New Mystery Cat Photo
Posted by: Loren Coleman on September 30th, 2010
A Mystery Cat was photographed in Screven County, Georgia, recently by a hunter’s trail camera. Officials cannot identify the specific type of felid. Can you?
“The image, snapped about an hour before daylight, shows a dark cat meandering through swamp grass. Its tail is not visible, but it has an unmistakable flat, feline face,” wrote nature writer Rob Pavey of the Augusta Chronicle this week.
Note the V-shaped lines on the face of this cat. They seem to appear dissimilar to the lines found on the heads of mountain lions and jaguarundis (below).
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.
Maybe it is a new species which serves as a link between Jaguarundi and Puma. Those latters belongs to the same genus afterall.
That creature looks more like a silver fox or a gray fox to me than a cat of some sort. I think the nose comes to more of a point than the perspective of the camera allows us to see.
While it appears to be a mountain lion, a simple comparison to a measured object for scale would eliminate most of the uncertainty. Is there some reason the same camera can’t be used at the same location and arrangement to do even that?
Cat. My guess: the meow kind.
dogu4 is right. One thing I am starting to consider a disqualifier for any “mystery cat” photo is no effort to put the size of the subject in context. This should be easy to do. If you don’t do it and there’s any reason to consider the subject mundane, the subject is mundane. Period.
Looks nothing like a fox… At all.
The closest thing it seems to resemble is the puma/mt lion. There is no size comparison, but just based on the physical features that are visible. Could be a new, similar species as well.
Either way, it’s some kind of cat.
No mystery there; that’s a puma, my friends.
Look at the shape and size of the ears. They are far too large to be a puma/cougar. The face is also too narrow. To me this looks like a domestic cat, male, either plain, or one of the breeds crossed with wild cats, like a Savannah. The lack of anything to reference size is all that makes it mysterious-looking.
But I don’t have seen yet any cats (either wild or domestic ) with those V-shaped lines before. Moreover its face to me is transitional between cat and Big cat.
Look at the front left leg of that animal. It’s far too thin to be a cat, especially a big predator.
It’s still a FOX.
Just grabbed one of my handy Felis catus and, gosh, there they were. V-shaped stripes on her forehead. The visibility of tabby stripes varies, a lot. but the v-shaped stripes indicate domestic cat. That and no size references mean there’s only a mystery if someone really wants there to be a mystery. And no, its not a fox. It doesn’t look like any fox I’ve ever seen (I’ve fed wild foxes by hand). The ears are wrong, the face is wrong, and there is not enough detail of the legs to argue that they are too thin to be a cat. The head is angled downward enough that we can see the top of the cats head. If it were a fox with perspective hiding its muzzle, then we would not see the top of its head.
I still stand by to my position, even officials cannot identify it. Tabby cats have also between those V-stripes other thinner stripes included unlike this critter. Besides, those lines seem just too broad for a tabby cat. This critter has also a relatively broad nose and elongated skull unlike the domestic cat.
Maybe it is a cougar, Manx (Cat), or a Pampas Cat. Here is a link to the Pampas Cat. http://dialspace.dial.pipex.com/agarman/bco/pampas.htm Here is another to the Manx http://chestofbooks.com/food/household/Woman-Encyclopaedia-4/Manx-Cats.html. These cats can both come in dark colors, and though the manx is known for being tailess in one litter it is not uncommon for their to be all sizes and lengths in tails. Just a random guess, but I agree it is definitely not a fox. I have seen hundreds and this guy does not fit the bill. If this is a canid of any kind, it is one that I don’t know about and I have seen a lot of canids.
One more note is that a hunter shot a puma in Georgia during the 2008 deer hunting season. Also a woman phoned a call in about a puma that she saw in Columbia County which is not that far away. Keep in mind, as Puma’s are protected and they have a range of 600 miles they will spread as their numbers do. From Florida there is no way to go but up. Georgia makes perfect sense.
Best guess-Puma, 2nd place- house cat, One millionth place-fox. That is a stalk of grass not a leg! his left front leg is going backward not forward.
The face shape is right for a cougar, but the shape of the ears and the size relative to the grass suggests a domestic cat. I’m not sure. I could go 50/50 on this. If it’s a cougar, it’s a small one.
Definitely not a jaguarundi or a fox.
I would comment, but once again DWA captured my thoughts perfectly.
Could it be a cub?
To Tarzanboyy :
To me the shape of the ears is almost the same as the one shown on the second photo of this article portraying a Puma.
Yea the shape and pose of the ‘mystery animal’ almost perfectly match the puma in the 2nd photo.
It’s ears are way too big and triangular to be a jaguarundi.
It’s an onza. Probably on holiday, but still an onza.
(well, it was worth a mention….)
To Roddy Hays :
You are right, it is worth to mention. It could be also a recent relative of Miracinonyx inexpectatus or indeed itself. In any case this animal is related to Puma.
Looks to me like its a young Panther. Just because it has that V shape on its face doesn’t it can’t be a Panther with a genetic deformity.
Im a little late to the game on this article, but I don’t think that the animal’s height relative to the grass can really be ussed to disqualify it. Im from Georgia, that kind of grass here gets pretty tall in fields. I think this is a young Puma. Not a baby per se, but maybe a young adult. It’s amazing what can hide around here, in my (very developed) neighborhood we have coyotes living, literally, in people’s backyards, without people ever realizing. My sister and I actually watched a coyote walk up behind a man taking out his trash without the man ever seeing the coyote. There’s no reason a small population of pumas couldn’t be living out in the wilds of Southern Georgia.
It is domestic. There are cats shaped just like that