Can you identify this skin

This skin was obtained by a BCIB member from a Chinese gentleman, we are not quite sure what it is. Have you any ideas.
There is no tail: more pictures with the head to follow.

Something strange in the woods....

Just up the road from the CFZ headquarters in rural North Devon there is a piece of woodland, near a hamlet called Huddisford. I have been visiting these woods for well over thirty five years now - man and boy - and I know them reasonably well.

In recent years, however, they have been the site for a whole string of big cat sightings. As everyone reading this blog will know, such sightings are widespread across the country these days, but in view of Di Francis's talk at this year's BCIB conference, I have started to look into them a little more dilifently.

Most of the cats seen are black; stocky beasts with the head and shoulders of a mastiff, but in the early spring and late winter of each year there are reports of a brown animal. The most recent sighting of the creature, which if Di is right (and it has to be said that she has been right a heck of a lot of the time), is the female, was in March this year.

I happened to meet the witness in the Village Shop a few weeks later, and as she told me of the lithe brown animal, with a puglike face, which so confused her that she didn't know whether it was a big cat or some weird dog, the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, and I began to feel an unfamiliar emotion - embarrassment.

For once again, my negative comments about Di and her work over the years are coming back to haunt me. As anyone who knows me will testify, I have a hearty appetite, but even so I don't like the prospect of having to eat my words...

... and I nearly forgot. We shall be doing a trip up to Huddisford Woods during the
Weird Weekend this year. As Mark Fraser will be doing his own inimitable thing with a BCIB exhibition, and Chris Moiser and Jon McGowman will be doing THEIR own initable things, there will be quite a lot of interest to the big cat researcher.

There are also lectures on sea monsters, bigfoot, Russian neanderthals, cryptid island species, and a whole host of other things, so I heartily recommend that you consider attending. You can buy tickets HERE should you feel so inclined.

So endeth the commercial break...

Puma or just a moggie in Gourock

Recently the Greenock Telegraph published pictures taken from footage via a mobile phone. It was said that the footage shows a large cat wandering through the Amazon business plant in Fauld's Park, Gourock. Some claim they are sensational pictures of a puma.

Noting the tail and other aspects, these pictures do not show a puma at all, in my opinion. Although the animal is a stocky one, and most defintely not black as the report states, it does seem a little unusual, although a domestic cat is the main suspect. A jungle cat, Abyssinian and a chausie have been put forward as possible candidates.

Jan Williams notes on the BCIB mailing list that the footage seems a little strange, something like out of "keystone cops."

What is your opinion and why?

see the full story at http://www.greenocktelegraph.co.uk


Note the tail of a real puma.