Hundreds of thousands of people have clicked play on a video showing what appears to be a big, dark cat walking in the snow in a Manitoba community.
The video was taken at 2:15 p.m. on March 5 by Danielle Shingoose, who lives on the Waywayseecappo First Nation in southwestern Manitoba.
“I was about to take the trash out, and I looked out the window and seen something moving in the field,” she said. “It looked like a big cat, so I took out my phone and started recording and zoomed in, and it looked like a cougar because of, like, a long tail.”
Shingoose said she then sent the video to her family’s group chat.
“I was just amazed that it was a big cat,” she said.
Her nephew Ayden Brandon then posted it on Facebook.
“Just because it was out of the ordinary,” he told CTV News. “Aren’t those things in the southern parts?”
In one day, the video collected more than 2,000 shares and more than 500,000 views.
In the comments, people are guessing what the animal could be.
A provincial spokesperson confirmed that conservation officers are aware of the sighting but did not positively confirm that the animal is, in fact, a cougar.
“Note that cougars’ sightings are uncommon and conflicts with people are rare,” they wrote in a statement.
Uncommon, yes, but less so in recent years, according to Bill Watkins, a retired endangered species biologist who’s tracked cougar activity in Manitoba for decades.
“Back when I first started managing the cougar surveillance program for Manitoba, we were only getting one every couple of years, and then it went up to one every year, and then two, sometimes three,” he said. “Then over the last few years, it’s been more like six or seven or even higher in terms of confirmed reports of cougar sightings.”
He’s worked on DNA research projects at Assiniboine Park Zoo, which may indicate cougars are coming back to Manitoba from North Dakota and Saskatchewan.
“We think what is happening is a recolonization event, where cougars that are doing well to the west and to the south of us are dispersing as they reach adulthood and are moving into Manitoba,” he explained.
CTV News sent Shingoose’s video to Watkins, who was very interested in seeing what was captured because he said Waywayseecappo is right in the heart of the region where several cougar reports have come from.
“It’s a hot spot for cougar reports,” he said.
However, even though the location is right, he said there isn’t enough evidence one way or another to say for sure the animal in the video is a cougar.
“The video was taken from too far away, and it’s a little bit grainy, and there’s not a lot in the video that can indicate the size of the animal,” he said.
He said the animal appears to be a little small to be a cougar.
“The tail of the animal also appears to be a little shorter than what a cougar tail would normally be,” he said.
Watkins added there is a chance the video didn’t catch all the animal’s features accurately because it was taken so far away.
“The best I can say is maybe, but I honestly don’t think so,” he said.
Still, the Waywayseecappo community is on alert because of the possible cougar sighting.
Band councillor Anthony Longclaws said he took out his drone to look for evidence of tracks to see where the animal may have gone.
“I didn’t see any because the snow is pretty hard right now, so it didn’t leave much tracks behind,” he said.
He wanted to investigate further because there are families with small children and pets living in that area, as well as people who don’t have phones who take walks.
Even if the animal is already gone and its species unknown, he wants people to be aware cougars are around.
“They’re out there. We just don’t see them, and lucky for this person to see that video.”
He thinks the animal in the video is a cougar.
“Just the way it moves. If you know how cats move, the way they’re kind of stalking looking,” he said. “And I knew it wasn’t a dog or a wolf, that’s for sure.”
However, the colour of the animal appears to be much darker than the typical cougar tan.
“The dark colour may just be the sunlight conditions in this video,” explained Watkins. “It seems like there was very bright sun in the one area, and it’s possible that that just made it look a lot darker than it really was.”
Watkins added while there have been the occasional report of a black cougar in Manitoba, none have been confirmed.
“There are no known melanistic cougar examples in North America ever,” he said. “There have been hundreds and hundreds of cougars that have been shot and trapped across North America, and there has never been a black one recorded.”
