New Update on Maine Mystery Cat Photos!
Posted by: Loren Coleman on July 1st, 2007
For more background on the above photograph, please see “New Maine Mystery Cat Photo Details”.
Now, here is an update…on the photographs (not just a photograph)!
The Kennebec Journal is a newspaper located in Augusta, Maine, the biggest city near the little town of Sidney. In the Friday edition, there was an article about the new photograph of a Mystery Cat.
In the comments section, the following email was sent in and can be found below the article:
Our lab at Elm City Photo processed this image straight off from his digital camera chip with no enhancements other than to lighten it. This was the best shot in a series of 4 or 5. Manipulated photos are generally brought in to us on CD roms or on USB Mass storage devices and not on camera chips as was this image. Hopefully we will be seeing more of these beautiful animals in our forests someday. Keep your cameras ready. John Goodine of Fairfield, ME; Jun 29, 2007 11:19 PM.
John Goodine is the president of Elm City Photo in Waterville, Maine.
Please click on image for larger version.
Thanks to Craig Heinselman for pointing out this posted email to me.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Will we get to see the other photos? If the tail were in one of those it would make identification much easier.
Searoom
I’ve looked at this picture several times. It looks more like a bobcat, however the torso is too long. The face is too slender to be a lynx. The shape of the head is more like that of immature male lion (before the mane comes in). That partially account for the dappled spotted appearance of it’s coat.
I do not think it’s a cougar, the body & head shapes are just not “right”. If this is indeed a actual unaltered photograph, then I would speculate it is hybrid of some sort. Given all that, it very well could be an undocumented species.
Yeah…where are the other photos? Looks like we have the real deal here and would love to see them! 🙂
It’s quite easy for someone to say there are more pictures. I’d need to actually see them before I believe that they have more.
i am just thankful that one photo was supplied and a pretty clear one at that. it is exhausting and disappointing looking at dark blobs all the time.
as i posted before, kudos to the home owner to have the presence of mind to get at least one good shot off among the couple that were taken, if that is the case and not some type of hoax.
sorry to get a little off topic, but what is wrong with these people that perpetrate hoaxes. i do not get them. it makes everyone skeptical when authentic photos are submitted by everyday people. maybe i just answered my own question there. these hoaxers either have some psychological problem and need the negative attention or they have a hidden agenda that is transparent to most of us. it could be a little bit of both.
in this case, the pendulum that i mentioned before seems to swinging back towards the real deal side and away from the hoax side. time will tell.
Now this is a Real Cougar and it`s not black like some other reports My only question is where was it really taken?
I live in a small town in southern nh, there are ALWAYS reports of mountain lion sightings from hunters and other locals in my area. i was outside with my dogs the other night in my backyard and saw/heard an animal come towards me and then take off through the woods about 25 feet away. it was at least knee high (maybe taller) and moved VERY fast. It was definitely a large cat, and appeared to leap over a large 6′ high brush pile we have in our woods. One of my dogs, a pitbull, who normally gives chase to ANY animal running from him, came back to me with his tail between his legs. This is the same dog who once took off after a huge Buck, only to reappear 5 hours later all banged up and pissing blood. This is one animal that i do believe is in New England and regaining its population.
Maybe it’s the angle but to me this animal doesn’t look at all like a cougar. Infact, it doesn’t look like no known feline.
The more I look at this photo I am thniking hybrid. I do agree with searoom other photos that may show the tail would go along way to saying what this is.
Bocats and lynx have ear tufts.
Hybrids of what?
Yes, anything is possible, perhaps.
But people may be seeing something in this image than is not there. Digital pixels cause things to be seen in photographs, especially those that go through the internet “telegraph” system, and then these images are open to various interpretations.
Let’s have patience while more details and images surface.
This photograph just might be of a mountain lion (unverified, but with little doubt they are in Maine).
I for one am quite intrigued by this photo. To me, it looks very much like an actual photo of a living creature rather than any sort of hoax. To me it looks like it could very well be a cougar. The face doesn’t look quite right for a cougar, but like Loren said, this could be a result of artifacts from the digital pixels. I see no tufts to suggest a lynx or bobcat and the body looks very much within the realm of possibility for a mountain lion. Looking forward to more details on this one.
Well, in all honesty… If you put a couple 8 inch fang’s on that cat, I’d swear I was looking at a Saber Toothed Tiger… We all know better than that though… I’m thinking cross breed of coug & linx…
That’s not a bobcat, believe you me. It looks to me to be a mountain lion (cougar). Remember, the photo was lightened for clarity as the press release stated. The musculature is mountain lion. I believe a sharper picture would reveal the cat is not as “shaggy” as first impression may place it. I think the shagginess is a byproduct of resolution, distance, and lighting and not actually a characteristic of the cat’s coat. The ears are not too large and a mountain lion in “scout” mode would have them up to listen, not down as in attack/flight modes. I understand an investigator must measure rocks and items around the site for relatively accurate size estimation. However, that cat is larger than either a linx or a bobcat by far. I’m spitballing that’s 145 to 165 lbs of cat. My opinion is it is a young adult/older adolescent male mountain lion. The photo is obviously not clear enough but I think it has male bits, if you follow me and of course, it’s size. Possibly driven to range by older, bigger males who stake quite large territories. If they are indeed able to officially learn more, that would be very interesting.
The link features a picture of a jaguar.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/kent/content/images/2006/08/11/jaguar_400x300.jpg
Don’t the cats look similar?
I know, that people aren’t even prepared to consider a jaguar, but I think that it is possible, especially with all the melanistic big cats reported. Also possibly the cougars mix with jags and can produce melanistic offspring.
Just a thought.
Actually, there have been two cougar confirmations in Maine, one in 1995 and female with kittens in 2000. Recently there have been several confirmations in New Brunswick and southern Quebec. Most of these confirmations involve sightings with tracks, DNA from hair samples or fecal material or cougar killed deer. It is inevitable that eventually a cat will be photographed or killed on a highway or by a hunter. They are repopulating the east, slowly but I believe surely. It could be that this picture was slightly distorted in the lightening process, plus I don’t think digitals are still quite as “crisp” as 35 mm film.
You are correct Loren was not trying to start anything. But if a Cougar and say Bobcat would mix would the off spring have ear tuffs. And yes there is something in Maine that has not been verified. My biggest fear is that will try and hunt it down.
Whatever it is it looks to be eating well, and I would not get too close.
I’m getting a nagging feeling I’ve seen this pic before, maybe not here and it would have been about 3 yrs ago, but I’ve seen this before. Searoom, that is a better pic, the one at the bottom. Notice you can see trees behind the cat? Okay, in my “expert” opinion (which comes from being outdoors most of my life) I’d have to say that either this is a large bobcat or a cougar/puma and bobcat cross. I have seen some large bobcats (both in person and on tv), but I’ve never seen any that size or that exact coloring. Usually bobcats have faint “stripes”, just enough for them to disappear within the shadows.
This Picture is definitely a painting. A painting of a larger than average fox. Sorry Guys paintings don’t count as evidence of a mysterious animal.
A painting? A fox?
What? Come on.
For a new posting of interest, click here:
https://cryptomundo.com//cryptozoo-news/sidney-cat-4/