Hear about the mysterious Essex lion this week? Turns out it was apparently a cat.
After police deployed a helicopter armed with a thermal imaging camera, experts with tranquilizer guns were sent out and most of Essex (the ones who weren’t busy being filmed convincingly for a clearly real TV programme) recoiled in fear as they traversed the streets and feared the sudden arrival of a random lion, the search has been called off after a woman announced that it was probably her exceptionally large domestic cat that had been seen.
Before the revelation that the whole lion claim had been blown out of proportion, police were scanning the area around where the big cat was spotted with a thermal camera. It was hoped that the unique properties of the thermal camera would allow the police to locate the ‘lion’ quickly and safely, as the technology allows heat signatures to be picked up both through materials and at all times of the day.
Britain has a bit of an obsession with big cat sightings. Over the years we’ve had countless stories about big cats roaming the countryside, a phenomenon that really hasn’t been helped by the internet and social media. Things rapidly get blown out of proportion pretty quickly in the media, and this Essex Lion is one such case.
You only have to look at comedian Ross Noble to see the power we can have. A while back he announced on Graham Norton’s chat show that he caused a panic in a park after announcing a crocodile was on the loose, prompting qualified experts to be sent out to track down this mythical crocodile!
It was initially believed that the Essex Lion, when it was still a lion, was either from local Zoos or had escaped from a travelling circus. This was quickly discounted when zoos in the area said all their lions were accounted for, and the local circus said it never had any lions to begin with.
In celebration of the Essex Lion that never was, let’s take a look at some of the best pictures Twitter had to offer as the hunt for the creature was underway:
