The Fen Tiger

Cambridgeshire's Wildlife Breeding Centre

 

Here you will read our view in full, as we wrote it, not just the selected parts published.

For several decades now stories of the "Fen tiger", or some other big cat on the loose, pop up in the news every so often causing a bit of a stir. Whether it be from mysterious foot prints, animal/livestock deaths or sightings the story never fails to make the headlines, despite the expert opinions or evidence to the contrary. This page has been constructed quite quickly in response to recent events, we have much more to tell you to and will update this page over time with information to justify our opinion as to why there can't be a leopard, puma, lion or tiger living in the wild in this area.

We have been keeping all kinds of big cats since the late sixties, including pumas, leopards, panthers (this is just a melanistic, or black form of the normal spotted leopard), tigers and lions, so we have many years experience of behaviour and footprints! We have always kept an open mind about the animal called the "Fen tiger" which has become a bit of a Loch Ness monster. 

We have been called out to sightings, been sent photographs, film and shown casts of prints but we have never yet seen evidence to suggest there is such a beast on the loose. We could go on for hours with reasons why this creature does not exist. This Fen tiger needs to go in the Guinness Book of Records as the oldest living cat in history!! In the wild you would expect no more than about 12 to 14 years old.

Judge for yourself the similarity between this photograph of rabbit prints taken within our grounds to those shown in the Cambridge Evening News. Taking into account the advance melting of the snow in our picture, there can be no doubt that the pictures shown in the Cambridge Evening News on 12th January were those of a rabbit.

 

Picture taken within Linton Zoo of rabbit foot prints (with close up of individual print) showing size 5 wellie boot print for size scale.

Actual Big Cat paw prints taken at Linton Zoo

Adult lion paw print
Adult lion paw prints, note the defined digit marks and large pad indent.
Adult lion paw print, note the lack of claw marks, walking with claws out would quickly damage them. Claws are precious and need protecting.
Lion paw prints next to a size 5 wellington boot.

These pictures are of quite large lion paw prints, the prints of leopards and pumas are actually much smaller than you would imagine.

Note how close together the paw prints are, the pictures shown in the Cambridge Evening News are far to far apart. The prints should be spread, the animal described in Cambridge Evening News has a line as if only two legs!

A little mistake people make when trying to justify cat footprints is "it has claw marks", cats rarely walk with their claws out, they are very important tools for them and they need looking after, if they walked with them out they would quickly wear down to nothing, our lion prints show no claw marks. These so called claw marks are often added by the photographer to enhance the picture. Some photographs of prints are quite clearly made by humans but with not quite enough knowledge to get it right!!

Muntjac deer carcass found in May

A deer carcass found in May 2009, this has the appearance of scavenging smaller carnivores such as fox, badger, feral cat or all of these - definitely not a big cat!

 
This is most definitely not how a big cat would consume a Muntjac!! The bones would be gone and not nibbled around and one of the favourite bits are the liver, kidneys and other organs. It would most certainly have eaten much more and anything left would most likely not have been left in the middle of a field for others to finish. Leopards take their prey up high, so too do lions and tigers sometimes, but if there was anything left the carcass would most likely have been hidden in a hedge, bank, ditch or under a pile of grass and leaves. To give you some  idea; one leopard would easily eat a whole small Muntjac or at least half. All that we get left from feeding ours is the lower jawbone and sometimes the hooves!!

The Dangerous Wild Animals Act

In 1976 the Dangerous Wild Animals Act (official website) was introduced in the United Kingdom, back then it was highly fashionable to keep exotic pets often the more dangerous species. The frequency of which was seen as a risk to the public and questions were being raised about the welfare of the animals, as well as hybrids becoming more frequent between wild and domestic species such as Bengals and Ocicats.

The purpose of the Act was to ensure that when private individuals keep dangerous wild animals they do so in circumstances which do not create risk to the public and safeguard the welfare of the animals. Keeping such animals without a licence became unlawful and the strict guidelines were set as to where and how the animal is to be kept. The law also requires keepers to have their animals covered by a satisfactory liability insurance policy. Many species are covered in the act including many primates, large or venomous reptiles, dangerous spiders and scorpions and of course big cats and other carnivores.

The introduction of this act meant that many people who had animals included in the Dangerous Wild Animals Act were unable to keep their animals so had to seek new homes for them or face serious charges. This led to many animals being donated to zoos, moved out of the country, killed or in some cases just released into the wild - which of course is where we get some of the argument about big cats in the wild.

It is quite possible that some big cats were allowed to roam free in the countryside, however, this was 34 years ago. No cat however big or well looked after lives more than around 20 years, in the wild you'd expect somewhere around 12 to 14 years old.

Which leads many people onto the argument that the newly wild animals could have met others that were released, mated and have since started several generations of big cats. Anyone who has any experience of working with animals, especially big cats can tell you that there is much more to it than putting a male and a female together and bingo you get babies. Even within international breeding programmes where only small populations of animals are available for breeding and these programmes are run by extremely experienced and knowledgeable people there is potential for problems to occur. Inbreeding from small populations of some cat species can lead to gross deformities and infertility. The sheer number of animals that you would need in the wild to be able to viably keep a health population going, means that we probably should be seeing these animals or at least regular signs of them all over the place by now. One thing to consider is why the hunts and shoot beaters have not flushed out cubs (which are not streetwise) or adults from the safety of their cover.

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