Big Cats of Britain - Grizzly Documentary

our leopards and Pumas are largely unknown part of our British wildlife I certainly knew what I'd seen with thousands of sightings reported every year could these big cows be controlling our ecosystems they've actually started to control the deer population or could they be a danger to us all if we had cats like this in our countryside the air we would have a big problem grizzly is a video and animation company who produced mostly commercial content on the side we go and shoot or install the project's six or seven years ago I had a quite a strange encounter which I believed at the time was a black leopard knowing how much your brain can play tricks on you as always that question of what if it was just a misidentification so this is the boards of all the recent sightings that we have apparently in the New Forest National Park someone saw a panther with a deer in its mouth some of the sightings in Bournemouth area are quite recent multiple eyewitnesses accounted to Puma like animals around the boom of airport this was in the last two years we placed a few camera traps around some of the recent sightings one of the sightings was reported by Chris College this was only less than two months ago the security light was triggered below and I saw the animal that had come over the fence and I saw it go into the darkened area of the bushes down there and then it came along the path here very clearly to be seen into that area there and then disappeared over the fence and are you absolutely certain of what you saw yes I could definitely say it say that it was a panther Chris wasn't the only person to come forward on camera about their experience Angela from Somerset has had multiple sightings over the years there in the track we're standing in this beautiful shows down this black animal flat head foolish head drawn back high withers sloping top-line hindquarters a dog breeder would die for very good bone nice tight feet low deep chest and this long tail going I really was extremely stupid I didn't think it was a leopard because I've just didn't I was trying to work out what math it was anyway just walked off into the undergrowth so I wait dad wait was I let all the dogs off the leaves what was it can you believe it it may sound how to believe but the theory of where they came from stands up well during the 1900s so you could buy pretty much any animal that you wanted especially with shops like Harrods selling baby elephants alligators lines and leopards then the government realized that this wasn't very safe and in 1976 they introduced the dangerous wild animals act which stated that no person should keep any dangerous wild animal except under the authority of a license the owners now needed to face a choice between building and enclosure with the appropriate size temperature ventilation drainage and so on or they could just release their animals just as easily in carelessly as they bought them whilst most exotic species either died out or were captured it is believed that being such adaptable animals leopards Pumas and lynx were able to breed and live a quiet life in Britain's countryside [Music] we're here at the Exmoor zoo which is home to the only breeding pair of black leopards and they call themselves the home of the Exmoor beast we're here to meet one of the carnival keepers and talk about this whole phenomenon and meet the leopards ourselves pleased to meet you Jackson we have two levels we also have Puma here which is also in our British countryside I remember seeing a leopard probably the best part 15 16 years ago I was in a car literally in the gap in a hedgerow one of these guys was there and it stayed there and then it disappeared into the bushes you know and you know what you know if you've worked with them a very long time it's quite obvious what you're looking at a lot of the stories a lot of the folklore or indeed that just stories you know so you have to effectively separate the wheat from the chaff this is Zoysia this is the male he's hammering a cat so he does like human company this particular cat but don't get me wrong if you went in there he would kill you stone dead and wouldn't think twice about it but he is and there's a lot of teeth there there's a lot of bite pressure it's a phenomenally powerful animal that is to trigger a response I mean you can only imagine lions and tigers and thing that when they mean it when this guy means it the ground shakes this is not meant as anything other than hello blokes I know him yeah it's quite intimidating human casualties they will look for an easy target what do we have rabbit we have pheasant we have deer we have sheep we have good that is the target they would rather eat a couple of rabbits a day then go and tackle something which could actually hurt them because as being a predator if they're injured they're no longer a predator because they can't then go out and hunt for themselves during our filming at the zoo we were informed that another carnival keeper areand has an encounter with what she believed was a puma I was walking my dog one night a few weeks ago and it was about 10 o'clock at night pitch-black I just had my torch dog started going a bit crazy barking or something I shown my torch around assuming maybe it's just a fox or a badger and then it was amazing but at the end of my torch beam I saw this big cat just walk across the road and jump over the gate into the field from Carrie on his way there's loads of evidence around that they are about and now that I've seen it for myself I'm fully convinced it they're definitely out there in some places like Exmoor it seems almost common knowledge that big cats are living around us John McGowan is the go-to guide for big cats in Dorset and has been studying the animals for years he joined us for a podcast we filmed last year as big cats have naturalized they've actually started to control the deer population and now we're not getting those spikes in deer populations anymore they're coming now so it's actually showing that these top predators are doing their job in controlling not just deer but Badgers foxes has otters and all other animals that need to be naturally controlled as well back at the zoo Derek was helping us understand some common misconceptions when people go out don't be silly they can't exist they were to living in here but so many visitors that Park only ever see one because she blends in the obvious thing to state is they wouldn't behave like this oh no they'd behave like that she is very much how a leopard would behave which is been reared by a leopard if we had cats like this and I've hunted I'd yeah we would have a big problem but that is how a leopard would be creatures of the shadow steep very quiet very calm wait for food whack back into the shadows you're looking at an animal which comes from a diverse area naturally snowy regions rocky escarpment in certain in cities in India for instance they actually have a urban leopard also it's a massively massively adaptable cat it is the second most widely distributed cat on the earth the first one obviously the domesticated cat this is a next one down and that's quite a remarkable thing again it comes back to that same question we posed everyday to visitors why can't they exist unsurprisingly our camera traps didn't capture any big cats but the footage highlighted the abundance of food even in urban areas just as we thought the filming was finished I've got a call late at night from someone who told me that both my podcast guest Jonathan McGowan and I knew nothing about big cats in Britain he had told us that he's got this footage of a six-foot leopard he wants to just sort of educate us in his words about this case understandably I was eager to meet him there we met under the condition nor his face voice office age would be on camera there's a deer in the background now that's a 1844 you know 12th of June 10 minutes later I got this shot same leaping snails front of the tree and the great thing is you've got a deer looking straight at him what do you think I thought it was a deer yeah but then look at the swiftness of that deers neck there mmm at the same distance away that's us it's always reflecting that his shoulder where he's leaping up over the tree branch there's a little way that's is here so on reflection I should have challenged the footage more rather than try and be polite however my friend and I both thought the photographs quite clearly resembled a deer jumping across in front of the camera there is no surprise that there isn't any crystal-clear procedural photographs around considering how brief the encounters are the people have with them and also considering just how adaptable and how elusive the animals are it seems very plausible that these big cats are out there and so the questions that remain are can their existence be confirmed if so can their impact be measured and what action can be taken to protect both us and the big cats of Britain [Music]

Channel: The Biome Project

Views: 475,797

Rating: 4.7327766 out of 5

Keywords: video, animation, production company, production, Verwood, Bournemouth, Grizzly Productions, Grizzly, Big Cats, Exmoor, Panthers, Leopards, Black Panthers, Lynx, UK, United Kingdom, Big Cat Sightings, Documentary, Britain, England, Doc, Puma, Exmoor Beast, Exmoor Zoo, Cats YouTube, Big Cats In Britain, Big Cats in Britain Documentary, Short Doc, British Conspiracy, British Myth, British myths and legends, myths & legends, Conspiracy theory, beast of bodmin, rhoda watkins, rick minter

Id: yoVpm4yBcJg

Length: 10min 0sec (600 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 15 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/mackduck]

I’m holding off on this. I’m highly dubious of sightings around here ( North New Forest)- the Game Conservancy would have seen evidence, the Agisters etc etc. They’d have to be breeding and there would therefore be a slow population increase. Why also have none been shot, or found dead? No scat either