'The Beast of Bodmin' or another big cat picture is a crude digital manipulation

This is a photograph which has been published today on news media as an example of a mysterious big cats roaming around the UK, often Cornwall, in the south-west of England. These so-called big cat sightings in the UK pop up from time to time and every time they are pathetically inadequate photographs which simply do not provide evidence and this is another example.

'The Beast of Bodmin' or another big cat is a crude digital manipulation. Image in public domain.

You can see that this is a black domestic cat with a tail added digitally and crudely. It just looks wrong. The tail is too long and there is a small gap between the body and the beginning of the tail or that is what it looks like.

It isn't just the tail which has been digitally added in, it is also the general body conformation. The big cats are quite stocky in their overall body confirmation. Their shoulders are strong and highly muscular. The legs are thick and also muscular as they must be to hang onto large prey animals. Looking at this cat you see typical domestic cat legs. They are quite fine and slender in complete contrast to what we see when looking at big cat pictures.

It is absurd to bandy around these sorts of pathetic images and argue that they are mysterious black panthers wandering around Cornwall. Please can we stop this and be sensible.