NEWSLINK: Big cat spotted in Antigonish County, some claim it's evidence of a cougar presence

The Lands and Forestry Department is going to have a wildlife biologist investigate after a trailcam in Antigonish County captured a picture of an animal some believe to be a cougar.

The picture was posted online at journalist Andrew Macdonald’s site TheMacdonaldNotebook.ca and shows a large cat in a wooded area.

Typically, a trailcam is a camouflaged camera mounted on a tree or other structure and can be triggered by motion in front of it to capture photos of animals in the field.

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SIGHTING, R.O.I: Crosshaven cougar: "It walked like a cat but was larger than a labrador"

A local woman in the Crosshaven/Fountainstown area has come forward to say she has also seen the large animal reported by other people in the area in recent days.

Aoife Fitzgerald, aged 40, told the Evening Echo she did not believe the rumours that have been circulating about a cougar or puma on the loose until she laid eyes on the big cat close to Hurleys Woods on her way home from work yesterday evening.

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ARTICLE: Are big cats really on the prowl in Dorset? This wildlife expert certainly thinks so...

Bournemouth-based wildlife expert Jonathan McGowan is certainly convinced that they are.

He has been studying sightings for most of his life and says he has amassed lots of 'evidence' over the past 30 years including big cat paw prints, faeces, fur samples and territorial tree markings.

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NEWSLINK: After lion, tiger dies in City zoo

The Nandankanan Zoological Park in the City once again hit the headlines for wrong reasons after the death of another big cat on Sunday.

Four days after an African lion died in Nandankanan due to hemorrhagic gastroenteritis (HGE), a 10-year-old old tiger breathed his last in the zoo. 

Nandankanan authorities said the animal was undergoing treatment at the zoo hospital under the supervision of experts from College of Veterinary Science and Animal Husbandry, OUAT since the last six months.

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NEWSLINK: 64 teams formed to scan lions in Gir for any illness

Days after the death of 11 Asiatic lions, the state Forest Department on Sunday formed 64 teams to screen the entire population of the endangered species in Gir forest and other protected areas to identify any sick big cat and give them medical treatment. The samples of the dead carnivores have also been sent to Pune’s National Institute of Virology to ascertain if any virus caused the death.

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NEWSLINK: Tiger population doubles in Nepal

While the number of tigers in many countries is witnessing a decline, a recent survey led by the Government of Nepal has shown that the population of tigers has almost doubled in under a decade in the country.

According to World Wildlife Fund (WWF), an organisation dealing with wildlife conservation and endangered species, this news can help Nepal become the first country to double its national tiger population since the ambitious TX2, a goal to double tiger numbers in the wild by 2022, was set in 2010.

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CARL WRITES: 30/8/18 - Bonnyrigg, Midlothian

The Bonnyrigg "big cat".

Read the original story here.

The animal photographed by dog walker Paul Dunham, and published in the Edinburgh Evening News (30 August 2018), is of comparable size to a small leopard or puma, and seen standing in close proximity to a streetlamp, appears to be dark in colour, possibly black. Nevertheless, going by what can be seen in the hazy photograph, the general anatomy of the animal in question appears to be that of a canine rather than feline. This is especially emphasised by the presence of a relatively short, and very thickly furred tail; so thick in fact, that the shape of the rear leg is ill-defined from that of the tail in the image, and is too short to belong to either a leopard or a cougar. The latter does typically have a thicker tail; however, assuming the tail is completely visible, and is not turned away slightly and hidden from the view of the camera, it is too short by approximately 15 - 25%.

It does however, closely resemble a large fox, and the apparent dark colouration might also be genuine and not just a trick of the light, as melanistic foxes once had a rich folklore in medieval Britain, and have turned up from time to time both as a naturally occurring, albeit extremely rare mutation, and as hybridised animals bred for dense fur and as exotic pets (see my previous CFZ online article "The Sad Tale of the Black Fox"). Black foxes exist in far greater numbers in North America because they are not hunted so widely, whereas in Britain their pelts were highly prized making the genetic strain much rarer. 

Admittedly, the concave profile of the animal's back does look rather cat-like, but a fox that's just been startled, and is starting to to rise up from a crouched position will similarly arch its back, which I believe makes this feature unreliable here. Moreover, Mr Dunham claimed that "it never looked up or towards [him]", and that his dog was aware, and hyper-cautious of the mysterious animal, just as the animal was likely aware of the presence of his nervous chocolate Labrador. If the animal had stopped and looked directly towards Mr Dunham, I believe we would likely see a pair of large and alert looking pointed ears in the photograph. Moreover, a fox that has just been surprised will likely have its ears flattened back, which might suggest why these potential features are not visible in Mr Dunham's photograph. 

The basic outline of this creature appears to be canine as opposed to feline, and is likely either that of an average sized domestic dog breed or a large dark coloured fox, and the animal in the photograph as mentioned before is standing near (though not directly in) the beam of the streetlamp providing strong evidence that the creature is indeed black. Based on this photograph, if I lived in the area, I would presume that Mr Dunham and some other eyewitnesses might be seeing fleeting glimpses of melanistic foxes and would attempt to provide a testable hair sample. Providing sufficient evidence for melanistic foxes, that validate consistent eyewitness reports of a mysterious black creature, would be equally as relevant to cryptozoology as the discovery of non indigenous big cats, as the black fox (even though we are talking about a mutation as opposed to a new species) is obviously a true British species, and the melanistic mutation has bordered the realms of zoomythology and natural history for centuries. Put simply, the British black fox nearly ticks as many boxes for true cryptozoology as the British ABC phenomena! 

As far as I am aware the last natural black fox (a cub) recorded in Britain was videoed amongst the graves in a churchyard on the outskirts of Chorley in Lancashire in 2008, which is a rather fitting location for a creature stooped in historic superstition.       


I am unaware as to whether the corresponding reports in and around Bonnyrigg also describe a black animal, but wouldn't it be interesting if what was being consistently observed by respectable eyewitnesses was another distinct, and extremely rare mystery animal, almost as rare as mysterious big cats themselves - a true British black fox.