Are they pumas, panthers, lynx or the figments of over active imaginations? It’s been an exciting summer for the growing number of dedicated big cat hunters, with reports of unexplained beasts roaming across the UK now a daily occurrence. Big Cats in Britain, a group which investigates wild animals prowling the countryside, says it’s getting so many claims of sightings that they no longer follow them all up. Hot spots at the moment are Ayrshire and Aberdeenshire, where this year one large, black cat has been causing a stir.

For

Hazel Fowler was walking her dog Sally near her home on the outskirts of Aberdeen early one morning in July when she came face to face with an unexpected sight.‘It was pure jet black, big head, big body, panther- like,’ she recalls. Hazel’s my neighbour, a down-to-earth Aberdeenshire lass, someone who doesn’t exaggerate. Having met her just hours after her scary encounter with what she describes as a ‘large, black cat the size of a labrador’ I could see she was still visibly shaken.

‘I was walking down the road at about 6.30am and here’s this large black cat in front of me. I was very scared. It just stood there and looked at me and the dog and I was shocked, basically, and by the time that I turned my head away and looked again, it had gone, probably into the woods.’ Hazel is adamant that what she saw was not a domestic cat. ’It’s not something I could make up,’ she explains.

The panther-like beast was then witnessed again by another neighbour in the same woody undergrowth at Blairs, just eight miles from Aberdeen city centre. There have also been several other sightings this summer of a ginger coloured large cat about 15 miles away at Crathes near Banchory. Grampian Police has revealed that five members of the public have contacted them to say they had seen a big cat in July. And just two weeks after Hazel’s scary encounter, police in Ayrshire were warning the public to be on guard after a vet concluded that a horse had been badly injured by a wild animal, possibly a puma.

But the highlight for big cat enthusiasts this year is mobile phone camera footage which seems to show a big cat beside a railway track near Helensburgh. The images were captured by police dog handler Chris Swallow, who initially thought he was looking at a dog. ‘The animal wasn’t moving the way I expected a dog to. It was then I realised what I was seeing was a big cat,’ he told reporters in July. Chris believes he saw a panther-sized big cat, about 4ft long. Enthusiasts reckon that this footage is the best evidence yet of the presence of cats in Scotland. It’s since been beamed around the world and studied by many experts and investigators, including Shaun Stevens, a researcher for Big Cats in Britain.

He believes the cat could be a hybrid species, or the Scottish wildcat which he thinks may have returned to the size they were over a century ago, ‘about 3 and a half to 4ft long.’ Various other schools of thought on Scotland’s big cats include the theory that they’re the descendent of pets released into the countryside by owners who didn’t want to comply with the1976 Dangerous Wild Animals Act. But it was Aberdeenshire’s big cat authority and author, Di Francis, who first put forward the more extreme view that the cats are actually an indigenous, undiscovered species. She’s just completed another book on the subject, which she says will reveal never before published photographs to help prove it

. One of the photos, which has been analysed by an expert, shows a big cat lying on a beach on the west coast. ‘What’s in that photo is unknown to science,’ she claims. Francis, who has seen about eight cats in thirty years of being interested in them, is keen to advise anyone who comes across a body of a large cat to secure the corpse until an investigator from Big Cats in Britain can view it. Francis believes the animals are being seen on a daily basis across the whole country and are not necessarily being reported, although Shaun Stevens says numbers of reported sightings have risen dramatically. ‘Before the Helensburgh footage, it was two or three reports a week, now its two or three a day,’ he explains. But what Stevens, Francis and all the other enthusiasts know they need is hard evidence. ‘Nothing’s any good until we get a body, that’s the frustrating part, says Francis.

Against

Fears that black panthers are roaming the Scottish countryside following the release of the Helensburgh mobile phone footage have been firmly debunked by international experts. According to big cat conservationist Dr Luke Hunter, ‘The footage looks very much like a very well fed domestic cat to me. ‘Leopards (black panthers are melanistic leopards) do not carry their tails upright, which you see in the footage, while domestic cats characteristically do. He added ‘I’ve seen big cats –leopards, lions, cheetahs, jaguars, tigers and cougars – in the wild thousands of times and nothing about this footage has the appearance or look and feel of any of those species. No way is this a big cat.’ And the lack of evidence leads Dr Hunter to remain unconvinced about the existence of big cats in Scotland.

He claims there are 100 or so Asiatic cheetahs left roaming in massive areas in Iran ‘yet we are able to camera trap them and find their tracks. They are even killed on roads. So by comparison, it’s ridiculous to claim that big cats in Scotland are elusive and can hide. When cats occur, it is pretty straightforward to find evidence of them. ‘Nothing I have seen or been asked to comment on in the last decade or so is remotely convincing as a big cat.’ Dr Andrew Kitchener, principal curator of mammals and birds at the National Museums of Scotland agrees. ‘It’s curious that none of them are getting killed on the roads.

Either they are not there or they are very scarce indeed.’ Dr Kitchener says that it ‘was pretty obvious that the animal in the Helensburgh footage was a domestic cat’ He believes there’s a problem with perception when trying to judge the size of any animal from a distance.

Conclusions

The Scottish big cat phenomenon is huge and eyewitnesses come from every walk of life. Shaun Stevens believes they can’t all be wrong. But despite the increase in sightings of these anomalous big cats, it seems the mysterious creatures have the upper paw. Investigators like Shaun continue to search for irrefutable proof, a body or unambiguous photographic evidence. ‘To get to the bottom of what’s out there we’re waiting for the proof, that’s the annoying thing,’ he says.

In a bid to find hard evidence, he’s taking part in a new project to try and determine once and for all if the creatures exist. A new survey in Kintyre, involving Scottish Natural Heritage and Highlands and Islands Enterpise, is encouraging locals and visitors on an 88 mile stretch known as the Kintyre Way to report sightings along the route. Once hot spots are identified, infra red cameras will be installed in an effort to resolve the mystery.

‘We’re desperate to get one captured to see exactly what’s happening’, he says. Meanwhile back in Aberdeenshire, Hazel Fowler’s husband Dave can now share her experience, having just seen the feline creature for himself. As for me, well I won’t be walking in the woods to meet my new neighbour, but if I do, I’ll make sure I have my camera. In the words of one enthusiast, ‘The truth is out there, but it’s going to take more than a bowl of Kitekat to tease it out.’