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CRYPTODIMENSIONS NEWS :. |
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HUNTING NEW ZEALAND'S ASHBURTON BIG CAT |
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filed Aug 16.06
(Original headline: 'Panther' prints actually a dog )
Paw prints found in mud on a Wakanui farm, near Ashburton, where a large black animal was spotted last week have turned out to belong to a dog.
Nathan Hawke, a spokesman for Orana Wildlife Park in Christchurch, said his specialist team had looked at photos of the paw prints and samples of faeces.
They belonged to a dog, he said.
A farmer who sighted the animal on Wednesday last week said when he went back four days later there were large deep paw prints at the site, with claw marks at the end of each toe.
A MAF biosecurity incursion investigator, Caleb King – who last week unsuccessfully scoured the area of the Ashburton River mouth after another reported sighting – said at the time his first reaction was that the print could have been made by a dog, because of the claw marks.
Cats generally only unsheathed their claws when hunting, not when walking, he said.
Periodic sightings over the past 15 years of a large black cat-like animal, at sites ranging from the Mid Canterbury foothills to as far south as Lindis Pass, have fed speculation about a small panther roaming the region.
.:Story originally published by:.
Stuff/A> / New Zealand - Aug 17.06
filed Aug 14.06
(Original headline: Mystery big cat leaves paw print )
When a Wakanui farmer spotted a large black animal on his farm last week, his first thought was that it was a roaming dog.
However, his opinion quickly changed when the animal moved.
“I was crossing my farm to the road and I disturbed this animal. I wasn’t sure if it was a cat or a dog, but when it moved, it certainly didn’t move like a dog. It slunk away across the road on its belly and disappeared into the trees,” he said.
The animal was the size of a dog, dark in colour and with a long tail.
“When I saw it I had only heard about the ‘panther’ in the foothills and I thought, well if I lived in the Mt Somers area, I could claim to have seen the panther.”
That was on Wednesday, but on Saturday, when he spotted a story about the reappearance of the mystery cat that has been sighted around the district since 2001, the farmer became curious.
He went back to the area of his sighting and found large pawprints in the mud near where it had disappeared.
Those pawprints were curious. They were large, with deep claw marks at the end of each toe. The prints appear to have been made by an animal with retractable claws, like a cat, the farmer said. For MAF biosecurity incursion investigator, Caleb King, the reported sighting and paw imprint, add another layer of data to the mystery.
Along with a large cat expert from Orana Park, Mr King was in the district last week to scour the site of a panther sighting, at the Ashburton River Mouth. They drew a blank.
When he received an image of the pawprint, Mr King said his first reaction was that it belonged to a dog, because of the claw marks.
Cats generally only unsheath their claws when hunting, not when walking.
However, he is not totally convinced and will gather more information on the prints and their size. He has also alerted Orana Park and anticipates one of their staff will visit the site.
“This is certainly worthy of further investigation. What is so interesting is the descriptions we are getting from people are relatively similar, but they’re not describing an animal that is as large as a leopard or a jaguar.”
The animal was typically about the size of a slim Labrador dog, with a very long tail and with the gait of a cat.
Reports of the river mouth sighting had resulted in more reports to MAF of sightings over the past nine or so months.
People with sightings of any animal that might be the mysterious large cat should contact MAF on 0800 80 99 66.
.:Story originally published by:.
Newswire / New Zealand - Aug 15.06
(Original headline: Tracking down the big black cat )
For more than a decade there have been sightings across the Ashburton District of a large, black cat, roaming at will, but eluding both capture and identification. A new sighting last weekend saw a flurry of activity this week as large animal experts flocked to Ashburton looking for clues, hoping, this time to crack the mystery. But to no avail. When the black feline slunk into the undergrowth at the Ashburton River mouth last Friday, the mystery simply deepened. Chief reporter Sue Newman charts the history of the mystery of the large feline that has been slinking silently through the district’s undergrowth, leaving little trace of its passing.
When the mysterious black cat-like animal that stalks hidden places in the Ashburton District was spotted last week at the Ashburton River mouth, it revived speculation that going bush might not be as safe as it seems.
Brent Thomas from Rangiora has joined the growing list of people who have spotted more than birds in the district’s bushes.
Since 1992 locals and visitors alike have reported random sightings of a large, dark-coloured animal, feline in shape, but of a size that a domestic or feral cat could never achieve.
Those sightings have mainly occurred in the foothills, but the animal has been spotted on occasions on the plains and at the river mouth.
By all accounts it is healthy, well fed and shy of humans.
The legend of the ‘black panther’, as it has been dubbed, refuses to die.
Those who have viewed it are to a person normal, sane; your average Kiwi. They’re not nutters, they hadn’t been drinking, they’re not given to flights of fantasy. Most were sceptics – until they saw the animal with their own eyes
Person unknown, Ashburton River mouth, 1992; Marcus Ewart and David Tutton, Winterslow station, Alford Forest; 2001; Peter and Toni May, Ashburton Gorge, September 2003, Chad Stewart, Mayfield foothills, October, 2003; Pat Hannan, Fairton, October 2003; several sightings by unnamed people at Seafield and Pendarves, January 2004; Mark Brosnahan, foothills area, May 2005; Nic Newman, Mt Somers Walkway, June 2005; Brent Thomas, Ashburton River mouth, August 2006 – these people belong to an exclusive club, they’ve spotted the mythical beast, they know it is real.
And it’s not just members of the public who believe there is a large, black feline roaming the district. MAF investigators and big game specialists from Orana Park are also believers.
Two of those, Caleb King from MAF and Graeme Petrie from Orana Park, checked out the latest sighting on Wednesday. They drew a blank, but that doesn’t mean the animal isn’t there, Mr Petrie said. Big cats are survivors, they’re adaptors and they’re masters at remaining unseen.
Their secretive nature means they travel light and under cover of darkness, they catch prey on the run and they consume it in seclusion.
They could very easily be capturing, killing and consuming animals without leaving any sign of their passing, Mr Petrie said.
“Most large felines, once they have captured their food, will hide it so they can dine at will; if there are predators they will climb into a tree with their food, but here they would pull it into the undergrowth.”
Because of New Zealand’s dense bush and scrubby riverbeds, a large feline could simply disappear and never be found, Mr Petrie said.
Their nocturnal nature made it easy for them to travel considerable distances under cover of darkness and to kill for food without being spotted.
Most felines had evolved to become ultimate survivors who were able to adapt to most environments, he said.
They were smart and generally knew to avoid traps – and humans. A riverbed or bush provided an ideal environment for an animal that survived by seeing, but not being seen.
While several searches for evidence had been made after reported sightings, it was not unexpected to find no trace of an animal that could walk so lightly it would leave little trace of its passing, Mr Petrie said.
MAF continues to build up a list of black cat sightings and in later years has these logged with GPS readings to pinpoint sites.
The search, for Caleb King, is something of a double-edged sword. On one hand he hopes to find an animal, but on the other as a biosecurity incursion investigator, he fervently hopes New Zealand’s borders have not been breached.
“I’m always left asking myself, did they really see something or is there actually something out there? It’s impossible to resolve it,” Mr King said.
The similarity in the information provided at each sighting lent credibility to the idea that a large black cat was roaming Mid Canterbury, he said.
Unlike Europe, where people kept large wild animals as pets, New Zealand did not have a lot of large felines in captivity. This made it more unlikely that the mystery animal was an escaped zoo or circus animal, Mr King said.
“There is nothing we know of in recent times that leads us to that conclusion.”
Several years ago a large cat escaped from a circus at Kaiapoi, and if that animal was still at large it would be over 16 years of age, Mr King said.
“By all accounts that animal has been recaptured. It is supposed to have been recaptured in the middle of the night but it was never well documented whether this actually occurred, so there is a little doubt in people’s minds.”
It is conceivable, given that large cats can live to 20-plus years in a good environment, that the mystery animal could be this creature.
“There are enough unexplained sightings around to leave us scratching our heads and asking, is there something out there?”
Another theory about the origins of the black cat went back in time to early ship movements and escaped ship cats.
These cats were often related to either the Maine Coon cat or the Norwegian Forest cat, both very large, thick-coated animals.
There were some features, however, that were inconsistent with this – the significant size of the reported animal, its huge tail and its uniformly black coat.
.:Story originally published by:.
The Ashburton Guardian / New Zealand - Aug 12.06
See also: Large, Panther-Like Cat Seen In New Zealand
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