Are there panthers in the UK?

Summer of 2024 was really quite exciting. In the news there were reports of DNA of the Panthera genus recovered from the swab of a sheep carcass in the southern Lake District. Is it real? Could it be a hoax?

Ours was the lab that detected it and we think it is real. Firstly, there is absolutely no doubt that the DNA sequence was that of the Panthera genus. So could it have been planted? Well, that doesn't seem likely either for a number of reasons. Firstly, obtaining panther DNA is not going to be as easy as it sounds. Get some from a zoo? Fine, go ahead, try it. Enclosures are large and the edges that the paying population will be able to get to are not going to be laced with panther DNA. Even if we imagine a Victorian cage zoo with bars that our panther is licking, you could swab those bars, but it's not going to be enough DNA with which to lace a carcass. What you need is fluids (blood sample, perhaps), for which you will need the cooperation of a professional. It's not likely that professi0nals are going to risk their jobs to provide such samples for the sake of the front page of the tabloids. Secondly, if the sample had been laced, then we would expect plenty of DNA for us to find (to be sure we would find it). That was certainly not the case, and takes some understanding of DNA taphonomy. DNA breaks down by hydrolysis, both in our bodies and after death. This process can change the bases of the DNA code. If there are very few DNA molecules to detect, then these base changes begin to show through, which is what we observed with the swab sample in this case, making it one base different to panther. The phylogenetic identity of the sequence is still completely solid, but this is a hard thing to fake.

However, to be truly convincing we need to find more samples. If samples show related individuals that are not related to captive zoo populations, then we believe the evidence will be compelling enough to convince most people

And what do we believe? We know the evidence we've seen so far is hard to fake, it seems very likely on the balance of probabilities that on the basis of this there are panthers in the UK at the moment. If and when we find more samples we will look to retrieving genomes.