually released it (or had it escape) into the "wilds" of the British countryside once it grew too big to handle/became illegal to own/etc.
I love that bear.
Lmao literally like a week or two ago I suggested covering the big cats of Australia. Glad the writers were way ahead of me, and funny for Simon to use Aus as an example of that not happening when the debate is quite a big thing here too.
Don’t forget Australians *never* make up animals, I nearly forgot to check for drop bears on my way to work today…
@@louwoolard5658 I went looking in the comments for just this reference.🤣🤣
@@louwoolard5658 Well Thylacoleo was around until very recently (geologically) and it most definitely fits the bill.
@@pressb True, it’s still better to imagine a murderous koala jumping out of a tree though, more tourist friendly haha
Here on the island of Oahu in Hawaii, there was a pair of wallabies that escaped almost a century ago. There's currently a small colony that lives in the Kalihi Valley area. Scientists concluded they've become their own species. Every once in a while we have a sighting here.
We have a small colony of Wallabies here in Scotland too, they live on an island in the middle of a lake called Loch Lomond. I don't know that they are their own species although I imagine they'd have to have adapted somewhat to survive the Scottish winter and all the rain!
Same in France
I’m from Yorkshire and the story my mum told me that a bunch of jaguars escaped or were released into the moors decades ago and have just been wandering the moors ever since .
I'm in West Yorkshire and one walked across the trail in front of me in about 06 no doubt about it.
I'm Australian & there are thousands of big cat reports recorded here since European settlement/invasion. These range from bobcats, cougars, panthers & even thylacoleo. I live in the country & do outdoor activities like fly fishing & hiking etc. Personally, I have twice seen evidence that there is some such creatures in 65 years. One was a predator running in a crouch (straight back line, including head) down a gully, then diving full speed in to thick bush, just meters behind where ducks were gathering to roost for the night. It was too far away for me to identify, but it was obviously heavier than me, & acting in stealth, using the terrain for cover & the thing that unnerved me was that it dove into thick bushes just metres behind a large flock of ducks without being noticed by them at all. I just packed it in & left, keeping out of sight myself.
The 2nd incident was walking along a forest service trail, I uncounted large deep paw prints that had been made during rains over the last 2 days. The prints were the width of my hand at the base of my fingers (8cm), They were wider than their length 4 spread out toes and a wide heel pad (2 trailing edge lobes). 2 paws were slightly smaller & symmetrical, the other 2 were (larger) were skewed (not symmetrical). These are typical cat characteristics, only the amount of skew was unusually pronounced. So, they were most like a cat but more skewed than any cat print references that I have found. So, I don't know what it was for sure, but the print size suggest an animal around 90 kg and I don't want to ever meet one of those.
I talked to a hunter at work about what I had seen, he wasn't at all surprised, confirming that big cats are in the area. To him, it's just an accepted fact.
In trying to research what these things may be, I did come across big cat sighting in the UK & a story of a private zoo that had failed. There was a suggestion that the big cats had been released into the countryside there. I don't recall the name of the zoo, but it seemed well known.
Anyway for what it is worth, I would not scoff at such reports anymore. There was an official survey conducted at Gross Vale NSW Australia, It was commissioned by government via NSW NPWS who engaged leading animal science experts from the University Of Sydney. Their conclusion basically said that while they had not found actual physical evidence, the number and detailed accuracy of reported sightings and considering the difficult topography & thick bush. the most likely explanation is that there is a breeding population of large feline predators in the area.
Despite this advice and according to the individuals who wrote that report, the official released conclusion is different to the one they had submitted.
I saw a large black cat, around 20 years ago. I was with my young daughter early one morning, near our rural home in Gloucestershire, walking our Alsatian dog. We saw this animal at the far end of the long narrow road and I said to my daughter that it was a black Alsatian and that I hoped it would not fight with our dog, as there was nobody with it. As we drew closer, I realised it was a cat and told my daughter to wait. I got a bit closer before it stood up and ran - 100% cat and every bit as big as our Alsatian. Only time in my life that the hairs on my arms have stood up like that. For weeks I took my camera with me when walking the dog but never saw it again.
Maine Coons... Are there any of them in the UK? 😬
They're pretty big! But pretty sweet cats as well.
I'd like to throw in a personal anecdote. I live in New Hampshire and enjoy hiking and camping in the swamps and forests in New England. One time, I was hiking in the swamp near my parents house when I heard what sounded like a scream, I turned around and saw a smallish mountain lion, slightly larger than a German Shepherd. I distinctly remember seeing a long tail and a body that was coyote brown all round except for a white belly. I responded by shouting at it, and when that did nothing I did the American thing and fired a bullet into the dirt. The cat ran off, and so did I.
When I got home, I looked into puma sightings in Massachusetts, and the state was claiming that only two had been seen since 1980-something, and everything else was just a bobcat and you shouldn't worry. However, when I told my mom what happened, she showed me how someone in town on the other side of the swamp from us saw a mountain lion and took multiple pictures of it, and people living near wildlife refuges and a reservoir park have been reporting puma sightings for years; granted, they were often mistaking bobcats for bigger cats or had no evidence at all, but there is enough evidence to conclude that there are multiple pumas in Massachusetts and the state is disregarding all the evidence for it. This isn't my state and thus I am unfamiliar with the politics of why, but my theory is incompetence.
All this to say, I wouldn't disregard this theory too easily
Same with grizzly bears... There are videos of grizzly bears in California convenience stores wiping out the donuts like Homer Simpson with the munchies while the madman of a cashier films it and laughs, but according to the State of California grizzlies have been extinct in California for, I think, like a century?
the difference is that this animal is endemic to the US , it lives not too far away and it’s not unreasonable to think its natural habitat could be larger than previously thought, or even that they’ve recently been migrating. the US is incredibly large compared to the UK. its a fifth of the size of Texas with twice the population. the fauna has been isolated from the mainland since the end of the last ice age save for domesticated animals that were very deliberately introduced. a large predator wouldn’t go unnoticed in an ecosystem for so long, if there was a natural population of large wildcats we’d have noticed them in thousands of years of continuous human occupation.
I think the sightings are a mix of real “freed” illegal exotic pets, exaggerated stories, and people who mistook another animal for a wild cat after hearing of the rumours.
@@tired1923 the UK sounds like a really sad place and I feel bad for everyone who lives there
@@doublepiedavid8908 Sad? we don't have guns. That makes it a very cool place to live. Big cats stories are just for the papers to sell copies . Before ya say anything , I lived in the states, California and yeah i do miss it but the Uk is Far from a sad place, visit and you will see why.
There was a Puma hit by a car in Connecticut. Scientists tested it and found it was genetically closest to a population in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Apparently it was a Western Mountain Lion that had wandered East.
Bobcats and Linx are different species. And as a Minnesotan I have seen Bobcats in the wild. They are much larger than you think.
Bob cats are actually members of the lynx genus . They are the smallest species of lynx. They are known as red lynx in some areas.
So that means we are the same as Australopithecus because we are in the same genus. We are only the smartest SPECIES of Homo Genus...
Sorry that was half coherent, I was half asleep.
I am British and I have seen what I would describe as a Black Panther in the English countryside.
This would be about 30 years ago now.
After parking and setting out for hike, walking down a lane, looking ahead, I saw a large black cat cross the lane walking right to left.
It was about 30 yards in front of me and my Girlf.
It stopped looked towards us and then carried on walking across the path. It was big with it's tail as long as it's body and head. It was a big as a labrador dog.
When we got to where the cat was, I looked for the cat but it had disappeared into the hedgerow. This was during a sunny day in the late autumn.
Thanks for introducing me to the name "Alsatian" for the German Shepherd Dog. Sounds mythical
Stop being a cynic Simon, you know the Alien big cats are real! 🤣
Also I love the title of this video!
The Cecil thing was that he had a tracking collar and was part of a long term study.
Also Cecil was tricked in to leaving the protected area by the hunter's guide using a food cache.
So evil.
The study included post mortality pride behaviour, such as when one male dies or is displaced by another. There was no prohibition on collared lions being hunted. The range of the pride included areas inside and outside a National park, he wasn’t tricked anywhere.
Using food to lure your prey is illegal for many areas where hunting of lions is allowed. Another issue was that Cecil was the park's major tourist attraction as the dominant male in his pride. It was also discovered, after questioning the guide, that it took Cecil 10 hours to die. Bit of a mess all round.
There is a feral ginger tom in my neighborhood that is the size of an ocelot. He's HUGE, and has an attitude to match. He's known to beat the crap out of any dog that gets near him, and he basically owns the whole street.
I used to have a 22lb male cat who would drive off foxes and stray dogs from our property. He taught all my sled dogs to leave cats alone.
@@zarasbazaar Our biggest is only 10lbs and slaps the local fox's into shape.
I'm becoming convinced that 'domestic housecats' are only as domestic as they want to be!
"In Australia, there’s enough s**t trying to kill you that they don’t make stuff up?"
Drop bears: Allow us to introduce ourselves
It's hilarious that you actually explain the term alien! Is there anyone out who doesn`t know the song "Englishmen in New York" or hasn`t seen it on every damn airport in Britain?^^
There are indeed big cats legends in Australia, when I was growing up it was the Lithgow panther, but every region has something similar. We have also adapted koala's into drop bears to frighten tourists
Shhh no! Drop bears are a real carnivorous sub species of koalas, keep the dream and fear alive for tourists
Okay lol just gonna act like yall made up drop bears to scare people shmmm they dont get any reallr m8
Uz lucky you havent run into one ursfz
How about the bunyips though? Those are real, right? ;)
@@Sally4th_ the super hairy guys that run around the bush? yeah they’re real, but a lot of aussies just call them wogs
Finally! One of these I can join in with. I remember seeing a large black cat back in 2015. It came out of a forest and walked along side the car that I was in for a about 30 seconds. I didn’t take a photo as I will admit I was bloody scared. It was defiantly not an alien. A local wild life expert said it was most likely a panther as they had spotted it in the area before and had received a few panicked texts and phone calls from other people in the area.
On a side note there is a lynx that lives near my village that I see on a semi regular basis. This is also not an alien.
I live in Devon in the UK and its well known local fact that there are lynxes on the moors, most likely escaped from Dartmoor zoo or private pets. They once tried to catch one that was killing livestock on the moors but they caught the wrong one and had to keep trying
I grew up in Devon, several of my teachers were ex marines who spent a whole summer trying to catch said cat.. they all said there was not a single shred of evidence.
My grandfather used to live in Cornwall, about 30 km/20 miles from Bodmin moore. I remember as a child my dad's step mum telling me about the Beast of Bodmin moore. But I'm actually somewhat certain that she believed the story, as she was a tad uncomfortable going to nearby Boscastle as well, due to the witchcraft museum there 😂
I live in wales and personally saw a large dark coloured cat (taller than my malamute x mastiff), supposedly they where left in Snowdonia in the 70's when exotic animal laws changed in the U.K.
I unfortunately only caught the glint of its eye move across a dark patch in my cameras view, having checked after watching my dog haul +ss after it.
A friend of mine was squatting in an old stone house with no electric or water in the middle of a forest in Wales in the 80s he was trying to claim it as it was abandoned house for years ,he said he regularly saw a Lynx on the edge of his property it used to watch him every day .he only told his closest friends so he wasnt trying to make money or fame out of it and it was before all the hype no one knew or heard about big cats back then