Bodmin Moor — the Beast of Bodmin

OVERVIEW

Two hundred square kilometres of granite tors, bog and rough grazing in north-east Cornwall, with Brown Willy and Rough Tor on its northern edge. From the 1980s farmers and walkers reported a large black cat — a panther or puma — and mutilated sheep, and the Beast of Bodmin Moor became the best-known of the British big-cat cases.

HISTORY

In 1995 the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food investigated and reported no verifiable evidence of a big cat on the moor, while not ruling one out. That summer a boy found a large cat skull in the River Fowey; the Natural History Museum identified it as a leopard's that had been cut from a rug, with cockroach egg cases inside it. Sightings, videos and photographs have continued.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

Hundreds of reports over forty years, none with a body. Zoologists explain most as domestic cats misjudged for distance and some as escaped exotics after the Dangerous Wild Animals Act of 1976; folklorists call the phenomenon a product of the press. The entry records a cryptid case with a documented inquiry behind it.

VISITING

Open moorland; car parks at Rough Tor, Minions and Jamaica Inn. Weather turns fast.