Animal of the Week August 27, 2012 -- not a lion

Not a lion, Teddy Bear

On the August bank holiday, news broke that a lion had been spotted in the Essex countryside near Clacton on Sea. A LION! Local police and a firearms unit were rushed to the area along with experts from Colchester Zoo to search for the big cat. But after more considered assessment of the evidence, rather than an actual big cat, the animal spotted turned out simply to be most likely a big domestic cat...called Teddy Bear. Riding several days behind the crest of the wave as ever, this week's Animal of the Week is NOT a lion, but Felis sylvestris catus (domestic cat).

Stories of big cats living in the British countryside are common newsroom fodder, particularly in silly season—the few weeks at the end of the "summer" when political recess leaves editors with little news to report and suddenly people start seeing things such as the word Allah in an aubergine, Jesus's face in a slice of toast, Nick Clegg in an egg, and leopards in Leominster. Some people devote their lives to their obsession with Britain's big cats, although despite hours of grainy video footage and years of dedicated expert tracking no conclusive proof has ever been found. So, there really aren't big cats (in the lion, leopard, puma sense) in the UK.

Not a lion, Max

Nonetheless, professor Stephen Harris of the University of Bristol claims that populations of feral cats are growing to extraordinary sizes, some reaching as big as 4 ft. In Australia, where feral cats are controlled to protect native wildlife, the record is 5 ft 9 in (1 m 65 cm). His theory is that in the absence of the large predators one would expect, since wolves, bears, and lynx were eradicated from the UK by human beings, smaller predators such as feral cats and foxes are evolving to be larger in size so that they can exploit prey such as rabbits, gamebirds, hares, and even young deer and young sheep, which lack natural predators. Indeed, just 6 months ago the UKs largest fox — more than twice the average size — was caught in Aberdeenshire.

Not a lion, possibly possessed, Stanley

Domestic cats are descended from wildcats (Felis sylvestris), which have a natural range throughout Europe, Africa, the middle east, and the Asian steppes, most likely they are descended from the middle east and north African subspecies F sylvestris lybica, which began to associate with humans perhaps as early as 10 000 years ago. The story of cat domestication is probably unlike that of dogs, horses, and farm animals, which humans have substantially modified in their behaviour and body shape as humans harnessed the benefits of hunting and guarding companions, or sources of food or leather. The association possibly grew out of mutual toleration (a perfect marriage). As humans began to amass food stores in permanent settlements, cats would have been useful companions for their ability to kill rodents, cats would have benefited from the steady source of food. So while dogs, have been adapted for a variety of different functions, cats have always perfectly served their usefulness for people and their form remains almost unchanged from their wild counterparts. Only recently have people begun to mess around with the aesthetics of cats, producing such abominations as hairless sphynxes and stump-legged munchkins.

Indeed, so alike to wildcats are domestic moggies that they frequently interbreed with them, endangering the purebred gene pool of their cousins; in the wilds of Scotland, the last place where these felines persist in the UK, it's thought just a couple of hundred purebred wildcats remain.