Do you think there are big cats (genus Panthera) in the UK wild?

17 comments

1. Any there were were pets released when it was made illegal. Will have passed away now,

2. Not anymore. And there certainly isn’t a panther – though there is a black sheep licking itself in a contorted position, which is apparently the same thing these days.

3. Search /r/AskUK

   There have been lots of threads about this.

   As for the question: Yes. I saw one myself (and which was talked about in the locality) about 15 years ago.

4. I believe so. My dad claims he has seen one

5. I once saw a puma run across the road in Dorset and enter an Army artillery range..This was around 25 years ago.
   The following year I was driving some friends around Dorset and we picked up a local hitch hiker

   When we got to the Army range I told my friends I had seen a puma there. The hitch hiker said”Oh have you seen it too? Lots of people round here have seen that”

   It was nice to get confirmation of what I saw.

6. Cougars are becoming more popular

7. There never have been any cats in the Panthera genus in the uk, the closest thing would be the lynx but that’s it’s own genus. Well other than the Eurasian cave lion half a million years ago.

8. There was [Felicity ](https://www.highlifehighland.com/inverness-museum-and-art-gallery/felicity-the-puma/)

9. No, but they are trying to reintroduce the lynx into Scotland.

10. What big cats went extinct in Britain in 700AD?

    There have no doubt been big cats wild in the UK over the past 50 years, but they would never have had a breeding population

11. Saw a big yellow one on the side of the motorway

12. Yes, last one I heard of being seen locally was about 5 years ago. My run in with one was about 30 years ago walking across a golf course. We heard something large in a bush next to us and stopped. Then we hear something exactly like this

    [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlMHz-eQdDA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlMHz-eQdDA)

    Never run so fast in my life.

    I believe there are some areas the released pets are meant to have bred so they are still around.

13. There was the beast of Bodmin Moore a few years ago

14. I’ve seen one strolling across a farmers field with my own eyes,it could have been a big dog as I was a way away but there’s no mistaking the way a feline moves,it’s all very silky and smooth and nothing like a dog.I was that mesmerised I didn’t even think to get my phone out just stared at it as it moved across the field and disappeared into woodland.

15. Until fairly recently anyone could buy them with no restrictions from pet shops and department stores and it was legal to have them as pets I’m sure a fair few escaped or were released when they weren’t cute cubs anymore/the laws changed. The likelihood of a breeding pair finding each other and successfully keeping a multi generational family alive for decades without being discovered is zero though. We need to ban the public from owning other exotic pets like monkeys next.

16. There probably *were* some large cats (maybe some true big cats, and almost certainly some medium to large wild cat species of other genera) released by irresponsible people when the dangerous wild animals act came into force. But not enough for a breeding population. They’re probably dead by now.

    Modern sightings are a combination of hysteria and hoaxes and the fact that it can be really hard to judge size and distance at the same time if you don’t have a firm measure of either. Is that a normal sized black cat a medium distance away or a much larger black cat further away, perhaps in bad light and a setting where the cat isn’t next to something of a known size or distance. A large cat further away is way more exciting to convince yourself you’ve seen.

17. Scottish wildcat? Unfortunately they’re on brink of extinction.