A possible panther sighting has been reported at Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch by a couple who were driving back from a cinema night in Llandudno. Gemma and her partner said they saw a massive black cat with a bushy tail on the embankment near Britannia Bridge as they crossed onto Anglesey around 11:15 pm on March 8, 2023.
“We were driving back from Llandudno cinema and spotted this black cat at 11:15pm just coming into Anglesey off Britannia Bridge our headlights lit it up we seen and locked eyes with it for a few seconds and then it disappeared into the deep foliage into the embankment. It all happened so fast and unexpected,” Gemma said.
She added that she couldn’t get a picture of the animal, but hoped that a traffic camera or another driver might have captured it. She estimated that the cat was bigger than her Labrador, who passed away a few months ago, and that its tail was longer than her height.
“I couldn’t get a pic at the time, it had gone. I was hoping a traffic cam may have picked it up or another driver may have even seen it. It was massive, we lost our labrador a few months ago and he was a BIG boy, this cat was bigger than him, with a massive bushy tail that was longer than me and I’m only 4’10 lol.”
This is not the first time that a big cat has been reported on Anglesey. In September 2020, we received a report from a resident who claimed that their Rottweiler was scared by a big cat on several occasions. Our interactive map shows other sightings on Anglesey, including when a bus passenger spotted a big cat near Moelfre and an encounter near Cemlyn.
Other sightings include a puma swinging from trees in woods near Llangefni and at Holyhead.
Big cats may have been released into the wild by their owners after the Dangerous Wild Animals Act of 1976 made it illegal to keep them as pets without a licence. Experts say that these animals are elusive and shy, and that sightings are rare even in their native habitats.
The Welsh Government has not launched an official investigation into big cat sightings, despite calls from some politicians and campaigners.
AI Disclosure
Puma Watch North Wales is trialling the use of AI tools, such as GPT-4, to assist us in processing the high volume of sightings we receive. Our hope is this will allow us to publish more of the reported sightings as currently, the majority don’t make it onto the website. For transparency, we’ll include this notice and the specific details below on every page where AI has been used.
IMAGES: The illustrations on this page, comprising the first two images, were generated by an AI model.
CONTENT: The original report submitted to us (shown below) was fed to an AI model with the prompt: “Use the data in this report to write a news article. Include the direct quotes for “where did this sighting take place?” field and the “What happened?” field but also summarise what they have said.”
The output was then checked for accuracy with small edits made and has been used above.
Original Report
| Where did the sighting take place? | come from a field going down an embankment coming off britannia bridge onto anglesey |
| When did the sighting happen? | March 8, 2023 11:15 PM |
| Do you know the species of the animal you’re reporting? | Yes |
| What type of big cat did you see? | Panther |
| What colour was the animal? | Black |
| What happened? | we were driving back from llandudno cinema and spotted this black cat at 11:15pm just coming into anglesey off britannia bridge our headlights lit it up we seen and locked eyes with it for a few seconds and then it disappeared into the deep foliage into the embankment. it all happened so fast and unexpected.I coudn’t get a pic at the time it had gone. I was hoping a traffic cam may have picked it up or another driver may have even seen it . It was massive we lost our labrador a few months ago and he was a BIG boy this cat was bigger than him, with a massive bushy tail that was longer than me and Im only 4’10 lol |
| Your name: | gemma |
please ditch the AI
a real breathing sentient person with a basic grasp of the English language would do a better job