Yowiehunters Forum

Otways video captures what could be big cat

OTWAYS' resident Connie Whistance claims she has proof big cats roam our bush after catching remarkable footage of an unidentified animal from her hand-held video camera yesterday.
Ms Whistance said she has been stalked by the creatures over the last two years, sighting them on numerous occasions on her property.
But yesterday's vision, taken near Binns Track on the edge of the Otway National Park, was the first hard evidence she had to prove to sceptics big cats were in fact prowling the region.
Ms Whistance said she watched the feline-like black animal wander around farmland about 500m from her home.
"It was there for a good 15 to 20 minutes," Ms Whistance said.
"It looked down like it was eating something and eventually it went back into the swampland."
Ms Whistance said she first spotted a big cat outside her home near Barongarook in April 2008, and was so paralysed by fear that she was eventually forced to move house.
Since then she said she has seen several panther-like creatures in various sizes and markings.

"(In 2008) the cat's and dog's behaviour had been erratic and they wouldn't go outside. Then one night I pulled into my driveway and I thought an alien was looking at me," Ms Whistance said.
"I didn't know what to do, it had these big green eyes."
The mystery of the big cat has baffled experts and residents in the region for years.
Despite hundreds of claimed sightings, the matter is often been fobbed off as myth.
In April 2009, a women told of a mystery big black cat issuing a screaming growl within 30m of her home at Kawarren, south of Colac.
In 2008, big cat researcher Simon Townsend blamed the death of 40 livestock in the region on roaming panthers.
Mr Townsend has since bought state-of-the-art camera equipment in a bid for elusive footage but the panthers have continued to dodge the cameras.
http://www.geelongadvertiser.com.au/art ... _news.html

Going by the fence posts in the background, it just looks like a biggish domestic cat to me, though the footage is so blasted jiggly it's hard to make much out. Good find, Mike, you must have a million newsfeeds coming in to find all these things - good job!

Shazz

I have no idea what it was, but I agree that's it's a very good find! I've always thought that those black ABCs in the USA were probably escapees (black leopards and black jaguars), but JMO, as I know nothing about them. Some researchers in the USA believe there are melanistic cougars to account for some of the sightings--again, I have no idea--and some of the sightings have surely been of dark gray jaguarundis. But those opinions would not apply to Australia, of course.

A good number of jaguarundis of both color variants have been seen on the upper Texas coast over the years, although officially, AFA I know, Texas Parks and Wildlife says they are confined to the Rio Grande valley. Chester Moore has taken photos and track castings in far East Texas. Many years ago, when I was living by the San Bernard River, what was claimed to be a "black panther" was witnessed drinking water from the river behind my house. On questioning the witness closely, the description matched that of a dark gray jaguarundi perfectly. But as for Australia--who knows, but fascinating!

Questions over Otway Ranges big cat video - ABC News 01/02/2010


Video footage taken in the Otway Ranges National Park at the weekend is being examined to determine whether or not it is that of a giant cat.
There have been unconfirmed sightings of a panther-like creature in the forest for many years.

Vision captured yesterday by a resident of the Otway Ranges appears to show a black cat-like animal walking through a paddock.

Mike Williams runs a website dedicated to Australian big cats and says the footage is too shaky to draw any conclusions.
"It's a large blue-ey animal that could be bigger than a domestic cat," he said.
"It's just really hard to tell. If the witness is quite correct with the observation it could be quite interesting and hopefully more video will come out of the same area."

He says 80 per cent of Australia's big cat sightings are generated by central Victoria residents.

Mr Williams says he thinks there is more than one breed roaming the State's forests.
"If I was trying to give you a hypothesis, the most simple one would be one species of cat," he said.
"But the problem is they're showing several different colour variations of coats. So I have been forced to say there is more than one species of cat, which makes it even harder for me to try and prove."

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Can't fool us Mike, where did you get the Cat suit....?

DMH

large blue-ey animal

What the hell...
I had trouble seeing its head..how could I have seen what colour its eyes were.. dopey journos..

Precisely how I first read it, then realized they meant 'Blue'ish'....

DMH

Yeah, Dean, that's how I interpreted it too - blue-ish in colour, similar to that of a Russian Blue or Burmese cat.... for what it's worth, some Russian Blue cats, particularly males, are really big. The people across the road have one called Galen, and he is much bigger than your usual domestic cat, his head is level with my knee, and he is LONG too. I've heard the Maine Coone is the world's largest breed of cat, but they are distinctively fluffy with large ears, ruff and ear tufts, nothing like this particular puss in the video.

Shazz

Hi Guys

Whilst travelling out to Glen Innes for work recently , on the Gwider H - WAY , just before the Gibralter lookout I seen an overly large but juvenile black cat cross the road in front of me when I pulled up to the spot it turned and rewarded me with a good look at it from a distance of approximately 15mts , its coat was brillantly shiny and black and its eyes appeared so yellow in contrast to its fur .

At first my heart skipped a beat as I thought I had a sighting of a big cat , although it was large for its size I felt sure it was only a domestic cat or a generation there of , it is amazing how animals respond to the conditions in which they live , I have been told by pig hunting friends out in the Coolabah region of nsw that if you were to let a pair of domestic white pigs go into the bush , then after 4 x generations their offspring would turn black and take on an almost completly feral appearence .

It makes me wonder the prospect , could a derivitive of the domestic pussy cat evolve into something quite larger than what its forebears started out ,with the need to be able to secure prey sometimes larger than itself I am sure that these traits would come to the surface and in some cases this could happen within a very short time frame .


I am deffinately not trying to discount any sightings but it just leaves me to ponder actually how big could feral cats become , it could explain some of the differing colourations that have been reported in the past . Any way just a little food for thought .


MY FINAL DECISION IS MAYBE ............

Al, that business about the white pigs' descendants turning black in four generations really caught my attention. With all due respect to your friends who have had the sightings of the black feral hogs, I honestly don't see how that's possible. But I know nothing about pigs except that they go "Oink, oink!" I just don't see how this could happen in only four generations, unless of course, it might be just barely possible that they each may have been carrying genetic material for the black color and it just came out. ???? If so, maybe natural selection kicked in and the black piglets were better adapted to hiding than the white ones, and were thus better equipped to survive in the wild. Or even that your friends just happened upon some unrelated black pigs in the same area and thought they had descended from the white ones. Or maybe the white pigs just turn black with aging! Don't ask me, I'm 99.99% ignorant about how genetics works. I just, from my sharply limited point of view, don't see how white pigs could turn black in a few generations. But it's sure an interesting account and I don't mind being mistaken. If I did, I'd be in hot water the majority of the time!

If we are using domesticated animals responding to their surroundings via genectic revision , is it not man who captured these wild animals and through selective breeding reduced the wild traits to suit their own purposes , maybe to simply , I deduce that current domestic animals must still retain some of the wild genes of their forbears , so when released or even abandoned as is the case with so many unwanted pets it has been well documented that the wild genetics will return through the lineage eg: a recent discovery chanel doco [ THE WOLF WITHIN ] stated that all dogs today could trace their genes back to the wolf , a little hard to phafom as I sit here now and observe my little staffordshire terrier watching me tapping away at this key board .



MY FINAL DECISION IS MAYBE ..............

How do we know when a sighting is a feral cat vs big cat, ferals are now getting so big as per darwins theory on natural selection, that only DNA sampling will give a definitive answer on true morphology, i am sure that these biggers are catching up to there big cat cousins, evry litter of ferals changes and adapts slightly every time, faster, bigger and tougher, the is now well and truly blurred between kitty cat and big cat, i have seen this first hand in my CSIRO days doing field work in the Boho State Forest in VIC, absolutly huge cat, took three magnum bullets to stop it, it took testing to confirm it was in fact a feral, i think the whole cat thing is an evolutionary experiment happening in real time and significant physical changes and adaptations in these animals are happening over relatively short periods of time.

having said that i do wholly support the existance of true big cats around this country

that only DNA sampling will give a definitive answer on true morphology

Bingo..instead of "just" mitochondrial dna samples we would love to get Nucleur to show the paternal line..for instance..if any of the asiatic golden cat family..were carried here as pets by the Indonesians in the far north who have been trading with Koori`s for gazillions of years..cross those with felis cattus..throw in some hybrid vigour and shazaam..large black and brown cats..

Or..
Aaron Fuller..who is a flipping genius and his ideas on chromosonal speciation events in one generation..he has also been poking Paleoanthropology and their ideas on the upright posture of "humans" for years with observations rather than theories..
http://www.uprightape.net/
Or
Robert Felixs book on speciation events and supposed correlations with magnetic reversal.
http://www.evolutionaryleaps.com/MENSA_ ... _Leaps.htm

OH Thanks Mike

This is litteraly a researchers "SMORGUS BOARD" so now I must feast .


MY FINAL DECISION IS MAYBE .............

AND.....AND..may also be an answer to the demise of some other species from the Australian mainland...ie: Thylacaleo etc

Wow, this has become a fascinating thread, and I checked out the links. However, I couldn't grasp all the info presented by the MENSA link, as I don't qualify for that organization, only for RETARD. The main point of interest to me was Topender's post about the big cats possibly orginating from feral domestic cats that grow to quite a large size. It sounds plausible to me, but I really don't know what to think, not knowing about how that works. But I've read reports of big cats in the wild in Australia, and I wonder if it might also apply to some of the ABCs here in the USA. Of course, there are genuine cougars in East Texas, even though they are supposed to be extinct there, and like I said, jaguarundis are much more widespread than they are told to be.

Al, your little dog sounds like a sweetheart!

Topender , Do you have any photogs of that feline you dispatched in the Boho state forrest vic ? even if they were shot on film there is a machine of some type available now that can read the negatives and then you can download the copies to the computer . I have not seen one of these but my 14 yr old tech savy daughter made me aware of their existance recently .. Iam a Dinosaur , according to her at least ..



MY FINAL DECISION IS MAYBE ..............

its the same problem i have with my camera once its zommed in to a certain point and since the hand moves all the time to a certain point it stuffs the footage up out of all preportian i believe it is a panther but there is no way to be certain