If I were in charge of this country the national animal would be a badger
Each county could have it’s own official county animal too, Dorset’s being the Beast or a wild pony but ideally the Beast
What's the Beast...?
SO throughout the years there have been sightings of some kind of large feline in areas across Dorset, with the appearance of a lynx or perhaps a wild cat. I believe in the 80s it was responsible for the deaths of a couple sheep.
The older belief is that when private zoos were ended some rich guy just released his lynx into the wilderness of Dorset, and the Beast is a descendant of some of those lynx, or it’s possibly a species of wild cat that has been hiding out of sight. New evidence suggests that it could be a species of black leopard.
Iirc there’s a project been set up by some nature conservationists and photographers to try and get photos of it around Dartmoor and the New Forest
This is an article from The West Dorset Magazine.
Image description:
A photo taken from a magazine. At the centre of the article is a large photo of the face of a black panther with yellow eyes, with the caption ‘You ain’t seen me… right?’. The article reads:
By Karen Bate
Walkers entering Piddles Wood, a small area of woodland close to Sturminster Newton, were warned to be on their guard following the sighting of a ‘big wild cat’. The notice pinned to the gate stated: “The cat is larger than a fox, not a recognisable breed.
“The cat looks large enough to be a threat to a small dog and is very similar to a large cat seen in Dorset a few years ago.”
The cat was spotted in the wood about 4:30pm and a sighting of it was reported two days earlier in Angers Lane, just outside Broad Oak.
Over the years, there have been thousands of eyewitness accounts from people who have seen the elusive wild cat, many of which have been spotted in West Dorset.
A few years ago there were several sightings a week, including a woman who saw a leopard-type creature running across a field between Bridport and Dorchester.
Farmers have also reported finding unusual footprints on their land or strange puncture wounds, often two in the neck, following an attack on sheep or cattle.
While many sightings are anecdotal, a 2023 DNA analysis of hair and carcass swabs from a sheep yielded a strong match to a big cat species, believed to be a black leopard or Panthera genus, providing compelling evidence.
The theory now goes that many of these big cats were released into the wild after the 1976 Dangerous Animals Act was made law and banned people from keeping dangerous animals as trophy pets.
The rural landscape of West Dorset is believed to be an ideal habitat for these predatory animals.
Accompanying the article is a photo of the sign from Piddles Wood, reading:
Warning!
Big wild cat seen at 4:30pm Wednesday 15th November in Piddles Wood
The cat is larger than a fox, not a recognisable breed and was also seen 2 days earlier in Angers Lane
The cat looks large enough to be a threat to small dogs and is very similar to a large cat seen in Dorset a few years ago
At the bottom of the image is a blue link to a website, however it is too blurry to see what it says.
Beneath the article are the contact details for the newspaper and ‘THE SALES SUMPREMOS’
End image description.
So yeah that’s the Beast. Pretty cool, right?
Dorset's official animal should absolutely be the Beast.
