Big Cat Sighting

[South hams hunter 8,849]

2 hours ago, keepdiggin said:

Jc will u stop sitting on the fence are they there or not!!!!

Just can' decide mate

[TOMO 24,899]

2 hours ago, Greyman said:

cats are so promiscuous that one pair can outbreeda pair of rabbits over the course of a year 

i find that very hard to belive.....gestation period is twice as long for one thing

[Greyman 25,340]

Just now, TOMO said:

i find that very hard to belive.....gestation period is twice as long for one thing

So did I when I first read it, but it's to do with the offspring and how many they have, how many survive and how soon they start there own family if you had 2 rabbits in an enclosure and 2 cats in another the cat family would outgrow the rabbit family within a year, possibly to do with rabbits being a natural prey animal for everything and everyone to dine on and cats even domestic/ferals are still a decent preditor so would have a much higher survival rate, cats have a much longer lifespan than a rabbit so the one original cat can also still be pumping out kittens in ten years time when bugs bunny is long gone, feral cats are a massive nuisance to the ecology 

[Greyman 25,340]

14 hours ago, scothunter said:

Don't like cats but aye the Scottish wildcat is a stunning looking beast. Went to a sanctuary last year where the people are preserving the true wildcat.

Best of luck to them. 

As a little aside from the big cats, I have a book somewhere called a highland year by Leigh McNally, he was a gamekeeper back in the day s they were considered pests and there are some good accounts of hunting wildcats with his terriers in there, some nice pics as well if your a reading type 

[ChrisJones 7,973]

If you owned a Scottish wildcat would it be, technically, just a Scottish cat?

[forest of dean redneck 11,193]

2 hours ago, TOMO said:

i find that very hard to belive.....gestation period is twice as long for one thing

 

2 hours ago, Greyman said:

As a little aside from the big cats, I have a book somewhere called a highland year by Leigh McNally, he was a gamekeeper back in the day s they were considered pests and there are some good accounts of hunting wildcats with his terriers in there, some nice pics as well if your a reading type 

I remember reading s fiction book when a kid that was about a wildcat an a gamekeeper ,Joyce stranger? Think wrote it.

[Greyman 25,340]

1 hour ago, ChrisJones said:

If you owned a Scottish wildcat would it be, technically, just a Scottish cat?

I think it would just be a wildcat, the Scottish bit is just were its last remaining stronghold is, among all the other things I get to try and sift through, I have seen a stuffed wildcat that was killed in Dorset in recent times and as I said before it's the same cat that's running around in some of the more wild parts of Europe in reasonable numbers, house cats are just wildcats that learned years ago it was easier sitting round fishermen and eating scraps from the floor than hunting your own, the only thing that keeps them species specific is isolation, as we brought in domestics they bred the wildcat out through dilution, there is a species of black wildcat in Scotland known as a Kella cat which seems to be a slightly bigger cat breeding true to type but nothing is known of its origins I think it's a hybrid feral type cat that through isolation has become a type rather than a breed, complex but hope that makes sense 

[ChrisJones 7,973]

2 minutes ago, Greyman said:

there is a species of black wildcat in Scotland known as a Kella cat which seems to be a slightly bigger cat breeding true to type but nothing is known of its origins I think it's a hybrid feral type cat that through isolation has become a type rather than a breed, complex but hope that makes sense 

Yeah, it does GM, I was wondering more as to how the endangered wildcat is more likely to hybridise with others and the species as it was will become extinct.

[scothunter 12,609]

I'm sure there a stuffed one here in town.ill find out where it is maybe get a pic. Definitely a stuffed golden eagle .I'm in town on n Wednesday I'll pop in get a few pics. 

[ChrisJones 7,973]

3 minutes ago, scothunter said:

I'm sure there a stuffed one here in town.ill find out where it is maybe get a pic. Definitely a stuffed golden eagle .I'm in town on n Wednesday I'll pop in get a few pics. 

I'd like to see that also. We have a golden eagle in this territory. See him feeding on deer carcasses although last winter he tried to kill my dog while she was in the yard. We call him Dennis because he's practically a neighbour at this point.

[scothunter 12,609]

There f***ing  huge things  have watched a pair when out with the dog. 

Wonder what would win between a golden eagle and a Scottish wild cat lol

[Greyman 25,340]

2 minutes ago, ChrisJones said:

Yeah, it does GM, I was wondering more as to how the endangered wildcat is more likely to hybridise with others and the species as it was will become extinct.

I don't think it's more likely, it's just what's available, Scottish wildcats like many others are quite a solitary animal until mating time so when it goes looking for a shag it don't care what colour pyjamas the girl is wearing, like any males of many species any holes a goal and as there are hundreds more feral/domestic types than pure breeds it's more likely to just breed itself out over a period of time, the experts claim there are less than 100 pure wildcats left so the chances of 2 pure ones meeting are rather slim especially when many farms up there are crawling alive with ferals that live in large family groups,  the answer is to wipe out the feral problem or at least tip the balance in the wildcats favour 

[ChrisJones 7,973]

2 minutes ago, scothunter said:

There f***ing  huge things  have watched a pair when out with the dog. 

Wonder what would win between a golden eagle and a Scottish wild cat lol

They're enormous! I was driving to work one morning and I thought there was a deer at the side of the road but it was Dennis trying to drag a dead fawn away from the side of the road! This was in broad daylight too! We know it's the same bird because he has a distinctive white feather above his eye.

Watching him in the tree trying to figure out how to get to the dog was intense. No fear just pure determination. He must've circled the yard for 20 minutes after I managed to get her inside. The shadow he cast looked like something out of Jurassic Park!

[scothunter 12,609]

They netuer all the cats they catch. They have pure wildcats in the enclosures and kittens. So I imagine they will keep breeding them and then release them. Hopefully they won't die out. 

[ChrisJones 7,973]

3 minutes ago, scothunter said:

They netuer all the cats they catch. They have pure wildcats in the enclosures and kittens. So I imagine they will keep breeding them and then release them. Hopefully they won't die out. 

That's a very interesting concept. I hope there's enough of a captive population to keep them viable. I hope they have a similar success that the Yanks did with the California Condor.