Report from Leo Martin
Are big cats living wild in the UK? Or are we just imagining them?
Are big cats living wild in the UK? Or are we just imagining them,
asks David Hamblin
From the The Guardian, 7 th August 2003
From the The Guardian, 7 th August 2003
Here kitty, kitty
For the past three years, a British collective of around 1,000 people
has been studying murky photographs, videos, clumps of hair and
decomposing carcasses. Their purpose? To discover if big cats really
are lurking in the darker corners of our countryside and mauling
deer, only to disappear when anyone with a camcorder happens by.
Whatever conclusions they come to, reports of big cat sightings, or
even of beasts, continue to pour in. The British Big Cats Society
(BBCS), which is organising the study, says this year alone it has
received reports from 18 English counties and more from Scotland and
Wales. Later this year, once the collective has finished its work,
the BBCS says it will hand a dossier of "convincing evidence" to the
Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. This dossier
will prove, it says, that big cats are out there and should be taken
seriously.
But however certain the BBCS is, a growing body of work by scientists
suggests some - if not all - sightings may be a trick of the mind, a
legacy of a time when humans were the hunted, not the hunters.
British big cat stories date back to the 12th century, but the BBCS
believes modern sightings date from 1976-81 when a change in
legislation drove some private owners of "exotic pets" to let them
loose. There are certainly some escaped pets out there. A number of
small cats, such as lynxes and jungle cats, have been found wandering
at large, some still wearing collars, and a puma was captured in
1980. Overweight, arthritic and tame, she became a star of a Highland
wildlife park, her origin a mystery. But feral big cats remain
elusive, and careful not to give up hard evidence of their existence.
DNA and other forensic evidence from supposed big cat kills points
instead to the work of dogs. No big cat bodies have turned up, no
conclusive paw prints have been found, and telltale droppings are
curiously absent.
Anecdotal evidence suggests we may be predisposed to conclude an
animal is a big cat if we cannot immediately identify it as something
else.
Recounting a run-in one morning, Richard Hughes, a keen photographer
from Buckinghamshire, says: "I witnessed a large black shape enter
the field we were in. At first I thought it was a dog but realised it
was a large black panther, complete with a long tail. I couldn't
believe my eyes - it was the most astonishing thing I had seen."
Hughes staked out the field for several days in the hopes of catching
the beast on film. When it finally appeared, alongside its owner, it
turned out to be a mastiff cross - with a short tail.
Hughes' experience is by no means unique and some scientists believe
they are close to explaining why we are prone to see things,
especially big cats, that aren't there. Clark Barrett at the
University of California, studies perceptual mechanisms in
identifying dangerous animals. He believes evolution may have left us
with a tendency to identify an animal we have only glimpsed as a big
cat. Millions of years ago, this could have been a life-saving
capability that was subsequently passed down the generations.
Richard Coss, professor of psychology at the University of California
has been studying "relic behaviours" since the 1970s. He believes our
ancestors' time as the hunted has left a mark on modern humans,
equipping us with innate defensive responses. He cites evidence
ranging from studies on the reaction of toddlers to leopard-spot
patterns to the ability of rural communities to mob big cats.
Coss says children as young as four seemed to have an instinctive
knowledge of predators, correctly guessing that, from a range of
options, the top of a boulder would be an inadequate place to hide
from a lion. It's not down to education, claims Coss, but an innate
understanding of a predator's capability.
He predicted differences between the way boys and girls sought refuge
from predators because early females were much smaller and better
climbers than males. His studies have borne out this prediction.
Barrett has done similar experiments, comparing the instincts of city-
dwelling children from Berlin with four-year old Shuar children
living in the Amazon rainforest. Both were equally good at predicting
the behaviour of lions and jaguars. Barrett believes education had
little to do with it.
Meanwhile, studies on the remains of our ancient ancestors reveal
signs that they were once hunted by big cats. The South African
palaeontologist Bob Brain excavated caves dating back 2.5m years. An
analysis of bones left by predators shows at least one carnivore
preying on our early ancestors was, in Brain's words, "a specialist
killer of primates". Brain identified the killer as Dinofelis, an
extinct cat the size of a puma with long teeth capable of piercing a
human skull. Its anatomy, similar to that of a jaguar, suggests
Dinofelis attacked by a sudden pounce.
Other researchers have found more curious evidence - that images of
cats seem to be imprinted in the depths of our minds. A team of
neurologists led by Gilles Fˇnelon at Tenon Hospital in Paris found
that patients with Parkinson's disease were more prone to illusions
than those without the dementia. Strangely, Fˇnelon found cats were
among the most common illusions his patients reported.
Visions of big cats may or may not be a legacy of a more fearful era,
but rumour and media coverage increase the number of people convinced
they have seen the predators. Paul Marsden, editor of the Journal of
Memetics (which looks at infectious ideas such as rumours, crazes and
urban legends), says the big cat stories are a form of social
contagion: stories with an air of mystery and danger spread easily,
he says. "The media plays an important role in this collective
hysteria," he says. "They amplify and lend credibility to word of
mouth."
The result is that everyone knows about the big cats that are
supposedly out there, so when they glimpse something they can't
identify, they are more likely to reckon it was a big cat.
Ellis Daw, owner of Dartmoor Wildlife Park and a spokesperson for the
BBCS, believes there is more to it: "Although the illusion theory may
explain many sightings, the physical evidence, which is slowly but
steadily growing, points to a very physical presence of big cats in
the UK."
But until the physical evidence is out there for all of us to
examine, British big cats will remain shadowy figures in the back of
our minds..
© The Independent, 4 th April, 1997
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