Large mystery animal

[jezer]

It certainly wasn't a badger, deer or muntjac. I've seen plenty of those, and they are easily recognisable.

[PDQ Mobile]

This spring at late evenng,in the car, on a single track lane between high banks I came upon a brown bearlike animal. It was a reddish brown colour and I got within 2 meters of it although It never really showed me its face. Just the other end.
It was large for a badger but I believe it was just that; an erythristic (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erythrism) badger!
It was remarkably bear like! And I really struggled to identify it despite being so close.

[iviehoff]

Most suspected ABCs turn out to be:

1) Ordinary moggies, but seen in a situation which confuses the brain as to the perspective and gives a false impression that they are much larger than they really are. Most actual photos that turn up are just this. There are also some quite large varieties of domestic cat, 7 kg is typical for a male Bengal type, and since they can subsist fine on rabbits (my ordinary moggy routinely catches and eats rabbits) they can become feral.
2) Large dogs or foxes (black foxes exist), again seen in confusing lighting/perspective situations.

Sometimes there is a real large cat there, but in nearly all such cases it can be clearly shown to be a recent escape from captivity - in practice this must be where they all come from. There are a surprising number of people trying to keep one as a pet. Due to the period in captivity, such animals are typically not able to hunt sufficiently to keep themselves alive, despite the surfeit of deer and rabbits in many parts of England, and are generally seen to be in poor health when a body is found or a capture made. For example the lion caught in Scotland and the lynx caught in London, and one or two road-kill carcases found indicate poor health. So I don't think they generally survive very long. Occasionally you get a spate of sightings then the dry up - probably an escape died in a ditch somewhere. It is implausible that they ever breed.

[Samuel D]

It appeared to be dark brown, and about three times the size of any fox I've even seen.

I’ve seen rats in the Paris métro system that match that description, but they’re unlikely to have made it to North Wiltshire.

[Mick F]

............ and since they can subsist fine on rabbits (my ordinary moggy routinely catches and eats rabbits) they can become feral.

Not too sure about that as a plain fact.

Rabbits are routinely brought in by Nellie our cat. She left her original home one spring, never to return. We know her original owner BTW.
Nellie subsisted on rabbits all that spring/summer and into autumn, but by the time she appeared at our front door, she was in a pitiful state. We knew who she was because we knew where she was supposed to live, but she wanted to live with us instead so we took her in and fed her up. Her owner was happy that Nellie was happy.

That was three years ago. She's still catching rabbits - one or two a day sometimes - and often brings them in through the catflap and eats them under our bed during the night.

Trouble is, by mid autumn, the rabbits are beginning to go below ground and rarely venture out and Nellie's food supply dries up.
Therefore domestic cats can't subsist on rabbits or any small mammals for a whole year, they need "A Levels in Cat Flap Studies" or find alternative sources of food.

Big "cats" can catch bigger prey and can indeed subsist though the winter. There's enough roe deer for instance running through the woods and gardens round here to keep them quite well fed.

[661-Pete]

I'm not sure when the Surrey Puma was last reported (I used to live in Surrey, but I never saw it...). It may have changed its territory and be ranging further afield.

[rualexander]

....... For example the lion caught in Scotland........

Which lion was this?

[tatanab]

It may have changed its territory and be ranging further afield.

Currently in Worcestershire
http://www.worcesternews.co.uk/news/144 ... t_attack_/

[iviehoff]

....... For example the lion caught in Scotland........

Which lion was this?

Felicity. Mountain lion rather than lion, I now realise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_b ... nd_remains
http://scotcats.online.fr/abc/photoalbum/cannich.html
It remains the only very large cat taken from the wild in Britain, ie bigger than a lynx, whose physical substance has ever been available for examination, dead or alive, excluding known short term escapes from zoos and circuses. As it notes above, there is clear evidence of prior domestication. There have been a few others, but they have been "medium-sized" such as lynxes.

Concepts such as the "Surrey puma" do not refer to a specific animal known to exist. Rather they summarise a collection of alleged sightings in one geographical area, often over many decades. As I said, most are misinterpretations due to situations resulting in natural optical illusions causing the size of the animal to be overestimated. Nearly all footprints are too small. Nearly all hair samples are shown to be fox or dog. Nearly all maulings of deer and livestock can be shown to be fox or dog. Foxes can look odd if they are melanistic, or suffering from mange: then you just need an optical illusion to get the size wrong.

[Mick F]

Look what the cat dragged in!

She obviously wasn't hungry because she didn't eat it.
Maybe grey squirrels aren't nice to eat?

[iviehoff]

Look what the cat dragged in (squirrel) ]She obviously wasn't hungry because she didn't eat it.
Maybe grey squirrels aren't nice to eat?

I'm sure they are fine to eat, you can find recipes for squirrel for human consumption. I'm impressed your cat caught a squirrel, they are extremely fast. It is the only locally common land animal of suitable size that our cat hasn't caught, to my knowledge.

Many domestic cats are content with the food you give them and only hunt for pleasure and giving you presents. It can be hard to know if they are eating their kills, or what proportion they eat, as they may eat them where they catch them, or take them somewhere they can eat them undisturbed. Our cat had brought in roughly 100 kills it left uneaten for us before I gained definitive knowledge it would also eat them, though we had some prior suspicions over rare occasions where we saw it with a catch outside that it didn't bring in. I gained that definitive knowledge because it happened to catch and eat a mouse just as I was watching out in the garden. It scooped it up out of a hole with its paw straight into its mouth - the tail was left sticking out for a few moments before it swallowed.

We now know all about it because It has taken to bringing rabbits into the house to eat them, presumably because it takes a while to eat them, fur bones and nearly all, and probably it doesn't want other animals that might be happy to take it from him disturbing him over such a tasty and filling kill. When I have thrown him out, rabbit in mouth, as I don't like having rabbits consumed in the house, can be very messy, he has taken it into the narrow gap (too narrow for an adult to walk down) separating our garage from next door's. But he also brings in rabbits for us, and shows no interest in eating those ones. But his own rabbits, the ones he wants to eat, he holds onto for grim death. To be fair, sometimes he eats half, or just the head, and leaves the rest for us. Head appears to be the best bit, in his view, he eats that first, ears, skull and all.

[kylecycler]

Maybe grey squirrels aren't nice to eat?

The last grey squirrel I ate was the tastiest, tenderest meat I've ever eaten in my life, if you can be bothered skinning it (and considering everything you've done to your Moulton, Mick, you can't kid any of us that you can't skin a squirrel! )

I used to have a whippet who would chase squirrels up trees. He couldn't actually climb, but his speed would carry him up to the first fork in the tree, then it would dawn on him that he couldn't get any further up, nor could he get back down. He would cling on, looking sorry for himself, until I climbed up and lifted him down.

Incidentally, we often see a bike with nervous handling referred to as 'squirrely'. That's just wrong - it's squirly, meaning it squirls - don't got nuthin to do with squirrels.

[Mick F]

Fettling a Moulton is similar to skinning a squirrel eh?

Nellie, our cat .............. I mentioned her up thread ............. catches and eats most things. Birds, mice, rabbits, more rabbits, things that go crunch in the night, fluffy things, more rabbits, spiders ............. and even a bat once!
Earlier this afternoon, she brought in a grass snake. Dead and half-eaten.

We find residue about the house ........... and usually under the bed. The squirrel was a first, and I don't know why it wasn't eaten. Maybe it was a present.

[661-Pete]

When your beloved Tiddles brings in a 'present' for you and dumps it on the carpet in a pool of gore, it's simply 'teaching you to hunt'. From the cat's point of view, you, the Master/Mistress, are its adoptive 'kitten'. It is showing you what's out there for the catching and what's good to eat.

If you chastise the poor moggy for the mess it's made, it'll simply think you're being a rebellious kitty. That won't stop it repeating the lesson, next time it's out hunting. It knows you've got to learn.....

[Samuel D]

This is why I don’t have a pet.