Phantom cat

Sightings of exotic big cats in Australia began more than 100 years ago. The New South Wales State Government reported in 2003 that "more likely than not" there was a number of exotic big cats living deep in the bushlands near Sydney.[1]

Since the 1960s, there have been many alleged sightings of big cats across Great Britain.[8] A 15-month survey conducted in 2003–04 by the British Big Cats Society gave the following regional breakdown, based on 2,052 sightings: South West 21%, South East 16%, East Anglia 12%, Scotland 11%, and West Midlands 9%.[9] Since 1903, a number of exotic cats, all of which are thought to have escaped from captivity, have been killed or captured.[10][11][12][13]

The blue, or Maltese, tiger, from common color terminology for cats, is a purported variety of the South China tiger, with sightings in Myanmar, China, and the Korean Peninsula. It is speculated that, if the "blue" genotype ever existed, it is now extinct due to poaching for traditional Chinese medicine.

In 1995, a big cat usually described as a lion (but sometimes as a lynx) was dubbed the "Beast of Funen" by numerous eyewitnesses.[14] There was an earlier big cat sighting from 1982 in southern Jutland.[14]

A supposed lion moved around Ruokolahti near the Finnish-Russian border in June–August 1992. There were multiple sightings. Tracks were identified by a government biologist as a big feline not native to Finland. The biologist was given police powers to capture or shoot the lion by the Ministry of Interior. Border guards participated in the hunt. The last reported sightings were in Russia, and there were reports that the lion was seen by Finnish border guards,[15] and that lion tracks were found in the raked sand field used by Russian border guards to detect crossings. The lion was never captured and the incidents have never been explained. One possible explanation could have been a railway accident of a circus train in Russia, where some of the animals escaped.[16][17][18]

In 2005, a black cougar was allegedly spotted on several occasions in a wildlife preserve,[19] but the animal, nicknamed Winnie, was later identified as an unusually large crossbreed between a domestic cat and a wildcat.[20]

Since the late 1990s, big cat sightings have been reported in widely separated parts of New Zealand, in both the North[21] and South Islands. There have been several unverified panther sightings in Mid-Canterbury near Ashburton and in the nearby foothills of the Southern Alps / Kā Tiritiri o te Moana,[22][23] but searches conducted there in 2003 by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry found no corroborating physical evidence.[21]

Phantom cat sightings in the United States should not be confused with sightings of jaguars in their native range in the states of Arizona and New Mexico while early records of North American jaguars show much wider distribution as far as Monterey, or cougars being sighted recolonizing the extirpated eastern cougar's former range in the Northeastern United States and expanding their range eastward.

In 2009, a black panther was allegedly spotted in the industrial area of Bommelscheuer near Bascharage.[34] When police came, the panther was gone. In the following couple of days, the panther was spotted all over the country. For a while it was alleged that a panther had escaped a nearby zoo (Amnéville), but the zoo later denied that any panther was missing. A couple of days after the Bascharage incident, it also was mentioned that although the police did not find a panther, they did find an unusually large house cat.[35]

The Pogeyan is a large gray feline known to local people living in the Western Ghats, India. Its name is derived from the local dialect, and means "The cat that comes and goes like the mist."[36]

• Introduced species
• Phantom kangaroo
• Winged cat

• Australian Big Cats
• British Big Cats Society