FORTEAN TIMES PRESENTS MONSTER HUNTERS: IN SEARCH OF UNKNOWN ANIMALS - MY LATEST MAJOR CRYPTO-CONTRIBUTION

 

The front cover of the new cryptozoology-themed Fortean Times bookazine Monster Hunters (© Fortean Times/Diamond Publishing Limited – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Bookazines are increasingly popular and prevalent in bookstores and on news stands nowadays, constituting a handy publication format that, as its name suggests, is midway between a magazine and a book. They sell well too, which is why I am currently involved in what, if all ultimately transpires according to plan, will be a series of bookazines featuring various of my animal anomaly writings from down through the years – but more about that some other time.

Instead, this present ShukerNature blog article focuses upon what is to my knowledge the first UK bookazine concentrating specifically upon cryptozoological subjects, and with which I am extremely happy to be associated via my varied contributions to it.

Published by the UK's veteran strange phenomena periodical Fortean Times, its full title is Fortean Time Presents Monster Hunters: In Search of Unknown Animals, and contains 12 classic cryptozoology-themed articles published by FT down through the years. Some of these are the result of field expeditions, others the product of bibliographical researches.

Moreover, as its in-house cryptozoologist for over 30 years now, I was very kindly invited by FT to prepare not only a general introduction to this bookazine but also a concise summary/update for each of its articles, thereby fulfilling much the same role as performed by the late Arthur C. Clarke for each episode in his famous 1980s TV show Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World.

The authors and co-authors of the articles are: Neil Arnold, Loren Coleman, Edward Crabtree, Adam Davies (two articles), Richard Freeman, Martin Gately, Sharon Hill, Ruby Lang, Stu Neville, Todd Prescott, Benjamin Radford, Richard Svensson, Michael Williams, and yours truly (two articles).

To avoid spoiling the many surprises in store when you read Monster Hunters, I don't want to give too much away here, so I'll leave you to pair up the articles' authors with their subjects, but the subjects are: bigfoot, British mystery cats, Loch Ness monster, mokele-mbembe, Mongolian death worm, Nandi bear, Russian yeti, Scape Ore Lizard Man, Swedish lindorms, Tajikistan ghul, Trunko, and yowie.

All of the articles are reproduced here in all of their original full-colour glory, which together with my introduction yields an 80-page bookazine that surveys a vast, global range of cryptids in what is unquestionably one of the most engrossing crypto-compendia that I have read for a very long time. Consequently, I unquestionably recommend anyone who has an interest in mystery beasts, or knows someone else who does, to buy (at just £6.99 in shops, or online here at £8.25 including p&p directly from FT) this masterfully-compiled (and bargain-priced!) anthology of very notable crypto-creatures. I guarantee that you won't regret it!

To give you some additional ideas of what to expect, here is FT's own publicity blurb for Monster Hunters:

From the archives of FORTEAN TIMES, the world’s foremost journal of strange phenomena, comes a new collection exploring the world of cryptozoology – the search for unknown animals.

Join us on expeditions to far-flung Mongolia to find the dreaded DEATH WORM of the Gobi Desert, to the Congo in search of a LIVING DINOSAUR and to Tajikistan on the trail of TERRIFYING APE MEN. Explore the wilds of the USA on the track of BIGFOOT and the South Carolina LIZARD MAN, or venture to the marshes of Sweden to investigate sightings of GIANT SERPENTS. And sign up for closer-to-home hunts for NESSIE and BRITAIN’S MYSTERY BIG CATS, including the infamous ‘Essex Lion’. MONSTER HUNTERS takes readers on an exciting round-the-world quest to track the most amazing, elusive and sometimes unbelievable crypto-creatures. Plus, the collection includes an introduction and updates and commentary on each article by renowned cryptozoologist DR KARL SHUKER.

See also its own dedicated page here on my official website.

Finally: I mentioned above that I've written a summary/update for all 12 of this bookazine's articles, but due to reasons of space one of them had to be omitted – my piece for the Nessie article. So now, as a ShukerNature exclusive, I am including it here, together with the illustration (as seen in the bookazine) that it refers to:

Perusing this article, I noted two very different aspects that resonate with my own Nessie associations. First and foremost is his statement that "people can see the monster in anything". This is extremely pertinent, because just as I've documented elsewhere in this bookazine [regarding another cryptid], eyewitness descriptions of what they claim to have been the LNM are so immensely varied that it should be instantly apparent that no single type of creature is being reported. Instead, a diverse range of different animal species, plus all manner of non-living entities (boats, waves, atmospheric mirages, etc), have been sighted on the loch down through the decades but have been erroneously combined by media reports and others to yield a single impossibly-varied and therefore non-existent composite beast known to us all as Nessie. Having said that, some of the separate, component creatures that have been mistakenly united to yield Nessie may themselves be novel beasts – extra-large eels, for instance, much longer than officially-recognised specimens, and/or covertly-introduced specimens of the European giant catfish (wels). But what of the alleged LNM land sightings, where unfamiliar-looking beasts have supposedly been seen in their entirety? If genuine, these cannot be explained via a composite-identity theory, which is why they intrigue me so much, and deserve far more attention than they generally receive. This article's second aspect of personal relevance to me is its illustration of three people looking across the loch at a classic 'head, neck, and hump' Nessie swimming by. That very same illustration was contained in a book chapter that as a child first made me aware of the LNM – but that's not all. The book, Stranger Than People, published in 1968, also opened my eyes to many other mysteries, lighting within me the flame of fascination for all things Fortean that has burned unabatedly ever since [click here to read more by me re Stranger Than People]. So I have a lot to thank it for!

 

The LNM illustration in question, as contained in Monster Hunters (© Fortean Times/Diamond Publishing Limited – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

THE ISLE OF WIGHT MEGA-FOOTPRINTS – A CAUTIONARY CRYPTOZOOLOGICAL TALE

My cast of one of the set of Isle of Wight mega-sized animal footprints from April 1994 (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Here's a cautionary little tale for cryptozoology that I included during a lecture presented by me on modern-day mystery beast reports at the very first Fortean Times UnConvention, held in London during 18-19 June 1994. However, I've never previously documented it anywhere online – so it's high time that I did.

In April 1994, naturalist Martin Trippett from the Isle of Wight (a large island situated off southern England) informed me that a garden in the IOW town of Ride had recently received an unusual visitor. The garden had been freshly dug on the day in question by its owners, who then placed their garden rubbish in some bin-liners. The garden was completely enclosed by a 3-ft-high wall and its only entrance was via a gate, which they locked that night.

 

Showing what a bona fide big cat footprint looks like, here is a real lion spoor cast in brass as a (very!) heavy paperweight, placed alongside a ruler for scale purposes; it was purchased  for me by my mother Mary Shuker in South Africa, November 2008 (© Dr Karl Shuker)

The next morning, they found that some unidentified animal had been in their garden, ripping the bin liners to shreds and leaving huge footprints all over the freshly dug soil. The photograph opening this present ShukerNature article is of a cast of one set of those prints (later described to me over the phone by some IOW newspaper reporters), which Martin very kindly posted to me for my examination and permanent retention.

Measuring 4.5 in long and 4 in across, the prints had no claw marks at all, which ostensibly leaned towards a huge cat as an identity. However, when the casts were sent to me, I could see from the shape of the heel pad and the diverging placement of the toe pads that they were in fact dog prints, albeit from a very large and extremely well-manicured dog – so this is what I told the reporters.

 

Diagrams comparing dog and cat spoor – typical examples (click to enlarge for reading purposes) (© Trevor Beer – reproduced with his kind permission in my 1989 book Mystery Cats of the World and in its updated 2020 edition Mystery Cats of the World Revisited)

Inevitably, they were rather disappointed, as this dashed any hopes for them of dramatic headlines concerning giant cats on the loose. Nevertheless, they then confessed to me that they had actually been informed by the police that a Great Dane dog had been loose in this particular area for the past week, a huge breed that could very easily scale a 3-ft-high wall if it so chose (more details here).

All of which proves that however tempted you may be to give the media the story that it wants, regardless of your own personal opinion, it is not a good idea to do so. Cryptozoology has a nasty knack of coming back to haunt those who flirt with its favours.

 

Vintage photograph from 1910 of a Harlequin Great Dane (public domain)

 

THE IRISH WILDCAT - AN ENIGMA FROM THE EMERALD ISLE

Sketch of the head of a European wildcat Felis silvestris (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Unlike Great Britain, relatively few reports emerge from Ireland concerning mystery cats of the very large puma-like or black panther-like varieties. Yet this island is far from bereft of feline mystery - on account of the Irish wildcat. It was traditionally thought that wildcats had never existed in the Emerald Isle, but in more recent times fossil evidence has emerged to confirm that such cats did indeed exist here up until approximately 3,000 years ago (see later). Moreover, there is a sizeable albeit highly controversial archive of reports on file claiming that bona fide Irish wildcats have been actually been sighted right up to and including the present day. More remarkable still is that these reports of alleged Irish wildcats have suggested a closer relationship for these felids to the African wildcat Felis lybica than to the European one F. silvestris.

Some of the material in support of Irish wildcats stretches back centuries, interwoven with ancient Celtic mythology. For example, an archaic poem believed to date from the 9^th Century (translated by Eugene O'Curry and published by Sir William Wilde) tells of the Irish hero Fin mac Cumhaill being held captive by the king of Erinn, Cormac mac Art, who pledged to free him only if a male and female of every species of wild animal inhabiting Ireland were brought to him at the ancient city of Tara. The poem subsequently lists many different animal forms, including a pair of cats brought from the cave of Cruachain.

While on the subject of Irish mythology: in an article of 6 December 1941 in The Field, Irish writer Patrick R. Chalmers argued that despite the wildcat supposedly being unknown in both Ireland and the Western Islands, the warrior King Cairbar of Connacht was surely called 'Cinn Chait' on account of the pelt of wildcat that he bore on his casque.

This leads to another aspect of the Irish wildcat mystery. Chalmers's comments drew a response by letter from A. MacDermott, who maintained that this cat form has never existed in Ireland, and that in his own boyhood the name `wildcat' was actually applied not to any felid but instead to the pine marten Martes martes - an arboreal relative of the weasel.

Pine marten painting by Archibald Thorburn (public domain)

Compare this with information obtained nearly 50 years earlier by William Andrews, because he had discovered that the inhabitants of the remote glens of Kerry's western reaches knew of both the pine marten and an apparently genuine wildcat form. They even had separate names for the two creatures, calling the marten 'tree cat' and the wildcat 'hunting cat', thereby destroying MacDermott's notion that the Irish wildcat was nothing more than the result of an etymological ambiguity.

The usage of 'hunting cat' in Ireland relative to supposed wildcats was also noted within the mammalian tome of the Reverend J.G. Wood's three-volume Illustrated Natural History (1859-63), together with an anecdotal account taken from Notes on the Irish Mammalia by the well-known Irish naturalist William Thompson. After having noted on several occasions grouse feathers strewn near a water-break in his Irish beat, as well as a number of grouse corpses beheaded but otherwise undamaged, the gamekeeper responsible for that area set a trap and caught two specimens of what appeared to be bona fide wildcats, one adult and one juvenile.

Thompson had taken a particular interest in reports of alleged wildcat sightings in Ireland, notably in the mountains of Erris in the county of Mayo. He had himself seen a very large cat, weighing 10 lb 9 oz, which had been shot in the wild at Shane's Castle park, County Antrim. Apparently this specimen resembled the European wildcat in every way except for its tail (which was not bushy at its tip like the European wildcat's is) and its fur (which was of a finer texture). Consequently, when the Larne Journal reported in February 1839 that the wildcat occurred in Tullamore Park and also used to be found along the shores of Ballintrae, Thompson naturally sought out further details. He questioned Lord Roden's gamekeeper, who informed him that he had never seen wildcats in Ireland.

All through his researches, Thompson encountered similar conflicts of opinion on this subject, and even his own ultimate conclusion is somewhat paradoxical. Even though he never became entirely convinced (at least not in print) of the wildcat's occurrence here, after comparing the Shane's Castle specimen with two Scottish wildcats Thompson nonetheless offered the opinion that it was probably a wildcat x domestic cat hybrid. Needless to say, however, in order for a wildcat hybrid to occur in Ireland, there must be pure-bred wildcats there in the first place.

William Thompson (left) and the Reverend J.G. Wood (right) (public domain)

In his own Illustrated Natural History, Wood mentioned that William H. Maxwell's book Wild Sports of the West (1838) contained several accounts concerning a fierce, wild-living felid form in Ireland that was depopulating the rabbit warrens. Apparently, one of these cats was killed after a severe battle, and was, according to Wood:

...of a dirty-grey color, double the size of the common house Cat, and its teeth and claws more than proportionately larger. This specimen was a female, which had been traced to a burrow under the rock, and caught in a rabbit-net. With her powerful teeth and claws she tore her way through the net, but was gallantly seized by the lad who set the toils. Upon him she turned her energies, and bit and scratched in a most savage style until she was despatched by a blow from a spade.

Although certainly fierce, feral domestics do not normally attain sizes larger than their tame counterparts (although as noted elsewhere in this present book, in recent years evidence has begun to accrue that extra-large melanistic ferals may be responsible in Britain and various overseas regions for certain sightings of unidentified medium-sized pantheresque beasts). Similarly, in his own wildcat write-up, Wood did not attempt to ally ferals with the much larger and mysterious cat form typified by the beast in the above incident documented by Maxwell. In any case, both in Wood's time and in the present day, feral domestics are very familiar animals in Ireland, not likely to be mistaken for anything else.

In or around 1883, while shooting rabbits near County Galway's Annaghdown, F.C. Wallace sighted an animal that in his opinion seemed to be a magnificent specimen of a genuine wildcat. As no physical evidence was obtained, however, no formal identification could be made.

If the Irish wildcat controversy were ever to be resolved, it was evident that a specimen would have to be procured and submitted for official scientific examination. Such an event appeared, at least initially, to have finally taken place in 1885. For on 28 January of that year, English naturalist William B. Tegetmeier exhibited the skin of an alleged wildcat from Donegal at a meeting of the Zoological Society of London and subsequently permitted Dr E. Hamilton to examine it thoroughly. In the Society's Proceedings for 3 March 1885, Hamilton's report on this specimen was published - in which he unhesitatingly classified it as merely a feral domestic cat, and included excerpts from letters by earlier researchers interested in the Irish wildcat saga all supporting his own belief that the latter felid did not exist.

Dr Robert F Scharff (public domain)

Irish wildcat R.I.P.? Not quite - because a most unexpected discovery was made just a few years later that added a completely new dimension to the mystery. In the report of the Irish Cave Committee sent to the British Association meeting in 1904, Dr Robert F. Scharff announced that he had discovered amongst a collection of felid subfossil remains obtained from the Edendale and Newhall Caves near County Clare's Ennis, a number that constituted two distinct series, one small in size, the other larger, and that he considered the larger to be of wildcat identity. Moreover, in a short report published by the Irish Naturalist during April 1905, Scharff dramatically reopened the case for the modern Irish wildcat by stating that the position and nature of the bones found suggested that the felid was not long extinct in Ireland, and that it was even possible that a few specimens still survived in the western regions' more remote mountainous areas.

Scharff then went on to comment that, until then, it had always been assumed that if a wildcat did actually exist in Ireland it would naturally belong to the Scottish form. However, as a startling climax in his report, Scharff disclosed that the County Clare cave remains were comparable not with the Scottish but with the African wildcat, and that its tail was not bushy at its tip but pointed - just like that of the sizeable cat observed by William Thompson.

This complete turnabout in the tale of the Irish wildcat resulted in a series of letters on the subject by other interested parties appearing in the Irish Naturalist during subsequent months. Some received Scharff's findings favourably and contributed further news regarding the Irish wildcat; others were more critical and remained sceptical.

For example, R. Welch related an old fisherman's account originally given to Irish entomologist William F. de Vismes Kane concerning the wildcat's supposed existence in some numbers on the banks of Lackagh. Conversely, Robert Warren poured cold water on this report, arguing that if such cats were indeed so common within this wild and little-traversed region, then some representatives should still be there today. Yet as noted later by Scharff, in view of the above-mentioned similarity between feral domestic cats and African wildcats (both having tapering tails), perhaps they are.

Sleeping feral domestic cat showing thin tail tip (public domain)

Warren also attested that the finding of sub-fossil bones of a wildcat in Ireland did not prove that the wildcat was a native of Ireland. This was a quite paradoxical statement to say the least, which the editors of the Irish Naturalist were swift to point out in a footnote at the end of his letter of June 1905.

The following year, Scharff published his findings as a scientific paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Series B, describing fully the unearthed remains. Meticulous comparisons made by Scharff between these and specimens of Scottish and African wildcats were also included, and which demonstrated conclusively in Scharff's opinion that the Clare cave remains were indeed most closely related to the latter wildcat.

Similarly, Major G.E.H. Barrett-Hamilton, a prominent British-Irish natural historian, had planned to include historical evidence favouring this felid's existence in a forthcoming book on British mammals. Unfortunately, however, his untimely death in his early 40s prevented this data from being published.

Nevertheless, one would have expected Scharff's researches to have been of sufficient importance in themselves to have initiated a new surge of interest and investigation regarding the Irish wildcat enigma. Instead, the possible existence of modern-day wildcats living in Ireland is nowadays totally dismissed - but why?

African wildcat, showing its pointed tail tip (© Michal Maňas/Wikipedia – CC BY 2.5 licence)

In an Irish Naturalists' Journal paper of July 1965, Belfast-born wildlife authority Arthur W. Stelfox re-examined Scharff's findings, and offered a very different explanation for them. First of all, he considered that Scharff was too willing to accept anecdotal evidence of Irish wildcats unconditionally, and gave the Tegetmeier specimen as an example, which Scharff had used in support of their existence (even though it had been denounced as a feral domestic by Hamilton). And as far as the cave remains were concerned, Stelfox was convinced that a much simpler explanation than Scharff's was available for these. Namely, that instead of the smaller ones being domestic cats and the larger ones being wildcats, both sets were of domestic identity - the smaller being females and the larger being males (especially as the two sets were found at the same geological level and in the same mineralised condition).

Stelfox also noted that although one would expect remains of fossil wildcats to be associated with those of other wild fossil species of mammal in Ireland if it did indeed harbour wildcats at one time, no such find had been discovered. Instead, all cat remains known from Ireland had occurred only at levels where the bones of domesticated mammals had been found, and Stelfox reported that he had not uncovered evidence of any cat remains in Ireland dating back further than the Bronze Age.

However, this is no longer true, as revealed in an extensive Quaternary Science Reviews paper published in 2014, whose co-authors included Queen's University Belfast biologist W. Ian Montgomery and the University of Manchester's veteran British mammals expert Dr Derek W. Yalden. They disclosed that fossil European wildcat remains dating variously from 9,000 to 3,000 years old had indeed been discovered in Ireland.

Moreover, sightings of large felids not readily explained away as feral domestics have continued to emerge from Ireland. In 1968, for example, while seeking lake monsters in western Ireland, Captain Lionel Leslie and his team were taken aback when a very sizeable felid suddenly appeared on the opposite side of Connemara's Lough Nahooin (i.e. only about 100 yards away) from where they were standing. According to team member F.W. Holiday, who subsequently documented this encounter in his book The Goblin Universe (1986), Captain Leslie stated afterwards that he had never seen anything like it before. Dublin zoologists later contacted by Leslie concerning this were equally bemused - a suggestion that it might simply have been a fox was flatly rejected by the team.

Vintage photograph of European wildcat showing thick tail tip (public domain)

More recently, in their excellent book The Mystery Animals of Ireland (2010), authors Gary Cunningham and Ronan Coghlan noted that in May 2003 a very elderly man from Connemara named Francis Burke affirmed that wildcats had been reported here. He claimed that they were bigger than domestic cats and occurred mostly in wooded areas.

They also recorded a sighting dating from as recently as a decade ago that indicates wildcat-like felids (possibly even hybrids of original pure-bred wildcats and domestics) may still exist in Ireland:

In February 2002, Sandra Garvey saw an animal while driving at night at Knockfune (Co Tipperary) which shocked her so much she nearly drove off the road. She described it as larger than your average moggy with a very striking tail. It transpired that Mrs Garvey's sighting was not an isolated one, with eyewitnesses coming forth, including park ranger Jimmy Greene who spotted such an animal with its two kittens whilst patrolling the Slieve Bloom Mountains in Co Offaly.

Appended to this report in their book was a detailed drawing by Gary Cunningham based upon Sandra Garvey's description of the cat that she had spied that evening, and the result is a burly tabby-striped felid with a sharply-pointed tail that looks very like a bona fide African wildcat.

Even today, therefore, it would seem that with leprechaun-like elusiveness, the Irish wildcat continues to evade explanation.

Comparative illustrations from 1896 showing the European wildcat (top) and the African wildcat (bottom) (public domain)

This ShukerNature blog article is excerpted and expanded from the Irish wildcat coverage in my book Mystery Cats of the World.

REMEMBERING TREVOR BEER - FROM EXMOOR BEASTS TO WOLVERINES

Trevor Beer MBE (1937-2017) – conservationist, naturalist, cryptozoologist, artist, author, and a longstanding friend of mine (© Trevor Beer)

In June 2017, I was greatly saddened to lose one of my oldest and dearest friends in cryptozoology, when the award-winning Exmoor naturalist and veteran British mystery cat researcher Trevor Beer MBE, aged 80, passed away, following a short illness. Within the realm of cryptozoology, Trevor was well known and well respected in equal measure for his longstanding and outstanding Exmoor Beast investigations, his classic book on the subject, and his own significant, first-hand sightings of a very large black pantheresque cat on the moors, but in the wider world of Westcountry natural history he was an absolute colossus.

RIP Trevor, thank you for all of the exceptional work that you have done for wildlife and nature conservation down through many decades, for all of your delightful books and articles, and above all for your friendship, dating back more than 30 years. God speed, my friend, you will be sorely missed by so many souls, human and animal, but your magnificent achievements will live on forever as a wonderful testimony to you. If anyone wishes to seek Trevor's monument, visit Exmoor and look around, and there you will see it, on every side, everywhere.

Trevor at a book-signing session for his book Trevor Beer's Nature Watch (1998), for which I was delighted to write a foreword (© Endymion Beer)

Commemorating Trevor's life and works, I now have great pleasure in reprinting below, as my own personal tribute, an interview that I conducted with him on 8 March 1998 and which was subsequently published during 1999 in The X Factor – a fortnightly partwork magazine published in the UK during the late 1990s, running to 96 issues in total, and devoted to mysteries of a great many kinds (but entirely unrelated, incidentally, to the somewhat later  TV music talent show of the same name).

Back-cover X Factor advertisement for issue #79, which contained my interview with Trevor – and also my article re New Guinea cryptids (© Marshall Cavendish Limited – reproduced here on a strictly educational, non-commercial Fair Use basis for review purposes only)

Trevor Beer is a naturalist with a lifelong passion for wildlife conservation in his native Westcountry, especially Exmoor. He is a member of the Ministry of Defence's Conservation Group and is the Army Ornithological Society's Representative for Devon and Somerset. He won the coveted Gavin Maxwell Award for otter conservation in 1974, he owns a wildlife reserve in North Devon, and currently writes three regular nature columns for the Western Morning News, including his daily 'Nature Notes' and weekly 'Countryside Matters'. He is also the author of several books, including Devon's Mysterious Walks, Tarka Country, Poachers Days, and his most famous work, The Beast of Exmoor: Fact or Legend?

Trevor has been conducting extensive field research in the Westcountry concerning mysterious big cats for two decades, he can claim several sightings of such creatures, and is unquestionably Britain's most informed and respected field investigator of these animals.

(Above) An exquisite pen-and-ink illustration featuring a mystery black panther alongside various British dragon-related cryptids and legendary entities, which was very kindly drawn by Trevor specifically for inclusion in my book Dragons: A Natural History (1995).

(Below) This is the colourised, publisher-edited version, focusing solely upon the dragons, that duly appeared in my book (© Trevor Beer/Dr Karl Shuker/Aurum Press)

The X Factor recently chatted with Trevor at his home in Barnstaple regarding his views and expectations relating to the 'beastly' feline phenomenon with which Exmoor and the Westcountry as a whole have been synonymous since the early 1980s.

Q1: When and why did you first take seriously eyewitness reports of mysterious big cats spied on Exmoor and elsewhere in Britain?

A1: I first took seriously eyewitness reports of mysterious big cats as long ago as 1967, when reports of pumas loose in the Westcountry appeared in the Western Morning News. The puma stories did not surprise me too much, as I knew people in North Devon had them as pets, at least three being kept by separate owners in the Barnstaple area where I live - the chances of occasional escapes not therefore being too surprising. I believe puma cubs could be obtained for around £30 each in those times, much less expensive, for example, than pedigree dogs.

The face of a puma (© Trevor Beer)

However, from the early 1980s, following the now-famous, so-called 'Beast of Exmoor' tales, which included black big cats, I began my own investigations, simply because here was a new phenomenon, if you like - black big cats, as opposed to the usual, if varying, puma colours. My own first sighting of a black big cat, at Whitechapel, near the Drewstone site - which is the site that was made famous by the so-called sheep massacres in 1983 - convinced me that I was looking at a black leopard. And from then on I was rather hooked.

Trevor's most famous book, The Beast of Exmoor: Fact or Legend? (1984) (© Trevor Beer/Countryside Productions)

Q2: Do you believe that more than one species of mystery cat is being seen - and, if so, what do you think they may be, and how many different species do your researches suggest may be living in the Westcountry?

A2: I know there are both pumas and black leopards living in the wild on Exmoor and elsewhere in the Westcountry. I know that both have bred, with cubs seen on a few occasions. It is possible that a lynx or two are present in the wild too, and of course an Asian leopard cat Felis bengalensis was shot dead at Widecombe on Dartmoor in recent years. I also interviewed a fellow who told me he had released two jet-black African golden cats Felis aurata after they grew from cubs in captivity and became difficult to keep. From personal experience, I'd say two species live in the wild in the Westcountry for certain at present - the leopard (in its all-black, i.e. melanistic, colour form, popularly termed the black panther) and the puma. But there could be two or three other species.

A lampshade bearing several of Trevor's beautiful drawings that he prepared specially for me, including the Beast of Exmoor as seen here, takes pride of place upon my black panther table lamp - (Above) My lampshade; (Bottom Left) My black panther table lamp; (Bottom Right) My glass table with a black panther depicted upon its pedestal, and upon which my black panther table lamp stands (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Q3: Where do you feel that these creatures have come from, how long have they been reported on Exmoor, and how are they able to survive here?

A3: Mysterious big cats have been reported on Exmoor for many years, long before the Drewstone incident occurred. I think they have come from very old captive situations, including menageries, perhaps even from Roman times, as well as from the various acclimatisation societies in Britain and Europe in more recent years. We then have an added modern situation, whereby many people were keeping exotic pet animals from the 1950s and 60s to the present day.

I believe the Dangerous Wild Animals Act of 1976 also played a part, in that when regulations governing the keeping of such animals were toughened, so releases occurred. I see no problems in terms of the animals surviving. There is at present ample food in the wild. There are also thousands of acres of cover, including huge tracts of forest, and a climate that is quite mild for most of the time, certainly here in the Westcountry.

Sketches by Trevor's of the black pantheresque mystery cat that he saw at Whitechapel in summer 1984 (© Trevor Beer)

Q4: What has been your closest encounter to date with a mystery big cat?

A4: I've had many close encounters, from 30 metres to a few hundred metres. Just recently,  two of us watched a black leopard along a green lane. This was here on the Exmoor fringes, because there is a seasonal movement of these cats in the Westcountry, off the higher moors and high ground to lower-lying farmland during the winter. This of course makes sense, the weather being far worse up on the higher moors than in the low-lying farmland. In my most recent sighting, the animal became quickly aware of our presence, and disappeared into a copse to one side of the track we were all on.

Other encounters included the sighting of a puma in broad daylight, charging down across Exmoor's Challacombe Common, whilst I was leading a natural history field trip of around eight or nine people. The cat was running towards us, with its tail up, and veered away to disappear into a combe to the east of where we stood. Needless to say, I suggested that we ignore the animal and carry on with our field trip, and that is exactly what we did.

Ready to set off for the Westcountry in search of the Exmoor Beast with Trevor during August/September 1993 (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Two newspaper reports from September 1993 documenting my visit to North Devon at that time to conduct some field investigations of Westcountry mystery cats with Trevor on Exmoor and elsewhere (© (Above) North Devon Gazette, 2 September 1993; © (Below) Sidmouth Herald, 4 September 1993 – both of them reproduced here on a strictly educational, non-commercial Fair Use basis for review purposes only)

We now have no difficulty in locating and observing a big cat if we wish to, given two or three days in which to do so. The thing is to sit up in areas where you know that they are likely to be, or where they have territory, because they come back around to former sites, as a rule, over a fortnight or three weeks to a month period of time. So you should be able to work out, roughly, where a big cat might be within a few days. And of course, once you get a sighting, you're away.

I've grown very fond of them, and hope to continue my studies of their natural history this summer, and to film them in the wild - more to prove that they are not as bad as some suggest, and are merely surviving in the rather alien world they have been placed in by irresponsible owners. I have no wish to film them in locations which, by showing a film publicly or via the media, might give away their whereabouts.

Merlin (2008), a thrilling novel written and illustrated by Trevor that tells the fictional story of a black panther in the Westcountry (© Trevor Beer/Halsgrove)

Q5: In your estimation, how many individual mystery cats might there be presently living in the Westcountry?

A5: It would be futile to try to estimate how many individuals there may be in the British countryside, but I'd estimate between 12 and 20 such cats in the Westcountry, bearing in mind that even with a breeding situation, it is unlikely that many cubs reach maturity, and thus numbers will remain stable but are not likely to increase dramatically - a situation rather like that of the otter, one might say.

Trevor's beautiful painting of an otter (© Trevor Beer)

Q6: In your opinion, what would be the ideal governmental response to the long-running controversy as to whether mystery big cats really do exist in Britain?

A6: It is difficult to suggest what the government's response to the presence of mystery big cats and other carnivores should be. I do not think they should spend public money on removing them, unless they follow through with even tighter controls, including a ban on the keeping of such animals by members of the public. It seems quite wrong to me to trap, or more likely kill, the cats, yet allow the people who lost or released them to get away with it. Prevention is better than cure. I feel it is very unfair on the animals if this situation is permitted to continue, even should the present cats in the wild be captured. Without a ban, quite obviously the situation will simply continue.

Black panther illustration by Trevor, from his novel Merlin (© Trevor Beer/Halsgrove)

WHITHER THE WOLVERINES?

Trevor Beer has also witnessed in the Westcountry some specimens of what he considers to be another non-native species of carnivore - a giant relative of weasels called the wolverine Gulo gulo, officially confined to the northernmost reaches of Europe and North America.

He and a colleague were conducting a wildlife survey near South Molton, Exmoor, in early January 1994 when they spied two unusual animals running along a disused railway line. No more than 40 yards away, each of the creatures was 3-4 ft long with a very thickset body, bear-like in general form except for its long bushy tail. Its fur was also very dense, and dark brown in colour, bearing a paler horizontal stripe along each flank. This description does not even vaguely recall any animal species native to Britain, but it perfectly matches the morphology of the wolverine.

Two of Trevor's wolverine sketches (© Trevor Beer)

Other Westcountry wolverine reports emanated from St Audries, Somerset, in February 1994; and during the spring or early summer of that same year, a dead wolverine was apparently sighted beside a road at Wembworthy by Joanne Crowther, a photographer visiting Devon from London, who did not realise the significance of her observation until she later described the carcase to some naturalists. The Westcountry reports followed similar accounts recorded from Dyfed in Wales, and dating back at least as far as February 1992.

But where could wolverines, which are seldom kept even in zoos in Britain, have come from? At least as far as the Westcountry specimens are concerned, Trevor can offer a very thought-provoking explanation: "My enquiries have led to the likelihood that these wolverines may be escapes from fur farms in England, and wolverines of course are more likely to take sheep than cats are".

Another of Trevor's delightful wildlife novels – Old Red: The Story of a Devon Fox (2002) (© Trevor Beer/Halsgrove)

[During our countless communications by phone and letter down through many years, Trevor also mentioned to me a number of other mysterious creatures that have been reported on Exmoor and elsewhere in the Westcountry at one time or another; of particular interest to me were sightings of alleged phantom Black dogs, strange extra-large foxes or fox-like canids with grey fur referred to locally as hill foxes, and even a supposed (but never captured) escapee binturong – an exotic Asian civet often termed a bear-cat on account of its bizarre combination of superficially ursine and feline morphological features.]

ARE MYSTERY BIG CATS DANGEROUS TO HUMANS?

Throughout his many years of personal researches into the Westcountry's mystery big cats, Trevor Beer has always maintained that he doubts these animals pose a serious threat to humans - unless they are harassed or persecuted. He considers that the most sensible course of action to pursue in relation to such creatures is simply to leave them well alone, and not even to follow up on sightings. Indeed, as is so often true in human interactions with other animals, it is conceivable that the biggest threat is posed not by the cats but by people: "I must say it does concern me that some idiot, somewhere, will attempt to shoot one, and perhaps wound it, in which case the wounded animal may well then turn nasty".

As Trevor points out, it is not yet widely known but the police do have wildlife liaison officers now throughout the U.K. Hence he advises anyone who encounters a mystery big cat to report sightings to the police - "...or simply let the animal be. Never attempt to corner or trap it in any way is the best policy to adopt if you see one of these cats". Sensible words - so let us hope that they are heeded by everyone.

Endymion Beer, Trevor Beer, Trevor's son Robin, and I, at Wistlandpound Reservoir, Exmoor, during my very enjoyable week-long stay with Trevor and his family in Barnstaple, North Devon, during August/September 1993 (© Dr Karl Shuker)

At the present time of writing, Trevor's website Countryside Matters can still be viewed online here.

A gorgeous, highly-detailed illustration of a dragon that Trevor kindly prepared for my book From Flying Toads To Snakes With Wings (1997) (© Trevor Beer)