How can people be so ignorant on the wild cat?
I am quite used to being ignored and people rejecting the decades of documented research work and it has to be said that people are making money out of promoting an attempt to 'save' a Scottish wild cat that is not.
Back in 1897 Scottish naturalists and zoologists including a man who had dedicated 40 years to studying wild cats declared that the species had become extinct some time in the 1860s. A period that could well be referred to as the Historical British Extinction Period (HBEP).
Well known and regarded naturalists/authors who had studied wild cats noted, from the 1870s on, that on visits to museums the specimens listed as "Scottish Wild Cat" were all hybrids lacking the distinctive wild cat diagnostic features. All of this I covered in detail, and fully referenced, in The Red Paper 2022: Felids and that is profusely illustrated by photographs and illustrations -including photos of taxidermies of the last generation of Old wild cat (kill;ed c 1830s) before the species became extinct.
I found out in the early 1990s that there were credible accounts of these tabby wild cats around England and Wales right up until the early 1940s. My assumption as a still young naturalist was that these were instances of relic populations in wild areas. I was still gullible enough to believe the dogma that started in the early 1900s as author after another (the "experts") quoted the same lines and who was I to argue?
Then I read an off-the-cuff comment made by a forester. I checked what had been said and that led me to another (very old) source. I queried more experienced naturalists (all now extinct themselves) about what I had found: "Ignore it -it's all tall stories!" and even "Never looked into it because it is patently rubbish!"
I felt a bit stupid to be honest so decided that I would simply follow the evidence presented in works from the 18th century to the early 1900s. Considering the size of the current claimed Scottish wild cat I had to ask why, when they were hunted by 'sportsmen' with packs of dogs those dogs were fitted with leather collars full of metal studs?
The "English Tiger" when it became extinct due to hunting and environmental destruction of forests and woods, had its name taken for its northern cousin and so "The Highland Tiger" was the last of the Old wild cats. It should be noted that for many decades those calling themselves "Cryptozoologists" have argued or suggested (strongly) that the size of the cats described, their lack of fear in taking on humans and how they mauled and sometimes killed hunting dogs indicated that this was a now extinct (correct) but unknown cat species or an exotic cat ("perhaps a tiger?") that escaped into the wild. I have found that in one "mystery creature" case after another cited by the fringe that not one of them has carried out real research or even gone to the available original sources (as with "The Great Dog of Ennerdale").
The fact is that, as naturalists noted back in the 1700s, the wild cat had only continued to exist for "hundreds of years due to interbreeding with feral domestic cats". In fact, the interbreeding may have begun as far back as at least the Roman occupation of Britain. In Europe with no water boundaries the feral domestics and European wild cats no doubt interbred for hundreds of years -as in the UK only isolated pockets of true wild cats existing until their demise via interbreeding until we have the wild cat of today.
The Old wild cats were large and their yellow coat and stripes gave them their moniker. They were large and humans thinking it would be fun to hunt them soon learnt that, unlike the fox, the cat fought back and not until it could get away but until its enemies whether human or canid retreated (with the cat not letting up).
We know that foxes (by the thousands each year) were imported from Europe as were deer and squirrel and other animals needed to keep the hunt going. When you learn how UK wildlife DNA matches European wildlife DNA that is the reason why -researchers doing this work appear to be totally unaware of this period (over 200 years) mass importation of wildlife and as I can attest; if you point this out to them they will completely ignore you (research is money and dogma helps the money go around).
But this importation explains the current wild tabby. My theory that the reports continuing up until the 1940s were indications of isolated relic populations became nonsense when I was carrying out historical research into exotic species in the UK. Travelling and private menageries as well as random naturalists had specimens of European wild cats (all fully documented and I have the newspaper archive clippings) and when animals bred "excess stock" was sold off or exchanged for animals the menageries or zoos did not have. It meant that by the 1900s there was, in captivity, a huge population of European wild cats and escapes were far from rare.
It meant that there were far more European wild cats in the UK than there were the Old British wild cats (due to the latter being extinct). In later years I found every image I could of taxidermy examples of "wild cats" from around the UK and England in particular and the colours varied and although some wild cat traits were evident the signs of the hybrid were also very clear. So had relic populations interbred with domestic feral cats until only hybrids were left?
I do not think so.
While I was following up on various wild cat reports while compiling The Red Paper there was an account from the North of England of a doctor who had shot a wild cat and had it stuffed and mounted. The museum it was later given to could not find it but being persistent pays off as following up on one of my leads they found it! At the time it was described as "typical of the Highland wild cats" but it was not (photo of it in the already mentioned Red Paper) and the story did not end with the doctor who had, at the time of killing the cat had wounded another which ran off and presumably died. So we had a pair based on the description.
Things got more complicated. Another person who had a licence to use the same "Shooting country" (land owned by someone who sold licences and get the area fully stocked for 'fun' shooters) had reported that the doctor's cat looked like the two he had shot some time before -after shooting the cats he simply threw them onto a tree branch and carried on having his 'fun' -it really was just about killing something. However, two similar cats had been shot just over the boundary of the area also.
What was going on? Looking around archives I found the answer; the land owner had released the wild cats into the shooting country to be 'game' for the shooters who held licences. If you had nothing to shoot in your land you obviously could not sell licences. The rarity of such cats (like every other species wiped out by hunting) did not matter. What mattered was to go out and shoot and kill something for 'fun' (then as today a psychological bloodlust) The landowner in question, as far as I can ascertain since the only cats we know of definitely are the ones reported killed, released at least three pairs of wild cats.
It seems that, as with releasing foxes into hunting territories as well as red squirrels(for shooting) those within hunting circles ("the sport") were also releasing wild cats. When you look at where the various hybrid wild cats were killed you find they were on parts of many old estates and hunting territories and from that it can be surmised that there was a glut of wild cats at one point -sold by closing down travelling or static menageries or private collections.
Hunting wild cats was still popular in Scotland in the late 19th century and it explains why the hybrid tabby is now seen as the 'true' wild cat. Looking at historical photographs and illustrations (in the book) you see how there were so many 'true wild cats' and no one noticed because the zoologists from 1900 on simply spouted dogma and did no real research -museums said "this taxidermy is of a true wild cat" so they went with that. Dogma continued equals more books and research grants.
Zoologists and naturalists have continually tripped over the elephant in the room and not even looked to see what it was they tripped over.
Every thing required is openly accessible and after more than 40 years I have presented the evidence as well as every possible reference source. But the experts do not want to slip out of the comfortable chair and so we will have more and more generations taught dogma rather than the actual lesson they need to learn from; human destruction of the environment and continued hunting devastated British wildlife and no matter how often you claim to be trying to "save" the Scottish wild cat you cannot.
It became extinct over 165 years ago.
