Big Cats May Actually Be Living in Australia

[00:00:00]People have been reporting giant cats in Australia for decades, like black panthers, cougars, and animals way too big to be normal cats. And at first, I thought, okay, it's probably just another [music] internet myth. But then I realized these stories existed long before the internet. So, what are people actually seeing here? I mean, after all, Australia was never supposed to have big cats in the first place. And I was surprised by how common these stories actually are. They come from all over Australia and most people describe almost the exact same thing. A large black cat low to the ground with a long tail and [music] shoulders that move like a panther. Now, some say it looks brown or sandy, more like a cougar, but usually it crosses a road, walks along a field's edge, or slips into the bush before anyone can get a clear photo. An official review in New South Wales looked at a database of 497 reported sightings dating back to 1946, and about 91% described the animal as black, and a few people even reported seeing adults with cups. Now, these stories actually go back even further. Reports of strange oversized cats have been part of Australian folklore since at least the 1830s, long before people could upload blurry videos and argue about them online. Now, there are also plenty of theories explaining how they could have arrived. Escaped circus animals are usually the most popular theory.

[00:01:32]Australia once had traveling menageries and a much looser exotic animal trade.

[00:01:36]So, lions, leopards, jaguars, and pumas were kept in ways that would shock a modern zoo inspector. Another story says soldiers brought exotic mascots home from overseas and later released them into the bush. And some people also blame private collections and abandoned pets. Historical records show that exotic cats were kept in Australia, but none of these accounts has provided evidence of a breeding population. Now, none of those stories provided researchers with a confirmed group of animals capable of establishing a wild population. [music] It's easy enough to believe that a single animal escaped. A large cat released into a suitable part of Australia could find cover and enough food to stay alive for some time. These animals are naturally secretive, often active around dawn or at night, and perfectly capable of avoiding people.

[00:02:27]But a breeding population, well, now that becomes a much larger claim because now we need several animals to reach the same area, find one another, raise young, and continue reproducing across generations. And as their numbers grew, they would leave hair, droppings, kills, tracks, DNA, camera trap images, and eventually, of course, a body. And people have shared photos, footprints, hair, and samples from supposed kills, but these have never solved the mystery.

[00:02:58]So, some large tracks could have been made by dogs. Saliva taken from sheep killed in Gibsland produced K-9 DNA. And another sample similar to leopard hair returned a promising DNA result, but problems with how the evidence had been handled made it impossible to trust. The official review found insufficient evidence to confirm that panthers were living wild in New South Wales, and many witnesses likely did see a real animal.

[00:03:25]The hard part is figuring out its size after just a few seconds. You see, a cat that's close by can look much bigger than one farther away. Of course, grass can hide its legs, and a dark coat can make it hard to see its shape. The long tail also makes the animal seem even larger. So large feral cats, dark walabbees seen from odd angles, and dogs moving through thick brush could all help explain these sightings. So Australia really does have a mystery.

[00:03:55]Hundreds of sightings, but no confirmed exotic big cat. And that led me to another question I found even more interesting. Why didn't big cats [music] ever reach Australia? So, Australia had already been isolated for millions of years by the time cats began spreading around the world. The cat family evolved elsewhere and expanded across Africa, Eurasia, and the Americas. They reached new areas through connected land, following prey whenever changes in climate and sea level opened a route.

[00:04:25]Southeast Asia brought them surprisingly close to Australia, and during the ice age, sea levels fell, exposing large parts of the sun shelf. The Asian mainland became connected with Sumatra, Java and Bali, and tigers managed to reach all three islands and their descendants survived there into modern history. But after that, the easy path stopped. East of Bali, the landscape broke into deep channels and scattered islands, and those stretches of water remained even when sea levels were at their lowest. And this helped create the famous biological divide associated with Wallace's line. Large Asian mammals could walk as far as Bali and still find the open sea waiting at the next stage of the journey. Australia and New Guinea sat on the other side carrying a very different collection of animals. Now Australia had already produced its own predators from marsupial ancestors and the closest thing to a native big cat was thyloio carnifex [music] usually called the marsupial lion. Now, it weighed somewhere around 90 to 160 kg [music] and had enormous slicing teeth, powerful forlims, and a large claw on its thumb. Its body suggests a strong ambush predator that could also climb.

[00:05:41]It filled a role that feels very cat-like, even though it belonged to the same broad marupial group as wombats and koalas. Now, that is one of my favorite things about Australian evolution. Give it enough isolation and a relative of wombats can end up built like something meant to drag prey into a tree. Thylo disappeared tens of thousands of years ago. True cats still had no natural road into Australia. The ocean barrier held until humans carried them across it.

[00:06:10]Domestic cats arrived with European settlers and then [music] began escaping from homes, ships, farms, and growing towns. And some were even released deliberately to control rats, mice, and rabbits. And once they reached the bush, they spread at an incredible rate.

[00:06:26]Historical records suggest cats became feral around Sydney by about 1820.

[00:06:31]Within the next few decades, populations appeared around Perth and southeastern Australia. And by 1890, cats had reached more than 90% of the mainland. Australia went from having no true cats to having them spread across almost the entire continent in less than a century. They managed this because a domestic cat already has nearly everything a small wild predator needs. [music] Cats also get much of their water from the animals they eat, allowing them to live in dry places without drinking everyday. Australia gave them plenty to work with. A cat living in Victoria may depend heavily on rabbits, but somewhere else it may hunt rodents, reptiles, birds, frogs, or even small marsupials.

[00:07:14]Individual cats can even become specialists, repeatedly targeting whichever prey they have learned to [music] catch most successfully. And they also learned to use the Australian landscape in ways that feel completely wild. For example, feral cats shelter inside rabbit burrows, hollow logs, and dense scrub during the day. They become most active around sunrise and sunset, [music] and some move into recently burned areas where native animals have lost much of their cover. A bushfire can leave small mammals exposed and [music] the cats appear to understand that surprisingly quickly. So these behaviors are a major reason they have become such [music] successful predators and they also show how flexible cats can be when they enter a new environment. Their bodies though haven't changed nearly as much. Most Australian feral cats remain within the general size range of domestic cats.

[00:08:08][music] Adult males commonly weigh 3.4 to 6.4 4 kilos, while females usually weigh 2.4 to 4.4 kilos. Rare individuals can [music] reach 8 or 9 kilos. That's big for a domestic cat, but it's still nowhere near the size of a leopard, [music] for example. Now, the biggest feral cats can look far more impressive than those numbers suggest. They are often lean, long-bodied, and heavily muscled from traveling and hunting everyday. An unmuted male can develop a wide head and thick neck, and long fur adds even more size, and black coats hide the exact outline of the legs and shoulders. So, put that animal in tall grass, take away anything that helps you judge its size and watch it across a road for just a few seconds. Well, suddenly an 8 kilo tomat can look much bigger than it [music] really is. And this is probably one of the best explanations for many Australian panther reports. The witness really did see a cat and it might have been unusually large. But what's [music] missing is an accurate measurement. And that is where the story becomes more interesting. You see, size is one of the traits that natural selection can act upon.

[00:09:19]Australian feral cats already vary in body weight, skull shape, strength, hunting ability, and travel distance.

[00:09:26]and a continental study of 528 cats found that heavier individuals generally moved farther and had a lower estimated risk of dying. Males also traveled almost twice as far as females with a few cats crossing enormous distances through [music] the landscape. So, another study found that body mass had the biggest impact on bite force and rural feral cats also had stronger bites than urban stray cats of the same size, especially among younger and smaller cats. Their average weight has hardly changed, but how they use that weight might already be shifting. And this is the kind of adaptation we would expect to see first. So, a cat living in the bush benefits more from strong jaws, experience, endurance, and caution than from just getting bigger. It needs to catch prey regularly and survive long enough to have offspring. And over time, the environment keeps favoring whichever combination of traits [music] works best. Now, in the desert, this might favor lean cats that can travel long distances between meals. In thick woodlands, however, cats with stronger shoulders and quick, powerful ambushes may do better. Near wetlands, on the other hand, cats might get especially good at hunting birds, frogs, and animals along the water's edge. And these differences can develop without forming a new species. They start with local populations becoming just a bit better suited to their environment. But the next step needs isolation. So across mainland Australia, feral cats show a lot of genetic diversity and genes keep moving between regions as cats travel and breed. Now in contrast, island populations can become much more isolated. So local conditions have a bigger effect on each generation. I mean, imagine a population living for thousands of generations in a productive woodland separated from other cats.

[00:11:16]Small prey might matter less in this setting. Adult rabbits, psums, large ground birds, and young walabbees could offer more food with each successful hunt. Cats strong enough to catch these animals would get meals that smaller cats rarely manage. And the change would start quietly. A slightly heavier cat might survive injuries more easily.

[00:11:38]Stronger front legs could help it grip better. A wider skull could hold bigger jaw muscles. Larger males could travel farther, defend better territories, and father more kittens. Each advantage might add just a few hundred grams at first, but over many generations, these small differences could change the whole population. The cats would still look familiar for a long time. They might just seem like especially strong feral cats, [music] similar to some animals already blamed for panther sightings.

[00:12:08]But after that, the differences could start growing more quickly. Maybe a group of cats that hunts bigger prey may [music] keep favoring greater strength.

[00:12:16]Larger cats would have more reason to go after bigger animals, and those bigger meals could support heavier bodies.

[00:12:22]Their hunting style, territory, size, breeding habits, and bodies could slowly set them apart from other cats, and eventually they might become a true Australian wild cat. Now, a future version weighing 10 to 15 kilos would be about the size of a caracle. It would have a broad head, strong front legs, and enough power to regularly catch medium-sized marsupials. But further in the future, a 20 kioat could be possible if conditions are right. And that would be a serious predator, big enough to stand out next to a road or a fence. It would never turn into a leopard or a cougar. Let's be honest, those animals evolved along their own paths. But this animal would come from Felis catis.

[00:13:06][music] Its distant ancestors were the cats Europeans brought on ships, kept on farms, and released to control rodents.

[00:13:14]Australia's first big cat could start as a domestic animal that slowly changed into something the domestic world no longer recognized. For scientists to call its new species, the group would need to stay separate long enough for its genetics, body, and behavior to become different. Studies on feral cats already show that isolated groups can start following their own evolutionary paths, especially when new domestic cat genes stop coming in. So, two centuries is just the beginning. The cats have spread out and learned to survive almost everywhere. Some are heavier, some travel farther, and rural cats may already have small differences in how their skulls and jaws work. Now, these clues cannot tell us exactly where evolution will take them. But they do show that Australia has everything needed. Variation, tough selection, different habitats, isolated groups, and prey from tiny rodents to [music] medium-sized marsupials. For now, Australia's feral cats are still small predators, though they [music] can look huge if you spot one quickly. With enough time, however, one group might grow so large that no one has to guess its size. Australia may not have a hidden panther yet, but its first real big cat could already be starting to take shape in a much smaller form.

[00:14:31]Well, that's all for today. If you enjoyed this video, don't forget to like, subscribe, [music] and share it with your friends. You can also leave a comment with what you would like to see in the following videos. [music] Thanks for watching, and I'll see you next time.