11 November 2023 , 18:43
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Jaw-dropping footage has captured the moment a "hybrid panther" was seen stalking through the Scottish countryside.
Gordon Welsh, 50, said he was walking along a road near Blackdog, Aberdeenshire, when he spotted the animal. The big cat spotter believes it was a mix between a panther, which is native to South America, and another species.
The beast, he said, was around the size of a greyhound – if not bigger – and was "well solid looking".
Footage shows the alleged panther limping down a hillside, before disappearing in the long grass at the field’s edge.
Recalling the sighting, he said: "I was just walking at the time and I’ve just seen it like limping – that’s what caught my eye. I was like ‘the hell is that?’ But then I was like ‘it’s nae a cat, it’s too big." Mr Welsh added that he had been a fishing and hunting guide, a deerstalker as well as a farmhand in the past, so he knew "the difference between a domestic cat, a feral cat and that cat."
Gordon Welsh, 50, said he spotted the 'hybrid panther' in Aberdeenshire (Credit: Pen News/Gordon Welsh)
Footage shows the alleged big cat limping down a hillside, before disappearing in the long grass (Credit: Pen News/Gordon Welsh)Gordon is one of Britain’s big cat believers, who claim that the UK has its own wild population, including panthers and pumas, and said that this is not his first encounter. He commented: "From the way it was moving, the tail size and that, it was slightly like a panther, but it could be a crossbreed. I’ve seen ‘em plenty of times, I’ve seen lynx, I’ve seen panthers, I’ve seen crossbreeds – they’re all over the place, trust me. To be quite honest with you, most will think you mad, but these things are out there, as a certainty."
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He found plenty of fellow believers after sharing the footage on a Facebook group dedicated to Scottish big cat sightings, where several people agreed on the species. One person commented "looks like a black panther”, while another quipped: "that’s no house cat". A third viewer wrote: "It’s clearly a panther, look at the size of it". Others, however, were not convinced, and suggested it was simply a larger-than-usual house cat.
But Mr Welsh is sure about what he saw, and believes the animal may have been attracted to the area by the abundance of local wildlife to eat. He said there is "plenty of deer" in the surrounding region, and smaller creatures including rabbits and foxes towards the coast. He added: "They would not bother humans, really. They’re more skittish of us than of anything else. He was only out during the day because he was hurt, or was just taking the path of least resistance across a park."
The existence of a wild big cat population in Britain remains unproven. While there have been isolated cases of big cats being captured, sceptics claim they were illegally-kept exotic pets that escaped, or were released by their overwhelmed owners.