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I have no doubt that a big cat might have been smuggled onto the island in the past and is now loose, but this whole thread is based on one picture of something that can't be identified. I'm not even sure it looks like a large cat and the rest of the evidence is that some people report seeing it but there are no other pictures and no other evidence it exists. The only real-looking evidence is a pawprint, but who knows if that's real, fake, or completely misinterpreted? It reminds me of photos of the Yeti's footprints in the Himalayas which I believe have been thoroughly debunked yet they made news all over the world.
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Australia has a lot of feral cats and some of them are getting up there in size. They also have a healthy rumor mill about large black cats like maybe puma sized. The pictures are all very ambiguous. A housecat crossing a field in the distance can easily be mistaken for a much larger animal. Hunters posing with cats have taken a page from the fisherman's book and hold the animal way out in front close to the camera, making it seem big.
Anyhow, there is plenty of precedent for rumored big cats to be something much more mundane.
A little internet nerd trivia: There have been many documented black (melanistic) leopards and jaguars but there has never been a documented black american mountain lion. I know the color in this case was not necessarily black but it just seemed relevant.
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Could be a hoax or just a large domestic cat but I find both those unlikely as it's more than one person claiming to have seen it. Yeti sightings are reported by many people too and I believe there probably are creatures out there that are smart enough and few enough in number to avoid detection but that's a different story.
As for smuggling technique there are a few that come to my mind but probably several more ideas I'm not thinking of. Faking pregnancy and putting a cat against your skin might be comical and entertaining to witness when it goes wrong. If I were a smuggler and was being paid enough, I would just get a big cat aboard a private jet or a boat from California to Hawaii and just pay someone enough money to keep quiet.
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Hunters were smuggling deer and mouflon interisland. The types of people who would wand a rare big cat would have no trouble bringing one in.
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09-18-2022, 08:20 AM
(This post was last modified: 09-18-2022, 08:24 AM by TomK.)
(09-17-2022, 06:13 PM)Or1on Wrote: Could be a hoax or just a large domestic cat but I find both those unlikely as it's more than one person claiming to have seen it. Yeti sightings are reported by many people too and I believe there probably are creatures out there that are smart enough and few enough in number to avoid detection but that's a different story.
Lots of people have also said they've been abducted by aliens, have seen ghosts, possess proof the world is flat, know who really killed JFK and that they have evidence that airlines are poisoning us with chemtrails. The point I'm trying to make is that the only evidence that has been provided is a picture of something that could be anything. Once again, please understand I'm not saying there's no big cat loose on the island, I'm saying there's no convincing evidence there is one.
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That's clearly fake because real lions aren't on a leash.
