When you think of four-legged British wildlife, the first animal that comes to mind may not be a black leopard.
Yet that is exactly what Sharon Larkin-Snowden insists she has seen roaming the Cumbrian countryside over the past few months. The 52-year-old part-time construction worker was first told about alleged sightings of the so-called Beast of Cumbria in November, when local farmers noticed “unusual activity” on their land. But it wasn’t until later in the month that she claims to have had her own sighting.
She stumbled upon the carcass of a sheep, which looked “different to how sheep are killed by fox or other predators”.
“It looked freshly killed,” she said. “I videoed myself walking around the local area to look for the cat in case it was still around. I wanted to cover myself in case something happened, God forbid. I took photos and went back to the car and then when I turned around the corner I saw something out of the corner of my eye.
“I thought it was a dog, and it took a few seconds for my brain to realise it wasn’t a dog, it was a big cat. It was a leopard. It must have heard me coming toward the sheep and then ran away.”
Since then Larkin-Snowden has been tracking the cat’s movements every day, responding to calls from local farmers who report similar sightings. She regularly updates a Facebook group called Big Cats in Cumbria, which has posts from others who claim to have made sightings.
Claims of big cats in the UK are not a new phenomenon. The so-called Beast of Bodmin has been rumoured to be stalking the moors in Cornwall since the 1970s and a DNA test on animal hair found in barbed wire in Gloucestershire in 2022 pointed to the presence of a big cat. In August 2023 there was a widely circulated photo of an alleged big cat in Staffordshire.
The big cat podcaster Rick Minter commends Larkin-Snowden’s efforts in searching for non-native species roaming British countryside. He also claims to have had big cat sightings and spreads word about them through his podcast Big Cat Conversations.
“My main sighting was over 20 years back on a visit to Cumbria,” he said. “Across a shaggy field I noticed what I thought was a labrador, casually strolling and seeming out of place. After 10 seconds no owners appeared, and the low and long form seemed more cat-like.
“It had no collar and didn’t sniff around. It purposefully strolled on and had the form and the long tubular tail of a cat. As it moved behind a fold of the field I focused on the last few seconds, realising it was a huge black panther, but desperately challenging myself for simpler explanations.”