Just returned from Victoria.Collected some more kill photos for our book.Interviewed some more witnesses and copied some interesting spoor.
What we find difficult, is discerning the difference between dog and cat prints in hard/lousy substrate.We know the difference in the prints in mud , if the whole print is clear.
But as so often happens, it is not always clear.
We are seeing dog like prints in the exact location a cat is being seen.
Or...smaller prints..where a very large cat has passed.
The monster cat..wobbling around on tiny feet is absurd.
Short film clip
Australian Big Cats – www.australian-big-cats
Short film clip here
More information about Australian big cats here.
Australian Big Cats
Australian Big Cats – www.australian-big-cats
Are there pumas in Australia.?
From all the reports we have studied and all the people we have spoken to, there appears to a good chance that there are.!
What is the proof.?
The only "proof" we have, is observations by farmers,hunters,police, newspaper reporters etc of large brown cats, that move/appear exactly like American pumas.
And the puma screams have been reported and taped in the same areas.
But....some of the large cats are reported to be black.
Now...melanistic pumas may well exist..but there is not one shred of evidence from the US that they ever have or do.!
We do not believe that " I have read of reports of black pumas on the internet" as any proof of their existence, just "proof" that people in the US claim to see large black cats.
Now, they could be misjudging jagarundi or seeing, down south, melanistic jaguars.
Who knows.
Some people claim that certain settlers released pumas for sporting purposes into the Grampians.
They may well have...but there is no proof anyone did, just conjecture.
The Deakin Study concluded that there was a breeding population of pumas in the Grampians.The major problem was that of their 4 best reports, 3 were of a melanistic large cat.
The other problems we have found is that the spoor prints are excessive in size compared to a normal adult, male puma.
How is this explained..well..there could be two species of big cats in Australia running around.
Thats worse than one undiscoverd felid isnt it.?
Another thing that is muddying the waters is that we have proof that super felis catus, the size of leopards are running around.