Mysterious big cat caught on film!

[GrahamB]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/gla ... 172064.stm

[Darth Rock&Roll]

looks like a black panther to me.

cool.

hope it's caught instead of killed.

[GrahamB]

They've been sighted all over the UK for decades - nobody is going to either catch or kill them - they're too smart!

[Doc Stier]

Dammit, Graham!
Where the hell have you been?

Welcome back, man.

[GrahamB]

I have been cultivating my inner chi orbit. It was most fruitful

[Doc Stier]

I have been cultivating my inner chi orbit. It was most fruitful

Thank you for sparing us the sordid details. Much appreciated!

[cdobe]

Walks an behaves like a dog.

[DeusTrismegistus]

I saw a special on TV about the panthers in the UK. The story goes that back in the 50s and 60s it was popular to own big cats as pets and when they passed laws requiring permits a lot of them got released into the countryside. There have been sightings ever since which would mean there has to be a breeding population but no one has ever found solid proof. The show was cool and they did an experiment to try to prove that peoples perceptions of size at a distance without a reference object isn't reliable but it actually showed that people are remarkably accurate at getting the size correct.

[Darth Rock&Roll]

Maybe the hound of teh Baskervilles was a panther?

[GrahamB]

Walks an behaves like a dog.

I don't think that's a dog.

[Chris Fleming]

That's some heavy breathing from the camera man. Needs some endurance work,

[cerebus]

Well.... unless train tracks in the UK are twice as wide as those in the US, I wouldn't say that cat was "panther" size. Large for a domestic cat, maybe around the size of a Lynx or a Bobcat, though it didn't look anything like either of those. Maybe something different?

[cdobe]

Walks an behaves like a dog.

I don't think that's a dog.

These snapshots can be deceiving. There's more information in the movement. Look at the relative stiffness of back and shoulders and the clumsy way it steps. The tail is sickle-shaped and ventrally it has longer hair. It's carried in a dog-typical fashion. The dog is sniffing around with the head held horizontally or more towards the ground, following his nose and not his eyes.

[cerebus]

Watched it again with the "dog" concept in mind and it still looks like a cat to me...

[Darth Rock&Roll]

It's a cat. and a big one too!