Conclusive evidence that a large cat is stalking the hills of northern England has been discovered, with a sample of the elusive creature’s most recent known meal revealing genetic material from either a leopard or panther.
The genetic material was collected from a sheep carcass discovered in Cumbria, a county in northern England, by resident Sharon Larkin-Snowden. She said that the carcass was fresh, and that she had startled the creature that had been feeding on it.
“I assumed at first it was a sheepdog, but then I did a double take and realized it was a black cat,” Larkin-Snowden said during an interview on the May 14 Big Cat Conversations podcast. “It was big–the size of a German shepherd dog” and was only 30 feet away from her. The creature quickly made itself scarce, disappearing from view after jumping behind a nearby stone wall. Although Larkin-Snowden had a mobile phone on her, she didn’t have time to take a picture: “it happened so fast; you see it for five, six seconds.”
Larkin-Snowden swabbed the carcass for any potential saliva samples, and sent the collected material to the University of Warwick’s School of Life Sciences, where Professor Robin Allaby provides a forensic test service, specializing in identifying canids and big cats.
In the sample, Allaby discovered DNA belonging to a species that is a member of the genus Panthera, a group of species that has five extant members: jaguars, leopards, lions, snow leopards and tigers. Although Allaby had earlier identified a piece of claw that was sent to him as being from a species that also belonged to Panthera, it wasn’t until seeing these new test results that he was convinced that there were big cats prowling the English countryside.
“It makes me a convert [to the existence of non-native big cats in the UK],” Allaby said, speaking to BBC Wildlife. “Until now, I have remained open-minded, I think that’s my job as a scientist.”
Big Cat Conversations podcast host Rick Minter suspects that the creature was a leopard, based on Larkin-Snowden’s description of the large black cat.
Numerous legends of large felines stalking the UK countryside have sprung up over the years, including the Beast of Bodmin, spotted numerous times near the town of Bodmin in the southwest of England; and the Staffordshire Panther—AKA the Beast of Exmoor—a large feline that appears in an undated photograph that is considered “the clearest ever photograph of a big cat in the British countryside.”
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Back a few years ago….2013 or 2014, I was driving from St. Clairsville Ohio to Marietta Ohio. It would have been south on Hwy 77. I noticed to my left in a large field what appeared to be a large black cat ahead about a quarter mile away. It crossed the highway directly in front of me as I approached it’s path. I got a very clear look and it. My best description was a completely black “mountain lion”.