New DNA Evidence 'Confirms' Presence Of Big Cats In The UK Wild
Cryptozoology
Wednesday 17th, May 2023
It's been long believed that big cats lived in the wild of the UK but there has only ever been very grainy video footage or poor quality photos, but now there looks to be hard DNA evidence to 'confirm' big cats living in the UK wild.
A hair sample that was collected from a fence in Gloucestershire after a sheep attack in 2022 has reportedly come back with a 99.9% match to a leopard species, Panthera Pardus.
A forensic laboratory analysed the sample using mitochondrial DNS methods to ascertain the 99.9% accuracy.
The original investigation was started on the Gloucestershire farm in 2017 when a farmer found one of his lambs dead.
Documentary film maker, Matthew Everett got in touch with the farmer and visited the farm where swabs were taken and sent to Warwick University for testing but all came back with no results.
Further to this the jawbone of the sheep which had been killed was sent off to the Royal Agricultural University in Cirencester for analysis as tooth marks were found in the sheep's jawbone.
The marks in the jawbone cam back as potentially belonging to the molar and pre-molar of a big cat.
A second attack on the same farm in 2022 caused the farmer to contact Mr. Everett again, Everett said,
A hair sample that was collected from a fence in Gloucestershire after a sheep attack in 2022 has reportedly come back with a 99.9% match to a leopard species, Panthera Pardus.
A forensic laboratory analysed the sample using mitochondrial DNS methods to ascertain the 99.9% accuracy.
The original investigation was started on the Gloucestershire farm in 2017 when a farmer found one of his lambs dead.
Documentary film maker, Matthew Everett got in touch with the farmer and visited the farm where swabs were taken and sent to Warwick University for testing but all came back with no results.
Further to this the jawbone of the sheep which had been killed was sent off to the Royal Agricultural University in Cirencester for analysis as tooth marks were found in the sheep's jawbone.
The marks in the jawbone cam back as potentially belonging to the molar and pre-molar of a big cat.
A second attack on the same farm in 2022 caused the farmer to contact Mr. Everett again, Everett said,
"It was a large lamb this time, at least 35 or 40 kilos,"
"There were what looked like two canine puncture marks on the skin. At the time we thought well it could just be dog worrying, we weren't really sure. There was wool sprawled across the ground, as though some sort of struggle had taken place."
"We checked the perimeter for access points, and there wasn't any. But there was a wall that was very high where something could have jumped down quite easily. And that's when we saw the wool and hair on the barbed wire fence."
The lab that verified the big cat DNA have asked not to be identified.
