“It’s a moggy!” Expert weighs in as another big cat ‘spotted’ in English countryside ( www.discoverwildlife.com )

A video has been released purporting to show a non-native black cat running through a field in the semi-darkness.

Martin Burford, the man who took the video in an unrevealed location on the Gloucestershire-Worcestershire border a year ago, has told Worcester News that it was a “panther”. He claimed there was a thriving population of these cats in the area and that this one had been attacking and killing lambs.

Leaving aside the issue of exactly what a panther is (the term is vague and refers to one of two species), does the video actually shows a non-native cat such as a leopard or jaguar?

BBC Wildlife has shown the video to Dr Luke Hunter, executive director of the Big Cats Program at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), one of the world’s foremost conservation groups – and he says it doesn’t.

“It’s a moggy,” Hunter says. “The gait is very much a small cat’s, not a leopard or another big cat’s.”

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“It amazes me that these claims persist,” says Hunter. “If there were big cats in the UK countryside, it would be almost unavoidable that unequivocal evidence would emerge.”

Some strong evidence – though arguably not conclusive beyond all doubt – did emerge in May when the DNA of a cat in the Panthera genus was found on a swab taken from a sheep carcass in Cumbria. In 2022, a hair found on barbed wire in Gloucestershire was identified as belonging to a leopard.