Big Cats: The Hidden Truth
By Dr. Claude de Curtains
Purrbeck College, London.
Introduction
Nowadays it’s all about having the latest mobile phone, but back in the 1960s it was all about having an exotic pet (Perry, 2002). Owning a leopard or panther was not only fashionable it was also legal.
You could even stroll down the street with your big cat on a lead and take it to the local park (“Look, squirrel, fetch”). However, in 1976 someone important decided that this was a bad idea.
The owners had three options: get a license, get a syringe full of nasty stuff from the vet or set the animals free; the latter option was actually legal until 1981.
It was considered that these animals would have no problem surviving in the wild and this theory is supported by the increasing number of big cat sightings in Britain over the last twenty years (Figure 1).
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A national survey recently recorded over 2000 unconfirmed sightings of big cats in just over 12 months (Bamping, 2004). Of these, two thirds were large black cats (melanistic leopards) and if confirmed, the British leopard population now rivals that of the Kashmir region of the subcontinent (Owen, 2004).
It has been suggested that Ian Fleming, the author of the famous James Bond books, predicted this big cat phenomenon back in the 1964, but his theory was mooted by scientists. It is believed that he named his leading lady Pussy Galore in the book Goldfinger as a silent protest.
Web pages run by avid cryptozoologists (people who study unverified animals) are springing up all over the place (but mainly on the internet). This survey aimed to re-analyse old data to test for a missing link in the occurrence of the big cat sightings.
Methods
Members of the public who were on record as having sighted a mystery big cat were re-interviewed about their sighting. Information was collated on time of day, date, weather conditions, grid co-ordinates of the location together with features of the local area.
In addition, a profile of the individual recorder was achieved with the help of criminologists, brought in for their expert knowledge of building profiles of dodgy looking people.
A Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was run because it sounded dead cool. We aimed to test the null hypothesis: There is no way any of these sightings were made up.
Results
A total of 274 people were interviewed concerning unverified big cat sightings. There was no regional bias in the distribution of sightings with 42% from Scotland, 49% from England and 44% from Wales. The sex ratio of recorders was 47 % female, 52% male and 1% from Lincolnshire. A selection of variables generated from the interviews are summarised below:
- 2% were dog owners
- 8% believed in the Loch Ness Monster
- 13% claimed to have witnessed a UFO encounter
- 9% believed England would win the next Football World Cup
- 17% had an Arts degree
- 63% of sightings were made in the fog
- 89% owned a guest house or newsagent within a mile of the sighting
- 97% of sightings were within 2 miles of a pub
- 80% said their cats preferred Whiskers
- 9% were students (of which 76% were pesky)
Statistical analysis split the data into two broad groups of sightings in the fog within 2 miles of the pub and sightings made by people who owned a guesthouse or newsagent (Figure 2).
Discussion
Officially the last big cat living wild in Britain was the lynx some 500 years ago, however, latest reports suggest that the British countryside is facing feline explosion.
The results from this study poo poo that theory and proves they were wrong and we were right. Our high tech number bashing indicates a strong correlation with both booze and financial gain, supporting the work of Room (2004).
Contrary to the Teddy Bears picnic (Kennedy, 1930), if you go down to the woods today there’s fat chance of a big surprise. The notion of big cats roaming around the British countryside is as laughable as it is ludicrous. Our study suggests the chances of bumping into a leopard in your local wood are 1 in 6 billion. You are three thousand times more likely to step in a dead hedgehog and stand an equal chance of being struck by a microlight.
References
Bamping, D. (2004). British Big Cat Society press release, 20th April.
Kennedy, J. (1930). The Teddy Bears’ Picnic. In: Brown, M (Ed.). Little History of the Teddy Bear. Sutton, 2001.
Owen, J. (2004). Leopards are prowling Britain, Survey Suggests. National Geographic News. June 3rd.
Perry, G. (2002). London in the Sixties. Chrysalis Books.
Room, R. (2004). The impotence of reason in the face of greed, selfish ambition and moral cowardice. Addiction 99, 1092-1093.
Editor’s note:
We regret that this paper appears posthumously. Dr. Curtains was fatally wounded in a freak microlight accident whilst out walking his dog.
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