The reason why images of big cat sightings are always fuzzy

Every single video of a big cat sightings in locations where the cats are not meant to be are fuzzy. They are unclear. The people operating their smart phone do not zoom in to enlarge the image of the cat. Note: 'big cat sightings' of pumas walking down the road in some American town is entirely different as you can expect mountain lions to be in the urban environment sometimes as these settlements are on mountain lion land.

It seems to me that people deliberately create bad quality videos or still images of big cats and then send them off to the news media in the hope and expectation to make a few hundred dollars or pounds. It would be so easy to create a decent quality video but the problem is that you would create a video of a domestic cat!

The reason why cat sighting videos are always fuzzy

If people created a decent quality video or image of a so-called big cat sighting, they would create a video of a domestic cat wandering through someone's backyard or in the countryside where they are meant to be. This most often happens in places such as the UK were there are no wild cats (except feral cats!).

Big cat sightings have to be fuzzy images. This makes them mysterious. It creates a discussion about what the animal is. The reason why there are no sharp images and high-quality videos of mysterious big cats captured by the general public is because there are no mysterious big cats in places where they're not meant to be.

It must be quite difficult for the television presenters to talk about these cat sightings. It is quite embarrassing to do it because the video is so obviously a video of a domestic cat. As usual it must have been a very bad news day. News media outlets like any other content producer can sometimes struggle to find reasonable content to fill their programs and this is a good example.

Poor quality images and poor-quality videos are synonymous with big cat sightings. The two go together like apple pie and custard. On this page is yet another version of the so-called big cat sighting and as ever it is a domestic cat minding his own business. 

If the video maker had zoomed in a little or taken a still image when zooming in the smart phone camera (and all smartphones these days have a facility to zoom in) they would have seen quickly that the cat is a domestic cat. And that would have been that. 

They would not have been able to send the video to a news media outlet because it would be a straightforward video of a domestic cat wandering around someone's backyard or on the edge of the countryside.

As you can see, there has to be an element of mystery about it and you get that by creating a poor-quality image or video. I have said enough about this.

Mutant moggies could be getting mistaken for big cats!

The Gloucestershire Live website has the above title and in my honest opinion it is completely misguided. The journalist is saying that people are mistaking enormous domestic cats for black panthers roaming around the British countryside. It is not a question of mutant domestic cats at all. This is a question of the human brain. I stress; these are not mutant, large domestic cats that are being mistaken for big cats but standard domestic cats which have been enlarged in the minds of their observers (at a distance).

This is assessed by Frank Tunbridge as a very large feral cat but how did he accurately assess size with such a poor-quality image? It is all in the mind and it is sad. Image: Frank Tunbridge.

And the reason why people historically enlarge the size of domestic cats and believe that they're looking at a big cat is because they are frightened. Fear is in the minds of most people all the time at a low level. It's guides them and dictates what they do in life. And there seems to be an inherent fear of cats. It is probably a throwback to time when people were living in caves 100,000 years ago.

At that time humans genuinely had to fight off marauding big cats because they were prey animals. And there were many of them even in Europe. Times have changed. Humankind has more or less exterminated all big cats from the planet. Certainly, in comparison to the very early days of the big cats there are very, very few left because of human persecution and the destruction of their habitat by people.

But there is still this fear of big cats and there are still people who actually believe that they exist in England, living in the countryside. And yet they have never produced hard evidence. The best that they can come up with are woolly pictures, badly out of focus or taken from such a distance that they are completely unsharp and unreadable.

CLICK TO LEARN HOW TO VERIFY OR THROW OUT BIG CAT SIGHTINGS

There are some diehard big cat enthusiasts who insist that they are out there but even the enthusiast Frank Tunbridge thinks that some people are mistaken and jumping to conclusions. Well, that's an admission but it's about time. I'm afraid it is obvious that people are coming to misguided conclusions.

He states that there are mutant moggies but he is wrong in that as well. He said that three women had seen a huge black moggy in Matson. They said that the animal walked along in front of them and left the area by the fishing lake. They describe the animal as having a long body, jet black in colour and the size of a small German Shephard dog. Mr Tunbridge set up a camera trap and on it is a recording of this large black cat. He thought the cat was a large moggy but the quality of the imagery is so bad that it is impossible to assess it (see pic above).

He refers to Australia where, indeed, some feral cats have grown quite large because of an abundance of prey animals. But this is a misconception as well. These large Australian feral cats are pretty large but they are nowhere near the size of the big cats. You would still describe them as small wild cats, the size of a large domestic cat. 

And Britain is not Australia. There are no feral cats in Britain of any size larger than standard domestic cats. It's about time that they faced up to reality which is that they are hostages to their distorted beliefs born out of fear.

'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.

Welsh government to formally investigate big cat sightings in Wales

Wales seems to be a country where there is a preponderance of big cat sightings and as such there is an open secret that there are big cats roaming North Wales attacking sheep and leaving broken and bloody caracasses in fields. There have been reports from: Buckley, Corwen, Denbigh, Llangollen, Mold, Mostyn, Pentre Halkyn, Pontybodkin, Pentre Halkyn, Rhuallt, and Talacre in 2020 and 2021 according to Leader Live. And also Chester and Ellesmere Port.

Big cat sighting in Italy is probably genuine. An escaped pet melanistic leopard but 99% of sightings are fake. See this story by clicking here.

It seems to be agreed that a formal, government managed process needs to be in place to investigate these big cat sightings. Once it is suspected that a big cat is present a formal investigation will take place. It sounds as if they will be detailed and thorough including a post mortem examination and a visit to the site of the attack.

The Welsh Environment Minister Lesley Griffiths said: "The Welsh Government’s policy is to investigate any reports received by the Department for Economy, Skills and Natural Resources of alleged sightings and attacks by big cats on livestock in Wales."

People should report sightings to the police when there is a threat to human life. No real evidence has been unearthed thus far. There is a group called Puma Watch North Wales which investigates sightings of I presume pumas (aka mountain lions).

Pumas are mostly spotted in Snowdonia and the Clwydian Hills. But there have also been sightings in urban areas miles away from the aforesaid locations. It is thought that the Covid-19 lockdowns may have encouraged the big cats to be more bold and frequent places where there are people but self-isolating inside their homes.

Comment: It is nice to see the Welsh government taking big cat sightings in their country seriously. I can't take it seriously myself. Over many years, even decades, there have been no decent quality photos of these mysterious cats. It is impossible to believe they exist. There'd be some clean evidence by now if they did.

British Subliminal Fear of Big Cats

Judging by some of the calls to the police the British have a subliminal fear of big cats. Perhaps it is in all of us, anywhere, an emotion going back to caveman times when big cats were genuinely a life threatening hazard to people.

Brits can't judge the size of animals at a distance especially when terrified!

Cheshire in the north of England has one of the highest rates of phone calls about big cats:

• report of an escaped lion living in their garden!
• tiger wandering along the banks of the river Dee in Chester (cat described as "three times as big as a cat, but fatter, stripy with a black ringed tail and black tip). This must have been a large mackerel tabby domestic cat!
• a lynx killing 10 sheep, 2 cats, a lamb, attacked chickens in a coop - paw prints as big as a person's hand.
• large wild cat prowling around the Tarporley town center.
• motorist sees a tiger prowling along the M56 (a motorway or freeway) reported on Twitter.
• lion on the loose in Chester city in 2013.
• whilst walking close to the river Dee a caller spotted a tiger who walked through a gate, looked at the caller and "sidled" off into nearby bushes!
• a cat the size of a panther outside the window.
• one caller saw a cat the size of a labrador (a popular comparison) prowling over a golf course. He probably did see a labrador! He insisted it was not a dog, however.
• a cyclist was stopped by a person covered in blood who said he had been attacked by a lion. Sounds like a case of the magic mushrooms.

Nine sightings of big cats were reported April 2011-2014.

Big Cat Sightings UK

"The head was similar to a domestic cat, but slightly bigger", says Mr Vine working up a tree 50 feet away. Here is another one of those mysterious big cat sightings UK. But look, guys, if a cat has a head a little bigger than a domestic cat it cannot be a big cat. The head of big cats is 5-10 times larger (estimated) than a domestic cat's head. It can, though, be a domestic cat that is larger than the type of domestic cat that Mr Vine is used to seeing. But big deal!

This latest UK sighting happened in Churchdown, Gloucestershire:


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This large domestic cat (I claim it is that) was jet black with a tail that "floated". The black domestic cat is very common. This one was jet black as stated. The purebred domestic cat with the most beautiful of jet black coats is the Bombay cat. See Bombay Cat PASSION. The Bombay, cat, though, is not the size of a Labrador (the size of the "big cat" sighted) but a medium sized cat. Also a Labrador dog is not the size of a big cat. These big cats in the UK are as rare as the Lochness monster. I would have thought that we would have had something more tangible by now. It's just the media, you know, creating stories out of thin air.

Big cat sightings

This is the first in a diary of big cat sightings. Every time I read about a big cat sighting I'll list it in brief in a posting plus a Google map. Over time this should present some sort of pattern in terms of location and type of cat sighted.

This one concerns a person who heard a big cat growl near Balcombe (Paddockhurst Road). Other people claimed to have seen the big cat. The cat was claimed to be like a ginger tom cat but three times the size. What does that conjure up? A cat 3 times the size of a domestic cat cannot be a big cat but a medium sized wild cat at best. Servals are about 3 times the size of domestic cats and they are tamed to be domestic cats. They do not look like domestic cats though; far more slender and "rangy" looking. Fast runners and high jumpers with long limbs and large ears. Other medium sized wildcats are the Ocelot, Fishing cat and American Bobcat but I am not sure that these cat growl like big cats. They make noises more like domestic cats.

Balcombe is in Sussex and is here:


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Big cat sightings in Sussex are not that uncommon. This is the latest.

Big cat sightings to Cheetah Habitat