British big cats

Uncommon card · No. 142979

In British folklore and urban legend, British big cats refers to the subject of reported sightings of non-native, wild big cats in the United Kingdom. Many of these creatures have been described as "panthers", "pumas", or "black cats". There have been rare isolated incidents of recovered individual animals, often medium-sized species like the Eurasian lynx, although in one 1980 case, a puma was captured alive in Scotland. These are generally believed to have been escaped or released exotic pets that were held illegally, possibly released after the animals became too difficult to manage or after the introduction of the Dangerous Wild Animals Act 1976. The existence of a population of "true big cats" in Britain, however, especially a breeding population, has been rejected by experts and the British government owing to a lack of convincing evidence for the presence of such animals. Supposed sightings made from a distance have been mostly written off as domestic cats close to the subject being...

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