A motorist thinks she might have noticed a useless large cat whereas driving on a busy highway in Chester.
Courtney Roberts, 21, was travelling on the A483 on the outskirts of the town final week when she noticed the useless animal mendacity in a central reservation. She later shared her footage with specialists and was informed it was considered the physique of a puma, in any other case generally known as a ‘mountain lion’ or ‘cougar.’
Experts mentioned the large cat, often native to the Americas, has been sighted within the wild in Britain for the reason that Sixties and Seventies after they have been fashionable to maintain as pets. Roberts, from Wrexham, mentioned: “You see so many unusual trying animals on the facet of the highway over right here. I needed to put my telephone on file and level it all the way down to the highway, sadly it isn’t as clear as I’d prefer it to be.
“Looking at that image it does appear to be a bobcat. My companion was simply trying and he noticed a Scottish wildcat on Google and I feel it appears to be like like considered one of them however …. in person you may see a noticed sample on its coat.”
She posted the images on a Facebook group for misplaced pets, the place it was seen by a community of nationwide large cat researchers who then picked up the case. Roberts additionally determined to return to the placement along with her companion to attempt to determine the animal or probably even get better the physique. However, when she went again an hour later, the animal had vanished.
Roberts added: “I’ve simply gone on to the bypass with my companion and pulled over, and we stopped precisely the place I noticed the animal, and now there isn’t any animal there. So I feel somebody has seen my put up and gone to take it.
According to Canadian wildlife knowledgeable Jason Kenzie, who has labored extensively with unique cats, the animal is most probably a juvenile puma. He mentioned: “It looks feline, but I believe it’s too large to be a Scottish wildcat. It could be a Bobcat or Lynx, but really this has the markings of a young cougar.”
Tim Whittard, who produced a documentary about Britain’s thriller large cats known as Panthera Britannia Declassified, agreed with the puma idea. He added: “This wouldn’t be the primary time the physique of an enormous cat has been seen road-killed in Britain. This is the fourth report I’m conscious of in lower than three months, and there are a number of excessive profile instances of comparable incidents.”
Big cat sightings
Last yr, documentary maker Whittard and his Dragonfly Films crew found what they claimed was the “clearest ever” photograph of an enormous cat stalking the British countryside. The image, which reveals a big muscular panther-like creature mendacity in lengthy grass, was discovered within the recordsdata of a zoology organisation.
Experts mentioned if the picture was real, it was “in all probability the very best photograph of a British large cat that exists”. The photograph, which is claimed to have been taken in Smallthorne, Staffordshire, was accompanied by a handwritten be aware dated 17 March – however it’s unclear by which yr it was taken.
A wave of “black beast” sightings have been reported through the late Nineteen Nineties, together with well-known instances in Herefordshire such because the “Woolhope Wildcat” in 1994 and quite a few reviews of the “Herefordshire Phantom Feline”, often known as “Big Puss”, from 1996 to 2000.
A photograph of an alleged large cat taken in July 2016 in Gloucestershire was in contrast in information reviews with a photograph of a fox in the identical location, however was later confirmed once more to be the scale of a home cat, whereas out-of-focus footage of an animal recognized as a lynx reported in November 2016 was additionally discovered to be an strange cat. In May 2022, a father and son noticed an enormous cat as they arrange a barbecue on the seaside at Pwllheli on the Lyn Peninsula in northwest Wales – the second reported sighting inside 12 months.
