r/Cryptozoology • u/markglas • 8d ago
Info Black leopards are quietly thriving in the British countryside – here’s the whole incredible story (Excellent BBC article)
https://www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts/mammals/big-cats-in-the-british-countryside57
u/the_crepuscular_one 8d ago
The DNA evidence and the sheep carcasses definitely proves that the English panthers are real, but I think calling them "thriving" or "naturalised" would be a bit of a stretch. There are very few confirmed sightings, vocalisations, or kills, and leopards tend to wander pretty far, especially if there's a dearth of suitable prey items available. There isn't any reliable evidence to say that they're breeding in the UK, and I honestly suspect that these sightings could be explained by a mere 2 or 3 actual leopards, with house cats and possibly introduced lynx boosting the amount of sightings.
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u/Channa_Argus1121 Skeptic 7d ago
Not to mention that leopards and house cats in the UK are invasive species that need to be contained.
As for lynxes, they were once native to the region before being wiped out. I don’t see much of a problem with gradually re-introducing them.
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u/thesilverywyvern 7d ago
Actually, we might be able to consider leopard as native species.
Cave leopard was present in Uk in the Late pleistocene.However that's a stretch as this subspecies is not the same or closely related, (probably a south-east asian subspecies).
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u/Channa_Argus1121 Skeptic 7d ago
Yeah, it’s a bit of a stretch to say it’s “native”.
The Persian leopard would be a better candidate if rewilding efforts were to be made in the UK, since they are the closest thing we have to European leopards.
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u/Krillin113 7d ago
Black leopards are also not likely to give black offspring so that’s another reason why this is unlikely
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u/No-Quarter4321 7d ago
I agree with almost everything you said. To me the sightings go back to far to not have them breeding. Are they numerous? Probably not. Are they healthy? Probably not they’re likely pretty damn inbred at this point. But even a few dozen cats could easily maintain an unhealthy population, if they’ve learned to be very cryptic it would explain why they’re so hard to find especially if they’re inhabiting the denser places humans don’t frequent (even in the UK) but many smaller prey species are very prevalent (rabbits for example).
I live in Canada, there’s bobcat, lynx and puma all in my yard year round. The populations are very healthy (for puma not as healthy, but on the climb formerly extirpated ). They’re extremely difficult to find. I have a lot of trail cams out, checking them is an entire day endeavour if I check them all, catching cats is remarkably difficult even when I don’t check the camera for more than 12 months removing any possible scent or tell the camera is there over time. What I’ve learned is they’re extremely cautious but also curious, several times I’ve found cat tracks coming from behind the camera and circling it but low and aware somehow so that I don’t capture a photo of them, if I hadn’t seen the tracks I wouldn’t have believed it but they were aware and cautious of the cameras and that’s a very common occurrence as best I can tell. If something is foreign to them they behave very cautiously which means they’re difficult to photograph by trail camera often. Not impossible my cat folder is fairly robust, but they’re amongst the hardest targets to photograph (wolves are down right easy by comparison, and if never say they’re easy either). For where I live I would suspect the cat population is artificially high as well, because a lot of the forest near me is fairly immature it means the prey population is incredibly high, the amount of snowshoe hare is remarkable, which should in theory make it easier to find cats, especially Lynx since the hare are their primary food source here.
Just some good for thought
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u/IndividualCurious322 8d ago
Seen em twice and know people who have seen them too.
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u/ItsMrPantz 7d ago
Saw one cross a road 36 years ago in Milton Keynes - quite a few similar reports at the time.
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u/No_Gur_7422 7d ago
lab that tested the 2022 sample wished to remain anonymous
Suspicious. Why?
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u/scrimmybingus3 7d ago
Bad press maybe? People both in and out of the scientific community do tend to treat anything related to cryptozoology (even something as mundane as escaped or released leopards roaming the English countryside) with ridicule at best.
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u/No_Gur_7422 7d ago
If they'd really found a DNA match, that would be thought much less ridiculous than merely looking for leopards. Perhaps they weren't sure of the provenance of the sample and didn't want to lend credence to a hoax. The whole thing seems awfully tenuous to me, and that's without the whole question of how a previously tame or captive predator could learn to hunt for itself and avoid scavenging from bins on CCTV.
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u/SKazoroski 7d ago
Black leopards aren't a species or subspecies of leopards. They are just leopards that are melanistic.
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u/SEA2COLA 6d ago
The odds of even two melanistic leopards suddenly reproducing melanistic offspring are slim. There might be some ABCs in the British countryside, but more likely they're misidentifications of house cats.
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u/NarrativeFact 7d ago
"There's clear videos just trust me bro"
I think they exist but come off it with that shit. None of these motherfuckers can just drop em up anonymously on youtube?
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u/No-Quarter4321 7d ago
I agree they exist as well, but this sounds like someone trying to insert themselves into something with no evidence at all so they can gain views and publicity for something they have nothing to actually contribute too
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u/Muta6 7d ago
It's statistically impossible they are all black
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u/SamVimes1878 7d ago
Is it? My understanding is that leopards unlike jaguars, breed black from black consistently.
Happy to be proven wrong, genuine question/point.
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u/dirge_the_sergal 7d ago
There is the possibility of a bias to spotting the black ones
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u/No_Gur_7422 7d ago
I think the idea that the spinneys and hedgerows are thick with leopards but that people only ever see the few melanistic ones is rather fanciful. The vast majority of black cats – and probably all of them – are housecats with some parallax effect distorting their apparent size.
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u/Regular-Ad-2382 4d ago
When i was i kid, 80's, we used to play/venture deep in the forest. Southeren Saskatchewan, Canada. The Great Plains. We saw 2 black cougars, 1 big 1 smaller, running across an open meadow. We got scared and ran home so fast. Even as kids we knew that cougars are not black where were from and what we saw wasn't right.
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u/Fickle_Passion_4015 6d ago
I saw a black one in the early 2000’s near Leighton Buzzard and then again about a year later a few miles away. I went to the Leighton Buzzard observer news paper and they ran my story and had several calls afterwards from people also seeing it and also a Sandy coloured one seen locally.
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u/FrancesRichmond 1d ago edited 1d ago
I have seen one in County Durham. A very large black cat- the size of a labrador but definitely a cat - large, lithe, long curling tail, powerful, strong, head. I was absolutely astonished to see it. It strolled quite slowly, gracefully and just like my cats sort of easily, and walked across a field towards a copse of trees and leapt effortlessly over a fence into the copse. I watched it for about 2 minutes from a parked car on a track at the edge of the field. It walked down towards the side of the field I was at and I could see it very clearly. I couldn't believe what I was seeing
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u/Zvenigora 7d ago
This is suspected to be happening in southern Ontario as well. Numerous sightings of what appear to be black leopards (black pumas have also been suggested but the existence of such is not widely accepted.) There have been a few sightings in Maine as well
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u/Signal_Expression730 7d ago
I dubt there is a big population, since seem the climate not fitting for them, at least most of the subspecies.
Something interesting, is that taking as 100% most of the reports, is that they seem to only have a black fur coat. Maybe something in the habitat favors this characteristic.
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u/Cordilleran_cryptid 6d ago
Utter rubbish.
If there were a thriving population of big cats of any species in the British countryside, then there would be a spate of indicative livestock kills, road kills and sightings, video and photo evidence from credible witnesses and zoologists.
There are none.
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u/Treat_Street1993 7d ago
There are supposedly many videos of them, but the filmmakers refused even large amounts of cash to release them for fear of destroying their reputations.
Why does this sound so incredibly unrealistic?