This is a “mystery cat” that needs more examination.
This isn’t like ol’ bigfoot.
This is something that could actually be in Florida, though I would bet that any of these cats would be derived from an introduced population.
Although we have records of jaguarundis in Florida from the Pleistocene, it would seem unlikely that this is a relict population of native ones.
My little quibble with this clip is that it says that these Florida jaguarundis might be the only ones in North America.
North America is everything from Panama northward, so there are jaguarundis in North America. And there are records of them in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.
For whatever reason, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission seems to think that it is impossible for jaguarundis to exist in the state.
However, this is the state that has so many exotic species thriving in its borders that it would seem more likely that a native North American cat would be able to survive there than something like a Burmese python.
But it’s well-known that South Florida does have a population of pythons living in its borders.
And keep in mind, that there are quite a few people in the US who own exotic cats.
In 2011, a serval was mistaken for an ocelot in Arizona. Servals are African cats that are fairly common in the pet trade in the United States. They are also commonly kept for hybridization purposes. The Savannah cat is a domestic cat breed that has some amount of serval blood. In order to keep the serval phenotype in the bloodlines, breeders still have to breed back to the wild species every so often.
A serval surviving in the Sonora Desert sounds a bit far-fetched, but as of 2011, there is at least one living there.
So I don’t know why a jagurundi in Florida is just so unlikely.
See related post
“My little quibble with this clip is that it says that these Florida jaguarundis might be the only ones in North America.”
I suspect that this is a bit of Yankeecentrism. After all, the only part of N. America that counts is the contiguous 48 don’t ya know.
In any event, it makes sense that Jaguarundis (and possibly some other small native cats) would be making their way to FL–there’s a huge suburban prey-base there for small predators afterall.
In interesting stuff. What is your take on the big cats supposedly roaming round the UK’s moors and woods?
I personally would take it w/ a grain of salt. If something like a black panther was roaming around in say the Chilterns or the Cotswolds I’d expect a lot of reports of attacks on dogs (a favorite prey of leopards in Africa.) I don’t recall hearing of a spate of such attacks, QED, they’re probably not what they’ve been reported to be. Most certainly, I’d expect to find spoor, scat and territorial scent marking in the areas where they’ve been reported.
It doesn’t help that the most seemingly plausible people can have their mind play tricks and there will always be a percentage of attention hungry bullshitters. People mistake ginger moggies for lions and abandoned soft toys for tigers, so mistaking a black cat for a panther at a distance is probably one of the more sensible mistakes.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2195116/Meet-owner-Essex-lion-Former-fitness-instructors-cat-sparked-Britains-biggest-safari-hunt.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-13491268
There was even one sighted about 3 miles from my house. Not that I’m worried as my Tibetan Mastiff is bred to scare leopards away – he-he! That’s right after I’ve eaten a hat. By the amount of sightings, there should be a breeding population that are the offspring of the ones supposedly released when the dangerous wild animal legislation was tightened up in 1976. You’d think with all the cameras and phones people carry about, someone would have found some physical evidence beyond grainy photos and far distant video with no size reference in the shot by now. The other “evidence” is either proved to be fake or would be easy to fake (single footprints, hair samples). We’re not in Africa here with large scavengers, where are the corpses or pugmark trails in the mud? In India, the leopards regularly stroll into town for a dog or child to snack on. These panthers are magical and telepathic as they only appear close to people with no cameraphone.
There’s even conspiracy theories about the police and DEFRA covering it all up. And the Daily Mail reckon they are out there. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1282333/Leopards-big-cats-ARE-loose-Britain–just-dont-tell-soul.html That’s enough to convince me they’re a figment of the mass imagination as if a Daily Mail journalist told me it was daylight, I’d have to look out of the window to check.
Quote from that last article: “He collects possible hair and droppings samples, makes plaster casts of suspected paw prints, and sets up camera traps, all in the hope he can prove once and for all that Britain is stalked by big cats.”
Does this sounds at all familiar? Could someone be preparing to produce a British clone of ‘Finding Bigfoot’?
As BCP said, in Africa and Asia these animals “regularly stroll into town for a dog or child to snack on.” Seriously, if these cats exist, where are the bodies, the stories of missing dogs and kids? Hell where are the hunters? Surely there are some local Jim Corbett wannabe’s that’d jump at the chance to bag a black panther.
If these stories were likely, I’d also expect that the locals would be up in arms, combing the woods with lights, guns and whatever they had to hand (kind of a modern day version of the old Frankenstein flick.)
Also, does anybody seriously think that two urban or suburban teens could outrun a wild leopard? If they saw a black panther, it was more than likely somebody’s illicit pet–hidden from public scrutiny but well-fed, semi-domesticated, and not inclined to go out of its way to chase teenagers.
What I can’t understand about the camera traps these fruitcakes set up is they NEVER catch anything out of the ordinary. Yet in the remote mountains of Bhutan, a team set up cameras and recorded tigers far higher up in the Himalayas than anybody thought possible. They also caught film of bears, snow leopards and several other endangered, low density species on the camera traps. If you get the chance to watch the 3 part documentary Lost Land Of The Tiger, I highly recommend it, but the link has some good footage.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8998000/8998042.stm
Yet the UK big cat enthusiasts can’t even catch camera trap evidence of panthers which are allegedly seen all over the place regularly by people in a semi rural well populated area. And why are they always black? Nobody ever sees a spotted leopard.
I don’t know about the UK, but my state’s DNR now says cougars are a possibility, though they will likely be Western ones moving east.
I agree.
I walk on Dartmoor most days (admittedly with a pack of dogs) and have never seen anything. Of course lots of people cite dead sheep ect as evidence but the truth is Dartmoor is pretty rugged and sheep die form none predators all the time. I personnel have rescued sheep from ditches, stuck between rocks and 2 stuck in a bog. If someone hadn’t rescued them they would have died and the foxes and ravens would have eaten them. This may have looked like they’d been killed and eaten by something else.
I didn’t know that about big cats liking to eat dogs. I have 7 atm but only two of mine are large and they are small gsds. That said you’d have to be pretty brave/stupid to attack one of 7 dogs! Anyway I’m inclined to agree that there isn’t a population.
Adam ,
Ah, but for you there’s always the Hound of the Baskervilles.
Or wild boar, which I’d like to bump into even less than the Hound of the Baskervilles. We definitely have those running loose and lots of evidence of them.
There’s supposed to be a large cat(Black Panther) in Bastrop County Texas. I have not seen it,but my brother did. He said it was walking through a herd of cows at sunset. The cows that were standing would get out of its way,the ones lieing down didn’t bother to get up. He said it was low on its legs with a long tail.
He was pretty good with animals and would not have confused a calf or a dog with a cat. (I was better,but he was good)
Oh,he was armed but only with a .22 and said there was no point in making the thing mad.
That I could believe. Bastrop Co. is reasonably close to Mexico. It wouldn’t be too difficult for a melanistic jaguar to make its way up from the south. Jaguars have been filmed in Arizona as recently as 2004*. Also, given the number of exotic big cat sanctuaries in TX, I would expect to see the occasional escapee.
*See http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Return_of_the_Jaguar.html
These cats have been reported for hundreds of years,my brothers sighting was some 45 years ago.
Kinda like those Lights that the pioneers saw that are now being explaned as reflections from car headlights
What would be really cool is if there were some Great Apes living wild in Florida? Would any species of ape be able to survive and thrive in the wilds of Florida?
There’s a great redneck joke in there somewhere.
Upland gorillas could probably handle the winter temps w/ no problems but terrain and forage would be a no-go I should think. Chimps, low-land gorillas, orangs, bonobos and gibbons are all habituated to warm climates so everything else being equal, I’d think the more extreme winters would keep them from establishing viable populations.
But you never know, after all there’s been an established group of rhesus monkeys in Central Florida for about 80 years and macaques such as those native to Japan would have no problem w/ the climate in the south eastern US.
BTW: Please don’t give anybody ideas–FL has enough problems w/ invasive species as it is.
There are also breeding populations of squirrel and vervet monkeys in Florida.I know an animal importer named Robert Baudy claimed that a young chimp he brought to his south Florida compound escaped and survived in the swamps for over a year before he recaptured it.
I have no doubt that there are jaguarundis living wild in Florida (and probably in some other southern states as well). Eventually this will be proven via camera traps. Whether they are truly native or descend from escaped or released former captives won’t be determined until some DNA becomes available for examination. I suspect, as I suspect with eastern cougars, that the answer to that is “both”.
It could also very likely be a dusky phase african wild cat or a chausie/jungle cat (the pet hybrid produced from a AWC and a domestic) they generally come in the red and grey phase just like the jaguarundi.
Texas Dept of Parks & Wildlife begs to differ about the animals not being anywhere but in FL — see http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/publications/pwdpubs/media/pwd_bk_w7000_0013_jaguarundi.pdf
Wiki Ref: ^ a b Simberloff, D.; D. C. Schmitz, and T. C. Brown (1997). Strangers in Paradise: Impact and Management of Nonindigenous Species in Florida. Washington, D.C.: Island Press. pp. 172–173. ISBN 1-55963-430-8. Retrieved August 11, 2010.