The Beast of Exmoor livestock and big-cat reports

Record summary

The Beast of Exmoor refers to recurring reports of a black or dark large cat and occasional livestock attacks on Exmoor. Reports continued through the 1990s and 2000s, with local newspapers, natural-history observers and amateur investigators offering competing explanations involving escaped pets, melanistic leopards, misidentified domestic cats or dogs, and folklore amplification. This is useful comparatively because it is a long-running regional cluster rather than one event. No specimen or DNA evidence has established an unknown population, and many individual reports are too poorly documented to assess separately.