“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 19th 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!
