Big cat sightings Sheffield: Police reveal South Yorkshire beast details after DNA confirms UK big cat

South Yorkshire Police have disclosed details of a string of mystery ‘big cat’ sightings that they have received from worried members of the public in recent years.

The details have been unveiled after a Freedom of Information request by The Star, which has uncovered six reported sightings, which have been made in Sheffield and elsewhere in South Yorkshire.

We put a request into the police for details of sightings across South Yorkshire, after DNA confirmed that there was a beast in the UK.

The DNA of a big cat has been identified from a swab taken from the remains of a dead sheep in the Lake District. The DNA of the Panthera genus was found following analysis carried out at the University of Warwick. South Yorkshire Police revealed to us reports that had been put onto their system under the words ‘panther’, ‘big cat’ and ‘wild cat’. They were unable to isolate the term ‘Puma’ because of the number of references to that model of car in crime reports, rather than the breed of big cat.

We have put all the sightings into a gallery, showing where the beasts were sighted. They also include details of the date, the time, and the description from the police log.

You can see them in the gallery below.