British big cats

In British folklore and urban legend, British big cats refers to the subject of reported sightings of non-native, wild big cats in the United Kingdom. Many of these creatures have been described as "panthers", "pumas" or "black cats".

There have been rare isolated incidents of recovered individual animals, often medium-sized species like the Eurasian lynx, though in one 1980 case, a puma was captured alive in Scotland. These are generally believed to have been escaped or released exotic pets that were held illegally, possibly released after the animals became too difficult to manage or after the introduction of the Dangerous Wild Animals Act 1976.

The existence of a population of "true big cats" in Britain, however, especially a breeding population, has been rejected by experts and the British government owing to a lack of convincing evidence for the presence of these animals. Supposed sightings made from a distance have been mostly written off as domestic cats close to the subject being misidentified as a larger animal sighted further away. One folklorist considered such sightings of creatures to be a "media artifact" driven by British journalistic practices in the 1970s and 1980s while another described it as the result of a situation where "media-generated interest encourages rumour, misinterpretation, and exaggeration".

Reported sightings and attacks

Folklore and historical stories

A medieval Welsh poem Pa Gwr in the Black Book of Carmarthen mentions a Cath Palug, meaning "Palug's cat" or "clawing cat", which roamed Anglesey until slain by Cei. In the Welsh Triads, it was the offspring of the monstrous sow Henwen.

The New Forest folktale of the Stratford Lyon tells of how John de Stratford pulled a giant, red, antlered lion from the ground at South Baddesley in the New Forest in the year 1400.