Beast Of Bodmin Moor

One of the most popular subcategories of current cryptozoology, particularly in Britain, is the investigation of what are known as Alien Big Cats, or ABCs. The word “Alien” here is meant to denote large felines that are “out of place,” rather than “extraterrestrial”—for instance, a common panther or leopard found somewhere that conventional zoology says it should not be. Fortean Times co-editor Paul Sieveking reported that ABC sightings have recently become the hottest topic of interest among the magazine’s British readers. Perhaps ABCs are popular because they are a more tangible quarry for British monster-hunters than American creatures like Bigfoot. And there are sightings aplenty. Around three hundred occurred in 1996 alone.

In the early 1990s reports started to circulate of ABCs in and around Cornwall, in southwestern England. Bodmin Moor became a kind of nerve centre of these sightings and reports of inexplicably slain livestock, and the alleged leopard-like felines of the region became known as the Beast of Bodmin Moor. Talk of dangerous wild cats led Great Britain’s Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to conduct an official investigation in 1995. The study’s findings, released on July 19, concluded that there was “no verifiable evidence” of exotic felines loose in Britain and that the mauled farm animals could have been attacked by common indigenous species. The report did concede, though, that “the investigation could not prove that a ‘big cat’ is not present.”

On July 24, less than a week after the government report, a boy uncovered a startling piece of evidence in Bodmin Moor. Fourteen-year-old Barney Lanyon-Jones, walking with his brothers by the River Fowey at the southern edge of the Moor, saw a strange-looking object bobbing in the river’s current. Barney thought it was an oddly shaped rock until he pulled it out of the water and discovered that it was a large cat skull. Measuring about four inches wide and seven inches long, the skull was missing its lower jaw but possessed two sharp, prominent teeth that suggested a leopard. The story hit the national press on July 31, a well-timed counterpoint to the official denial of ABC evidence in Bodmin Moor.

The Lanyon-Jones family turned the skull over to London’s British Museum of Natural History for verification. Dr. Ian Bishop, the museum’s assistant keeper of zoology, examined it and determined that it was a genuine skull from a young male leopard. But he also found that the cat had not died in Britain. Bishop concluded that the skull had been imported as part of a leopard-skin rug.

The back of the skull had been cleanly cut off in a way that is commonly used to mount the head on a rug, and there was an egg case inside the skull that had been laid by a tropical cockroach that could not possibly be found in Britain’s climate. There were also fine cut marks on the skull, indicating that the flesh had been removed with a knife, and the skull had begun to decompose slightly only after a recent submersion in water.

This was not the first time the skull from a mounted trophy had stirred confusion in the search for ABCs. In 1988, two teenage boys found a skull on Dartmoor that was never turned over for official study, but the witness testimony that the back of its skull was missing caused experts to suspect a rug-based origin. In 1993, the Natural History Museum identified a large cat skull found in Exmoor as part of a work of taxidermy. Doug Richardson, assistant curator of mammals at London Zoo, has suggested that a prankster may be planting these skulls on the moors intending to mislead their discoverers.

Sightings of the Beast of Bodmin Moor still continue. In October 1997, officials from Newquay Zoo claimed to identify pawprints left in mud to the south of Bodmin Moor as the fresh tracks of a puma. Soon after that discovery, a photograph allegedly of the Bodmin Beast materialized, which seemed to show’ an adult female—and apparently pregnant—puma. The photograph, never authenticated or conclusively debunked, remains controversial.

SOURCE:

Cryptozoology A to Z – The Encyclopedia of Loch Monsters, Sasquatch, Chupacabras, and Other Authentic Mysteries of Nature – Written by Loren Coleman and Jerome Clark – Copyright 1999

During the 1990s sightings of a creature known as the Beast of Bodmin Moor caused a sensation in Great Britain. Described as a large cat, similar to a leopard or puma yet of no known species, the beast was reported in and around Bodmin Moor near Cornwall, England, and in Cornwall itself, and a few farmers in these areas reported that some of their livestock had been killed by this animal. In 1995 the British government sent experts to investigate the situation, and although they found no large cat, they were unwilling to totally rule out such an animal being in the area. Afterward the sightings continued, and in late 1998 the footprints of a large cat were found near Bodmin Moor. Consequently, some people believe that Bodmin Moor is the home of a yet undiscovered feline species, perhaps in existence since prehistoric times. Skeptics, however, say that the cat is either the product of imagination or a puma or other known species of cat, perhaps let loose into the wild by a private collector of exotic animals. Although the skulls of large cats have been discovered near the moor, in all cases these have proved to be from the abandoned remains of animal-skin rugs or other types of taxidermy.

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