There are wild Panthers living somewhere in the English countryside

!britbongs

!animalposters

An undisclosed Cumbrian hill farm is the location for the first ever positive identification of big cat DNA taken from a carcass.

“To my right, I saw something black running, and assumed it was a sheepdog,” she said. “Then I did a double take and realised it was a black cat. It ran towards a stone wall, stopped and then jumped the wall. It was big – the size of a German shepherd dog.”

Larkin-Snowden took swabs from the sheep's nose and back and front legs, and they were sent to a laboratory at the University of Warwick which specialises in testing for big cat DNA run by Prof Robin Allaby.

Allaby told BBC Countryfile Magazine they were able to make a positive identification of DNA belonging to a cat from the Panthera genus. This includes five species – lion, leopard, tiger, jaguar and snow leopard, but only two – leopard and jaguar – that have melanistic (black) forms as seen by Larkin-Snowden.

This news follows the 2022 discovery of strands of black animal hair on a barbwire fence in Gloucestershire apparently belonging to a big cat