Star comment: The truth on big cats is out there

Alternatively, there could be no big cats whatsoever, and people who think they have seen panthers, pumas and the like, are mistaken.

We can make some sort of judgment about how seriously to take things by seeing how seriously police take things, and there have been big cat sightings in Shropshire that they have taken very seriously indeed.

For instance, in August 2003 armed police were deployed in Bayston Hill after a six foot-long cat was spotted. Nothing was found.

There have been shadowy CCTV images which have captured creatures at night and have led to police to fret about the potential dangers to the public from whatever it was that the security camera picked up.

A Freedom of Information request has shown that Dyfed-Powys Police have had 14 reported sightings in the past five years. There have been numerous sightings too in Shropshire. Of course, reports of big cats in the countryside go back a lot further than just five years.

If the people making the sightings showed a pattern of being gullible or otherwise unreliable, then we could dismiss the swelling body of eyewitness evidence. However, they are generally convincing witnesses.

But against that, there is a remarkable and frustrating absence of incontrovertible proof of the existence of big cats. An exception locally is the discovery of the body of an Asian jungle cat in the Ludlow area in 1989. Apart from this example, why have none ever been captured or been found dead?

We should keep an open mind. These sort of things capture the public imagination, and there will be many people who are attracted by the idea of big cats roaming the countryside and are consequently less guarded in using their critical faculties in assessing all possible explanations.

For instance, a big cat briefly glimpsed in the darkness as it scurries away may not be a panther or a puma, but may be an oversized domestic cat. This has been the conclusion of experts in a number of sightings. There again, there is reason to believe that captive exotic big cats have escaped, or been released deliberately. One way or the other, the truth is out there.