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Is there any evidence to support the existence of big cats in Australia? Peter, WA
There are certainly enough sightings to inspire one’s imagination. We meet with Tim the Yowie Man, a self described crypto naturalist, who has passionately searched for evidence of big cats for 14 years.
Tim says that there have been over 2000 documented reports of large cats roaming the Australian bush. However, the reports have generally been inconsistent.
We also interview Peter Mawson, the principal zoologist at the department of environment and conservation to ask him whether there is any evidence to support the existence of big cats in Australia. Peter says that there has been no one who has come forward with any physical evidence that suggests that existence of these big cats. Peter has no seen any of these animals being killed on the road, shot or come across any skeletal remains or even dung.
There are four main theories that try to explain the big cat sightings. The first is that a travelling circus crashed, allowing a breeding pair of big cats to escape. Tim the Yowie Man has researched this theory and has not found any evidence in support of it.
Another popular theory, but one that has been emphatically discredited is that the big cats are a descendant of the marsupial lion that became extinct about 50,000 years ago.
The third theory involves an always popular scapegoat, the US military. This theory dates back to WWII when in 1942, there were rumours that four cougars were thrown overbroad off a ship off the West Australian coast and swam ashore. There is no concrete evidence that those events actually occurred.
The final theory and the one that has the most creditability according to both Peter and Tim is that the big cats are in fact either large feral cats or feral dogs, and some may have a disease called mange-mite where they lost most of the fur and can give them the appearance of having stripes or patches.
You can never claim in the definitive that something doesn’t exist but some evidence would need to present itself before we can really believe in the existence of these cats.