Beast of Exmoor

koala · Site Admin Joined: 12 Oct 2006 Posts: 712

The Beast of Exmoor is a cryptozoological cat (see phantom cat) that is rumored to roam the fields of Devon and Somerset in the United Kingdom, slaying livestock at times. Most scientists and casual observers believe the beast to be purely mythical, but some natives of the area continue to insist today that they have seen the Beast with their own eyes.

Characteristics
Although there are considerable differences in the eyewitness testimony, the Beast is most frequently described as a feline creature, roughly the size of a puma, and dark in color. The Beast is said to stand very low to the ground, and to be somewhere between four and eight feet in length (from nose to tail), with the ability to leap over 6-foot-tall fences with some ease. No such cat is native to England.

Evidence
No physical evidence for the Beast's existence has been discovered; evidence for its existence rests on eyewitness accounts of sightings.

First sightings
Sightings of the Beast of Exmoor were first reported in the 1970s, although the period of its notoriety began in 1983, when a South Molton farmer named Eric Ley claimed to have lost over a hundred sheep in the space of three months, all of them apparently killed by violent throat injuries. The Daily Express offered a reward for the capture or slaying of the Beast. Farm animal deaths in the area have been sporadically blamed on the Beast ever since.

Eyewitness testimony
Eyewitness testimony has produced a number of different descriptions. Most eyewitness accounts claim the animal is a large cat, sometimes as large as a puma, other times as a panther, with jet-black fur. Others claim that the creature is either tan or dark gray. Some believe that there are more than one creature; perhaps, one is tan and one is black.

Photographic evidence
Photographs have been produced on at least two occasions and both appear to show a big cat with the features of both a puma and a panther. Sceptics point out that such photographs invariably show the animal without any objects in frame that might give an indication of its size, leading to the suspicion that the photographs are of domestic cats. 'Photo 2' is not very clear, and could well be a black dog, many say.

Government involvement
In 1988, in response to increased reports of livestock death and sightings of the Beast, the Ministry of Agriculture ordered the Royal Marines to send sharpshooters into the Exmoor hills—although some Marines claimed to have seen the Beast fleetingly, no shots were fired, and the number of attacks on livestock dwindled. Ultimately, the Marines were recalled from the field, after which the attacks on the local sheep allegedly increased. By 1987, the creature was connected to over 200 farm animal deaths. More recent attacks were reported in 1995 and 2001. The Ministry continued to study the problem into the mid-1990s, before concluding that the Beast was either a hoax or myth, and that the alleged sightings had been mistaken identifications of creatures native to the Exmoor area.

Explanations

Misidentification
Most observers and scientists believe that the sightings are merely of escaped domestic cats whose size has been greatly exaggerated, or else of large dogs that have been misidentified. The livestock deaths have often been attributed to these large dogs, although human attacks on the sheep have also been suspected.

Escaped pets
Although large cats are not native to England, some people have kept exotic animals, and in the mid 1970s this became something of a fad. It is inevitable that some have escaped over the years, and concievable that they created a small group of big cats living hidden in the Exmoor area's countryside. In particular, the 1976 Dangerous Wild Animals Act, which controlled the keeping of big cats (among other things) led to the mass release of many privately owned wild cats.

Hybrids
Some descriptions of the Beast attribute it the features of both a puma and a leopard. Although these animals have been hybridised by Carl Hagenbeck in captivity, the offspring were always found to be dwarfed and short-lived; one such hybrid is preserved in the Zoological Museum at Tring. The name for such a hybrid is a Pumapard. Because male big cat hybrids are always sterile, a self-perpetuating race of puma-leopard hybrids is not possible. The apparent mix of features is probably due to inexpert witnesses rather than hybrid origin.

The Beast in popular culture
The Beast of Exmoor is now seen by most locals as a whimsical fiction—St. John's Garden Centre in Barnstaple, for example, now features an animatronic leopard that has been nicknamed "The Beast of Exmoor".