CARL MARSHALL: Big cat report (Cotswolds)

On March 2nd this year Richard Lamb, manager of Stratford-upon-Avon Butterfly Farm, was driving home alone from London. It was about 11:30pm as he travelled between Burford and Stow-on-the-Wold on the A424 when his eyes caught glimpse of a large, dark, feline shape standing still in front of a row of bushes that was parallel to the pathway on the left hand side of the road. The animal had adopted a low hunting posture or something had startled it such as the car. As soon as he drove past and realized what he had seen Richard slammed on his brakes, put the car into reverse and tried to get another look, but the mystery cat had disappeared into the darkness. If Richard had had a camera with him he would not have had the time to prepare for the shot.

Richard says that for the second or two he saw it he could make out the shape quite clearly and it was obviously a large cat, with its muscular body and stocky head, thick tail ending in a hook and small rounded ears. He eventually concluded that he had probably seen a medium-sized melanistic leopard. Note: Richard is very skilled at species identification, often spotting the most minute sub-specific differences between specimens of lepidoptera with relative ease, which is of course his speciality. But he is also extremely knowledgeable about the natural world in general and I personally trust his judgement. He also told me that he had taken other species into consideration as possible identities for the sighting, such as foxes, but finally decided to go back to his original suggestion as the animal he sighted moved and acted more like a felid than anything else.

What made him first look over was the green reflective eye shine as the panther stared into his headlights and paused for a second. Reflective eye shine in nocturnal animals is caused when light passes through rods in the inner eye structure. These act as light receptors as opposed to the cones that work as colour receptors; this means animals with more rods than cones to their eyes can see better in the dark, but a strong light source can distort their perception of colour. After light passes into the rods and travels through the retina it hits a layer of membranous tissue called the Tapetum Lucidum, which then bounces the light back through the retina; this is used to create more light for the photo-receptors enabling the animal to see more efficiently in low light conditions.

Richard believes that the cat he saw was probably black; however, it was 11:30pm and although he had the aid of his headlights there was little light so it may have just been very dark.
Richard also states that the leopard was smaller than the typical African leopard, which would be approximately twenty-five inches (63cm) at its shoulder. The male can be up to thirty percent larger than the female. Richard estimates the cat he saw was about eighteen inches (45cm) at the shoulder and probably just over a metre long including tail. He felt it was about the size of the Amur leopards he recently observed at the Cotswold Wildlife Park and theorises that the cat's diminutive size was either due to a poor diet or it was a sub-adult.

As a point of interest there is actually a Beast of Burford and the local animal park have indeed put out a reward for the animals capture. After phoning this animal park and speaking to a guy named Stuart, I was informed that the reward was put out about eight years ago and to date they have had no response to the reward, which is probably a good thing after all: as Neil Arnold advised me, if someone shoots at it and injures it, it could become dangerous, posing a threat towards man. Stuart did say there had been animal kills reported and also that he had personally observed a panther locally and that his observation could NOT be ignored or assumed to be a large black dog or domestic cat with no size perception against its surroundings. It has apparently also been spotted within the last three months on the Charlbury estate in Oxfordshire.

I suggest that the animal Richard saw was probably a juvenile leopard. The reason I am choosing this explanation over the poor health theory is because Richard claims he could see the muscular tones in the body structure of the animal and that it looked robust and healthy, with a stocky tail not looking emaciated at all.

One thing is for certain: if the reward was put out eight years ago and the leopard Richard saw was likely a juvenile then we must consider the fact that these big cats are probably breeding and producing viable offspring in the wilds of the UK.

I am now keeping an up-to-date record of sightings in the Cotswolds area.