Tyger tyger burning bright

 

So I decided to fact check a stunning statement overheard on the interwebs with my new friend ChatGPT...

Is this a true statement: Tigers appear orange to humans because most of us are trichromats, but green to deer and boars which are dicromats. The tiger´s orange and black colors provide camouflage, helping it stalk hoofed pray like deer and boars effectively. 

Yes, this statement is generally true.

Explanation:

1. Human Perception (Trichromats):

   • Most humans are trichromats, meaning we have three types of cone cells in our eyes that detect red, green, and blue light.

   • Because of this, we perceive tigers as orange due to how their fur reflects light.

2. Deer and Boar Perception (Dichromats):

   • Many of a tiger’s prey, like deer and boars, are dichromats, meaning they have only two types of cone cells (usually sensitive to blue and green).

   • This limits their ability to distinguish between red and green hues, making colors like orange appear more like green or grayish tones to them.

3. Camouflage Advantage:

   • In a forest or grassy environment, greenish or grayish shades blend in well with foliage and shadows.

   • This helps tigers remain less visible to their prey, making them more effective ambush predators.

So, while tigers look orange to us, they likely appear greenish to their prey, enhancing their natural camouflage.

Is the tiger a trichromat or dichromat? 

Tigers are dichromats, not trichromats.

Like most carnivorous mammals, tigers have only two types of cone cells in their eyes, making them dichromatic. Their color vision is similar to that of deer and other prey animals, meaning they have limited ability to distinguish between red and green.

How This Affects Their Vision:

• Tigers can see blues and greens fairly well.

• Reds and oranges likely appear as shades of green or grayish tones.

• This means that while they don’t see their own fur as bright orange like humans do, their camouflage still works effectively in the forest.

Tigers, like other predators, rely more on motion detection and night vision than detailed color perception. Their eyes are adapted for low-light hunting, which is more critical for their survival than distinguishing a full range of colors.

Tigers in the snow

 

Can´t Americans ever stop mystery-mongering? LOL. Here is a "cryptid" I never heard about before: tigers in Alaska. Yes, Alaska. Or rather no, not really. There are apparently some Siberian tigers in an Alaskan zoo (see the funny comments in the commentary section), but what about the wild expanses of the Last Frontier? It seems the "reports" are a collection of hoaxes, April Fool´s jokes and fakelore. Yes, we´re talking about the pseudo-reality series "Alaska Monsters" and its tall tale about the White Death, a super-sized tiger supposedly stalking the so-called Alaskan Triangle (compare Bermuda Triangle). 

There are tigers in the Russian Far East - the previously mentioned Siberian tiger - but for various reasons, it´s highly unlikely that they could have wandered all the way to Alaska. Nor is it likely that an undetected relict population could have survived from some time before the Ice Age. One interesting fact is that tigers in Russia were detected by scientists using helicopters from which they spotted their footprints. Which by implication means that a "cryptid" can´t really hide from humans, if said humans decide to find it...

But if nobody is looking, who knows?

Still, it seems we can put at least this little mystery to rest.  

  

In leopard country

 

"The Leopard Rocks" is a documentary about leopards living in the Aravalli mountains of Rajasthan in northwestern India. I´m not an expert on leopards, but apparently the big cats in this particular region are unusually gregarious. They live in caves in the hills and supposedly never attack the humans in the area. 

The documentary tries to paint a picture of primitive shephards living in balance with Nature, but this is obviously a truth with some modification. The area is advanced enough to have a large dam providing water during the dry season, the lack of suitable prey animals for the leopards suggests human impact on the surrounding environment, and when leopards sneak into the villages to abduct and kill farm animals, the local business community pays the poor farmers money in compensation so they won´t hunt the leopards. Why? Because of tourism, that´s why. 

The balance around the Leopard Rocks seem very precarious.

Other highlights include Hanuman langurs (yes, they really do live around a temple on one of the rocks), the striped hyena (they, too, are gregarious in this particular region), the mongoose, peacocks, parakeets and antelopes. Frankly, the langurs and the temples were more interesting than the big cats, but that´s me!

End of reflections.    

Lesser known erythristic cats

 

"Good day, dear Sir"

I just learned a new word: "erythristic". Almost a crypto-word! 

Two lesser known Brazilian mystery cats 

Thomas Jefferson: Vampire Hunter?

 

Was Thomas Jefferson (who also served as US president) the first cryptozoologist, at least in North America? He collected stories about surviving mammoths, mysterious giant lions and lake-monsters in the American wilderness. 

None of these ideas were necessarily fringe at the time. I think the idea was that since all animals were created by God, divine providence would never let them go extinct. Ergo, mammoths must still be around. 

Jefferson wasn´t particularly credulous either, sometimes skeptically pointing out that some observations of unknown beasts were probably just mountain lions (cougars).  

Animalistic

 

 

This is so bizarre that I wonder whether it´s even real, or AI-generated. I mean, dude! But OK, the liger is real. I think. 

When Aslan met Bagheera

 

From the X account Legendary Cryptids: "One of the only known cases of multiple cryptids being friends are the reports of black panthers and maned lions in America traveling together. A pair were spotted near the Illinois Indiana border in 1948 and in Arkansas in 1977."

They say Aslan and Bagheera are on the move...

The wrong cryptids

 

This may or may not tell us something about American TV production. Imagine seeing and taping a possible lake monster while making a TV show, but the footage is never shown (or even mentioned) since the show is about...monsters in the woods?! Specifically Bigfoot. Yes, it´s an interview with James "Bobo" Fay from "Finding Bigfoot". 

:D

Also some speculations about black mountain lions in the United States and "the Eastern cougar".      

The Baskerville effect

Here is a topic I haven´t revisited for some time…

Yes, it´s time for the paranormal Black Dogs (and their equally dark-colored feline cousins) to enter the fray again!

The link goes to Darren Naish´s science blog Tetrapod Zoology, which occasionally dabbles in topics cryptozoological and Fortean, usually from a skeptical perspective (although it´s obvious that Naish really wants to find a cryptid one day, preferably of the fleshly and bloodily persuasion). Naish is positive towards a kind of heterodox naturalistic explanation, according to which certain features of the landscape gives rise to anomalous electromagnetic phenomena, which are then interpreted by the human brain as “freakin´ large black dogs” (or panthers).

WHICH IS PRECISELY HOW THE FAIRIES HAVE OPERATED FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS!!!

:D

This kind of natural explanation shades seamlessly into the more forthrightly supernaturalist take that the fairies are indeed of an electromagnetic nature, at least when they manifest on our physical plane of existence.

You already know my take, citoyen! 

Legend of the Black Dog

Cryptids and credulity

 

Credit: Martin Walsh, "The Zanzibar Leopard" blog

"Cryptids and credulity: the Zanzibar leopard and other imaginary beings" is an article by Martin Walsh and Helle Goldman, published in "Anthropology and Cryptozoology: Exploring Encounters with Mysterious Creatures" (dated 2017). I haven´t read the entire volume, in fact, I didn´t even know that cryptozoology had attracted the interest of mainstream scholars. Walsh and Goldman are skeptics, and regard cryptozoology as a rather naïve pseudo-science, a quixotic quest for animals that aren´t merely undescribed, but above all *unrecognized* by science (i.e. they might not even exist). In the opinion of the authors, cryptozoologists cherry-pick factoids from a broader context which may be better understood anthropologically. If a cryptid fits hand and glove in, say, a context of belief in witchcraft or ghostly beings, chances are that we´re dealing with an imaginary being from folklore, rather than an undescribed flesh-and-blood animal. This is doubly true of alleged ETs and other beings that sound too fantastic to be true. 

"Cryptids and credulity" is really a longer version of another text by Walsh and Goldman, "Chasing imaginary leopards" (first published in 2012). The two authors have spent considerable time at Unguja (Zanzibar Island), the main island of the Zanzibar Archipelago off the East African coast. Zanzibar is controlled by Tanzania. Their mission was to investigate alleged sightings of the Zanzibar leopard, a very real subspecies of the leopard. During the 1990´s, Western NGOs and conservationists became interested in the plight of this big cat, which had been hunted and killed by the natives with the tacit support of the local and national governments. Walsh, Goldman and other researchers assumed that the Zanzibar leopard was still extant, and local informants (including hunters) readily shared their stories with the foreigners. However, further research strongly suggested that the leopard had been hunted to extinction or at the very least to extreme rarity. Yet, people at Unguja saw them all the time! Very often, they claimed that a substantial portion of the leopards were kept by witches...

It turns out that belief in "kept leopards" is part and parcel of a complex lore centered on the realities of witches and witchcraft. The witches are said to own the leopards and control them through supernatural means, for instance by offering them enchanted food. Some leopards belong to witches´ guilds, but most are individually owned. The leopards are seen coming and going into certain houses. Both the cats and their keepers can be countered by powerful curses, but the witches have developed counter-curses and defenses of various kinds. The witches use the leopards to terrorize the general population, in a worst case scenario by letting the cats attack and eat people who fell afoul of the witch. Needless to say, there is zero evidence that kept leopards exist. It´s interesting to note that leopard-like spirits also play a role in the local folklore, perhaps suggesting that the boundary between paranormal entities and flesh-and-blood animals isn´t entirely clear. 

To Walsh and Goldman, we are thus dealing with culturally constructed narratives about imaginary beings controlled by other imaginary beings. While the Zanzibar leopard is (or rather was) a real animal, it also played a prominent part in folklore, so prominent that the lore still exists, despite the original animal being extinct! My impression is that the association between the leopard and witchcraft was one reason why people hunted and killed them. If so, it´s richly ironic that the belief in the evil powers of the big cat has survived the beast itself. (It´s almost a bit magical, so to speak.) The authors believe that the incomprehension of native folklore is the main reason why both Western and Tanzanian researchers constantly take the stories of kept leopards at face value, and go on virtual "kept leopard chases", always without finding anything tangible. The cryptid only exist in the imagination of the credulous cryptozoologist. 

Link:

Cryptids and credulity

Chasing cryptids in Zanzibar

 

Credit: Peter Maas

"Chasing imaginary leopards: science, witchcraft and the politics of conservation in Zanzibar" is a short paper by Martin Walsh and Helle Goldman originally published in the "Journal of Eastern African Studies" (November 2012). It was reprinted in 2017 in an academic volume titled "Contemporary Issues in Swahili Ethnography", edited by Iain Walker. The two authors of the paper have a blog called "The Zanzibar Leopard".

Zanzibar is an archipelago off the coast of East Africa. The main island is called Unguja. Zanzibar, a former British colony, is presently part of Tanzania. The Zanzibar leopard (Panthera pardus adersi) was a local subspecies of the leopard. Although the leopards were protected by the British colonial authorities, the Zanzibari natives hunted them anyway, since these big cats killed livestock and occasionally humans. After the 1964 Zanzibar Revolution, eradication of the leopard became quasi-official policy, and when Western conservationists became interested in protecting the animal during the 1990´s, they were either extremely rare or already hunted to extinction. (It´s intriguing to note that scientists have only seen the Zanzibar leopard in the wild on two occasions, both during the early 1980´s.) Walsh and Goldman, who carried out research at Unguja, believe that the Zanzibar leopard is most probably extirpated. 

There is just one problem. The natives keep seeing them...

The fact that Ungujans claim to know the whereabouts of leopards, including specimens in captivity, have led Western outsiders to assume that perhaps there still is a viable population of big cats on the island. It´s also a widespread belief among trained researchers hailing from Unguja. A number of researchers have experienced what the authors call "kept leopard chases", ultimately futile attempts to locate supposedly tamed leopards owned by villagers. The presumed owners often demand large sums of money to show their specimens, but in the end, nothing ever comes out of it. Attempts to persuade the leopard-owners to build miniature zoos where they can display the cats have also come to naught. 

Walsh and Goldman believe they have identified the explanation: the persistent belief in the survival of the Zanzibar leopard is a superstition, closely connected to ideas about witches and witchcraft. According to local lore, there are two kinds of leopards: wild and kept. The kept leopards belong to witches, who breed them in secret and can use them to attack and otherwise terrorize the village population. If I understand the paper correctly, the islanders were also scared of wild leopards, since nobody could know for sure whether they really were wild, or belonged to a witch. Hunters who shot and killed the (real) leopards had to have "magical protection" before embarking on an expedition into the forest. So strong was the superstition that the local government of Abeid Karume wanted to eradicate both leopards and witches at the same time! The non-existence of kept leopards neatly explains why the search for them always turns into a wild goose chase...

But why would anyone believe that the kept leopard are real flesh-and-blood "cryptids"? I get the impression that Walsh and Goldman believe that many Western researchers in Tanzania "go native". This is particularly the case with those who learn the local language (Swahili). Indeed, the authors seem to think that "going native" and adopting various "occult" beliefs is a persistent problem in anthropology! Another problem could be postmodernism (not explicitly mentioned), since the authors are critical of the idea that so-called "indigenous knowledge" has anything important to contribute to conservation efforts. Is "indigenous knowledge" a code word for native superstition? Of course, to a postmodernist this is presumably not a problem (the elusive kept leopards of Zanzibar Island simply being another Narrative), but to a conservationist NGO working on a shoe-string budget, it just might be! 

I suppose cryptozoologists might be somewhat disappointed that Panthera pardus adersi has been extirpated, ironically by the same people who still fear the power of leopard-related witchcraft, but then, finding cryptids outside Indochinese wet-markets have always been pretty hard. 

Link:

Chasing imaginary leopards

The real Jungle Book?

I didn´t know that "Wild Karnataka" was considered to be one of the most spectacular nature documentaries released in 2019 (or ever). In Sweden, it´s not narrated by David Attenborough, and has been retitled "Svarta panterns skog" (The forest of the Black Panther), although that particular big cat is only briefly shown. So I suppose I didn´t watch it in the right reverantial mood, lol. Indeed, the profane Swedish public service TV made an explicit connection to Bagheera from "The Jungle Book"! Interestingly, the soundtrack from the docu has been released, composed by Ricki Kej, an Indian environmentalist activist and award-winning musician who currently resides in Karnataka.

Karnataka is a state in southern India, and the documentary gives us a straightforward look at its wildlife, from the ocean to the monsoon forests. Animals featured include leopards, tigers, otters, dholes, wolves, monkeys, peacocks, crabs, and fish. And (of course) elephants! We also get to meet the myrmecophagous sloth bear, which does indeed have some similarity to Bagheera´s jolly friend Baloo. Some of the situations in "Wild Karnataka" are the opposite of what you would expect: an aggressive deer manages to chase away a pack of hungry wild dogs, while an otter family scares the living daylights out of a tiger! More typical is a leopard hunting monkeys (hint: leopards can climb trees). Personally, I wonder if the gigantic shadow cast by the elephant when seen from above is real or a special effect added later?

Perpahs I´m getting spoiled by spectacular nature documentaries, since Karnataka´s wilder sides didn´t move me *that* much, although I admit Ricki Kej´s music did give the production a certain "Hindu-Buddhist" meditative feel...

Phantoms will phantom

“Mystery Cats of the World: From Blue Tigers to Exmoor Beasts” is crypto-zoologist Karl P N Shuker´s classical work from 1989 about cryptid felids from all over the world. The book is interesting and fascinating, and if you can´t get hold of it, don´t worry, Shuker is still active and maintains a blog where he discusses many of the elusive creatures mentioned in this fine work. “Mystery Cats of the World” could be seen as Shuker´s attempt to write an exclusively felid version of Heuvelman´s classic “On the Track of Unknown Animals”. If that was the purpose, I say the author succeeded eminently well.

Some of the cryptid cats discussed in the book are probably just unusual color morphs of known species, including spotted lions or blue tigers. There are also reports of known species outside their “normal” range, such as leopards on the Indonesian island of Bali. More contentious are claims about black cougars in the eastern part of the United States – here, both the color and the range are wrong! Other creatures discussed by Shuker must be species entirely new to science, such as the Onza in Mexico, which supposedly has both cougar-like and cheetah-like traits. Still other mystery beasts sound too good to be true, such as surviving saber-toothed cats or marsupial lions. Shuker has also included reports that straddle the paranormal, although he of course believes they are about real animals. The Alien Big Cats or ABCs – often black panthers – showing up in the UK, the US and Australia are cases in point. Pack-hunting felids in the Amazon (which nobody has actually seen, although their screams scare the living day lights out of the Natives) or aquatic jaguar-like creatures in Paraguay also sound folkloric rather than really real.

While the material in “Mystery Cats” is interesting, I must say that I´ve become more negative towards crypto-zoology lately. As already indicated, most of the phantom cats discussed in Shuker´s book from 1989 are *still* discussed by the very same author on his blog 30 years later, suggesting that very little has changed. The phantoms are still phantoms. Note also that many of the mystery felines have been "seen" by eye-witnesses since before World War II. It seems extremely unlikely to the present reviewer that dozens of big cat species are still unaccounted for after 100 years, bearing in mind the encroachments on nature by humans during the same period, not to mention all the scientific and non-scientific expeditions to various remote corners of the globe. Even specific attempts to catch a cryptid cat have failed – such as the hunt for the Exmoor Beast organized by the British Marines. Nor has there been any road kills on American highways or bush meat specimens at Vietnamese markets. Of all the dozens or so cryptid forms described in Shuker´s book, it seems that only one has been confirmed by science: the Kellas cat, which turned out to be a hybrid between Scottish wildcats and domestics. The Onza specimen reported in the book was just an unnaturally gracile cougar (proven by DNA tests). The author may not like it, but misidentification *is* much more likely in many cases than the specimen being a truly new species.

People see strange things all the time, including things which simply cannot be real. The peasants in the Swedish province of Småland encountered impossibly large snakes and dragons during the latter half of the 19^th century in areas which were apparently inhabited by humans. Of course, we know that no such creature ever existed. Some of them *can´t* be real, anymore than the Jersey Devil (see my review of “Om Draken eller Lindormen” by Hyltén-Cavallius). In the same way, we know that many of the tales collected in “Strange Creatures Seldom Seen” (also reviewed by me on this blog) can´t be true either, and so on. How likely is it that a breeding population of black panthers have survived in the UK for generations without the authorities (who have been *looking for it*, remember?) being able to apprehend a single one? The only way to save the appearances in this case is to postulate that many of the cryptids are really paranormal entities. Maybe they are, but that´s an entirely different proposition (and entirely different discussion) than the one we´re conducting right now…

My prediction is that “Mystery Cats of the World” will feel just as fresh in another 30 years - since exactly the same Alien Big Cats will still be at large. But sure, I could be wrong. The timeline *is* strange, so if we´re really lucky, perhaps a blue tiger or surviving saber-tooth will soon be apprehended somewhere in Suburbia. Probably by Donald Trump!

The phantom panther

Phantom cats (a.k.a. Alien Big Cats or ABCs) is one of the more curious paranormal phenomena I've encountered in the Fortean and cryptozoological literature. It seems that big cats, usually black in colour, are spotted all over the world: from peaceful Little England to the hills of Australia, these mystery felines which aren't supposed to exist keep insisting on showing themselves. As usual, there is very little physical evidence for the creature, except a string of cattle killings and even attacks on humans attributed to the alien black beast. In contrast to other ghost stories, this one has been taken seriously enough by at least the British authorities. The British Marines were once sent out to capture the elusive Beast of Exmoor, without much success. On the web, I've seen the inevitable conspiracy theorists blame the government for hiding the truth (in this case, the Australian one).

"Lions in the Backyard" is an episode of the never-ending U.S. TV series "MonsterQuest". The series is usually extremely boring and slow-paced, but this episode struck some kind of chord in yours truly. All over the United States, people report seeing black panthers, including in states where no big cats are supposed to thrive: Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Maryland...

A game warden charged with keeping track of cougars reveals that only one out of five calls from the public are about real cougars. All the rest are about black panthers! However, no black cougars are known to science, although the mutation is theoretically possible. Black jaguars are another possibility, since the jaguar is on the verge of re-establishing itself in the United States. However, the reports of marauding panthers are just too many to be explained by the small jaguar population in Arizona.

"MonsterQuest" interviews a rancher who is slowly descending into paranoia, claiming that the panther "knows when I'm here, when I'm not, what time I feed the animals, where I'm working at...I carry a rifle wherever I'm at". His livestock has been attacked, but the experts believe that attacks of this type are the work of coyotes, feral dogs or even large pet dogs roaming at night (sic - somebody should get his dog license revoked). However, when the rancher goes public with his concerns, both neighbours and a lot of other people send in reports about...panthers.

And yes, this episode also features a llama attacked by an unknown predator. Another panther?

Unfortunately, only one piece of film of the mystery cat shows what may be a (young) big cat. All other photos of the elusive beast show black house cats! The purported carcass of a panther turns out to be a large domestic dog. Yet, the reports keep coming in, from all over the planet...

The interesting thing about "MonsterQuest" is their desperate attempt to find a natural solution to the panther problem. However, I think it's obvious that we're dealing with some kind of ghost story. Of course, that too raises a lot of questions!

Recommended. You can find the episode free on Youtube, or on the DVD "MonsterQuest. Season 1", available from Amazon. Thus, you don't have to buy this single-episode DVD, unless you are an anomalist aficionado with too much money on your hands. I also recommend "Tigers in the suburbs", which doesn't seem to be available on DVD at the present time.

The phantom cats strike again

A review of the MonsterQuest episode "Vampire Beast" 

This episode of "MonsterQuest" takes us to North Carolina and a small farming community actually named Bolivia. Sturdy guard dogs in the village have been killed by a mysterious creature, known in local folklore as the Beast of Bladenboro or the Vampire Beast. Apart from Bolivia, the bizarre creature (which looks like a dog but sounds like a tiger) has struck in Lexington, Greensboro and Bladenboro.

"MonsterQuest" eventually reaches the conclusion that the killer is a stray cougar, an animal not normally found in the Tar Heel State.

Maybe. And then, maybe not. Apparently, it's a common trait of a certain kind of ghosts to look like a cross between a black dog and a (big) black cat. The Vampire Beast doesn't seem to kill for food, but for sport. Also, one of the eye-witness episodes sound ghostly: in the dead of night, the creature supposedly exhumed the dead body of a dog, and brought it back to exact spot of the killing! Typical cougar behaviour? I don't think so, Mr. Hajicek. THE VAMPIRE BEAST WILL STRIKE AGAIN.

Addendum 23/11 2012. According to "Varmints" by Chad Arment, a mysterious carnivore sometimes described as dog-like, sometimes as feline, has been stalking North Carolina ever since the 1890's. It used to be called the Santer. Obviously, the Beast of Bladenboro and the more recent Vampire Beast are modern variations of *this* creature, the identity of which remains unknown. How many stray cougars can there possibly *be* in NC? And yes, the Santer also had a penchant for attacking sturdy dogs...

The varmints of Chad Arment

I admit I'm jealous of Chad Arment. His younger than me, yet has his own publishing company, and seems to both write his own books and publish some pretty cool titles penned by others! He's also on a first name basis with reptilians, amphibians and (gasp) hobby herpetologists. Less clear are his religious-philosophical commitments, since Arment claims to be interested in the "zoological aspects of young earth creationism" and is listed as a "Darwin skeptic" by Jerry Bergman, who is a...well, young earth creationist.

Apart from his interest in herpetology, The Managing Director Mr. C. Arment is an avid cryptozoologist, which brings me to this book, "Varmints", arguably some kind of magnum opus in the field. Strictly speaking, the book isn't really about varmints as usually understood, something given away already in the sub-title: "Mystery Carnivores of North America".

While the book does contain short presentations of North American carnivores, the emphasis is on cryptids, i.e. mysterious beasts unknown to science. Some of them might be real flesh-and-blood animals awaiting detection, but many others could simply be local ghost stories. Arment seems to regard the Lava Bear, Great White Wolf and Eastern Cougar as potential candidates for flesh-and-blood status, while being much more sceptical of the Great Naked Bear (sic), the Ranger Bear (which supposedly spouts a white star or crescent on its breast) or the Santer (a precursor to the Beast of Bladenboro).

Most of the book is really an encyclopaedic reference to sightings of mysterious carnivores, from the late 18th century until today, arranged in alphabetical order after the U.S. state or Canadian province where the sightings took place. For this reason, I don't think "Varmints" is of interest to the general reader, but if you are a folklorist specializing in local legends about beastly creatures, or a really hard-line cryptozoology buff, this could perhaps be a good addition to your private library. Those interested in so-called phantom cats might find the volume of special interest, since most mystery carnivores covered are of the feline persuasion (or quite simply unfathomable). It's not a co-incidence that the book cover shows the iconic black panther...

For the record, I bought the book mostly because I'm quite the character! I actually used it once - to check up some needed background on the Vampire Beast chased by MonsterQuest in North Carolina. As I suspected, the naturalist explanation "stray cougar" doesn't wash...

If that has something to do with the Mosaic revelation in the King James Bible, or with different forces entirely, is - I suppose - another story...

;-)

Mutant cats down under

"Australian Big Cats" is a Fortean book about the strange phenomenon known as ABCs, Alien Big Cats. (Note that the book title also spells ABC if abbreviated.) There are no native big cat species in Britain, Australia, New Zealand or the eastern United States. Yet, people in these regions keep seeing mysterious feline creatures on a semi-regular basis, sometimes connected to predation of livestock or attacks on guard dogs and pets. Often, the mystery cats are black, and hence referred to as "black panthers". In Britain, the phenomenon seems to be a straightforward ghost story, inviting folkloristic or even paranormal explanations. Are we to believe Michael Williams and Rebecca Lang, the explanations for ABC sightings "down under" might be more complex. But then, the colonies always are wilder than the mother country...

Sightings of big cats are relatively common all across Australia. The book features reports from Western Australia, Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales, including the suburbs of Sydney. The authorities consider the cat sightings an urban legend, but sometimes a scared public has forced at least token action from reluctant federal bureaucrats or the odd state premier. Williams and Lang consider the ABCs to be real, flesh-and-blood creatures, but if so, where do the big cats come from?

One popular explanation is that escapees from zoos, private menageries or circuses have established themselves in the wild. Real life exotic cats *do* escape from confinement on a semi-regular basis - the book reports several such cases, two of them in the same small town, Broken Hill (both lions). There is also the curious case of an African pygmy hippo (!!) shot in the jungles of the Northern Territory, a confirmed escapee from a private menagerie. It's certainly theoretically possible for big cats to establish themselves in Australia, but the problem with the phantom cats goes deeper, since they are spotted all across the continent.

Another popular theory is that the elusive felines are descendants of mascots brought by U.S. troops during World War II. When the troops moved on to Japan or elsewhere, they supposedly released their pet cougars into the wild, rather than shooting them. A touchy-feely story, and although the book shows a few photos of soldiers with lion cubs, there is no real evidence for a massive introduction of big cats during the mid-1940's. In fact, people spotted ABCs already before the war. It's almost as if one urban legend is being used to explain another. This particular story is common all across Australia, and also in New Zealand.

The authors of "Australian Big Cats" have come up with some intriguing suggestions of their own. They discuss the possible survival of the Queensland Tiger and the Thylacine. They also believe that feral domestic cats (of which there are millions in Australia) might have evolved into out-sized creatures. The idea of a feral tomcat being the size of a cougar or leopard sounds bizarre, but the authors have dug up three jumbo-sized cats shot by hunters. The Larry Beppington cat was 117 cm, the Alpine Man cat was 123 cm and the monstrous Kurt Engel cat was a whooping 170 cm and weighed 30 kg. The last catch is particularly hard to believe, especially since Engel threw away the carcass, but he kept a very long tail to back up his story. There are also some photos. I suppose it's *possible* that EVIL-ution might favour mutant ninja cats down under, but why haven't more been killed by hunters?

While Williams and Lang shy away from overtly paranormal explanations, some of their stories reflect the paranoia typical of UFO research. Witnesses have been threatened by mysterious agents, entire boxes of documents have disappeared, and the authors had to use the Freedom of Information Act to secure the release of some key documents, including letters to the proper authorities from wildlife inspectors supporting the existence of big cats.

There, the book ends, somewhat inconclusively. That being said, "Australian Big Cats" is nevertheless a good addition to the private libraries of Forteans or mystery buffs...

A daimonic sister

The author of "Mystery Big Cats", Merrily Harpur, is the sister of Patrick Harpur, the author of "Daimonic Reality". It shows. In many ways, Merrily attempts to apply her brother's spiritual-philosophical insights on the strange phenomenon known as phantom cats, phantom panthers or ABCs (Alien or Anomalous Big Cats).

All across Britain, people are seeing anomalous, feline creatures which simply shouldn't be there. Often, they are described as "black panthers". Sceptics consider it a piece of modern folklore, perhaps triggered by misidentifications of real animals (large domestic cats or black dogs). The British black panther would therefore be something similar to a ghost, an UFO or Nessie, which sceptics don't believe in either. Escaped exotic pets or a relict population of an unknown feline species are other attempted explanations. The British authorities (in contrast to American and Australian ones) often take the reports of "black panthers" in the countryside seriously enough to organize search parties. Once, the Marines were sent to catch the elusive Beast of Exmoor! So far, no Alien Big Cat has ever been caught.

Merrily Harpur strongly doubts that ABCs are real, flesh-and-blood animals. She points out that most reports don't match a known species of big cat. For instance, the ABCs are often jet-black, but with no visible spots - on a real black panther (a melanistic leopard or jaguar), the spots (rosettes) are still visible. Even stranger, ABCs which aren't black can come in all shapes and sizes. One eye-witness saw an anomalous big cat which looked like an enormous Siamese! Another reported a creature similar to a King Cheetah, an obscure subspecies of the Cheetah, not likely to be on the loose in Britain, not even as an escaped pet. Harpur also notes that virtually no regular leopards have been reported by eye-witnesses. Yet, in real life, regular leopards are much more common than black panthers, including in zoos, circuses and menageries. If the ABCs are escaped exotics, England's greenest hills should be littered with leopards, not panthers... Another interesting fact is that most ABCs until the 1980's were tawny, with the black version becoming dominant afterwards. This suggests some kind of cultural process at work, not an actual population of escaped big cats. The author has even found consistent reports of big black cats on the small Isle of Mull west of Scotland, which takes over an hour to reach by ferry. How did the panthers get there and establish a breeding population?

Other things also suggest that the ABCs aren't physically real. They have an uncanny ability to appear and disappear at will, run incredibly fast, jump incredibly high, disappear with no problem trough the thickest bramble bushes, etc. People attacked by phantom cats do have scares, but they don't match those of an actual cougar or leopard. Indeed, the real thing would probably have killed the witnesses, or mauled them beyond recognition! Other animals react in unnatural ways towards ABCs. Several witnesses have seen black panthers strolling around sheep, with the sheep not noticing anything out of the ordinary. Conversely, dogs often react to an unseen presence before (or after) the phantom cat shows itself. The reactions of the human eye-witnesses are also peculiar. While many are scared, many others feel privileged and awed by the jet-blacks mega-cats, as if seeing a numinous being. The Oz effect has also been reported. Witnesses with cameras handy forget to use them, and most photos of the "panthers" seem to show domestic cats. (A few are harder to explain away, including a bizarre photo of a *White* big cat!)

Merrily Harpur eventually reaches the conclusion that the phenomenon is paranormal or "daimonic", to use her terminology (borrowed from Patrick Harpur's book). After painstakingly looking for some kind of pattern in the ABC sightings, Merrily Harpur believes that the mystery cats are associated with railways, ditches, caves and golf courses (sic). She speculates that railways radiate yang energy, which is somehow balanced by the cats (which are yin). By contrast, mystery dogs are yang and associated with rivers, which are yin. However, in a later chapter it seems that Harpur gives up all attempts to classify the phenomenon, with the argument that the daimonic cannot be classified in the first place. The Anomalous Big Cats are products of the World Soul standing in between Man and the Divine, challenging our Imagination. They are both objective (out there) and subjective (in our minds). Indeed, the daimons are, in a sense, real creatures inside us... At this point, the book becomes about as difficult to understand as Patrick's "Daimonic Reality". Merrily is sure of one thing, though. By repressing the daimonic inside us, it will simply become more robust and perhaps more threatening on the outside. She ends by pointing out that mysterious black felines have been spotted in Germany, Netherlands, Sweden...

The daimonic reality is bursting through. Where it will all end, remains to be seen.

"Mystery Big Cats" is a good read, and recommended to cryptozoologists, folklorists, monster-hunters of all persuasions and even New Age believers.

Get over it, black panthers are real

"The Black Beast of Exmoor" is an attempt by "MonsterQuest" to come to terms with the weird reports of black panthers and other out-of-place big cats in the British countryside. The team travels to Exmoor, looking into the evidence for the famed Black Beast of Exmoor. Even the British marines have been sent in to find and kill the monster, with no success.

As usual, the episode ends inconclusively. Still, it's quite interesting - we get to meet eye-witnesses, one of the Marines, and sceptical big cat experts. Footage of purported black panthers is analyzed. Most show domestic cats, but the 1994 piece of film is rejected somewhat prematurely by "MonsterQuest" in my opinion.

If that's a domestic cat, it's a pretty large one! :D

Get over it, guys, England's greenest hills are TEEMING with hybrid black cats. It's a daimonic thing. I'm sure William Blake understands...

Girl pride Afrika?

"The White Lions" is a documentary following an unusual pride of lions in South Africa's Kruger national park. The pride consists of two females and their cubs, two of which are white. The male lion has disappeared under mysterious circumstances, making the all-female pride a target for marauding "nomad males" bent on killing the cubs. An additional problem is the high visibility of the white lions, making it difficult for the pride to hunt or hide from aggressors.

Yepp, this is "nature red in tooth and claw", and nobody is surprised that the story unfolds on an African savannah, with all the usual action featuring buffalo, hyenas, elephants, etc. I admit I was bored. I outgrew TV safaris long ago. However, there is a slight "feminist" angle to "The White Lions" which I suppose is innovative. The male lions are the bad guys, while the females desperately defend their outcast cubs. Girl power Afrika?

The documentary could be interesting for those who just love to watch charismatic mega-fauna, so I give it three stars, but I admit that it wasn't really my cup of tea. But sure, we need more girl power... ;-)