One Arizona woman says she and her husband have had a lot of wildlife encounters lately, and their latest encounter has attracted a lot of attention online. It’s also proved somewhat controversial, because the wild cat the couple spotted in the Arizona desert is—well—it’s weird looking.
Anna Combs shared her footage of the weird-looking wild cat on Instagram, and her video has over 1.7 million views.
“We’ve been having some amazing wildlife encounters lately; it’s gotta be a sign for something, right?!” Combs wrote in her Instagram post sharing the video, which includes the hashtag #bobcat.
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However, not everyone looking at that cat agrees that it looks like a bobcat. It’s oddly thin, its neck appears quite long, and its tail isn’t as “bobbed” as you’d expect a bobcat’s tail to be. Some people in the comments section think it’s a serval—an African wild cat.
“This is a sub Saharan serval. Most likely an exotic pet someone tired of and tossed. Humans suck,” wrote one person.
“[It] has a long tail. Not bobcat. Maybe a Serval. Some have gotten loose in Arizona before from sanctuaries,” wrote another.
A wildlife biologist chimed in to clarify that the cat is, indeed, a bobcat—it’s just a skinny one.
“Wildlife biologist here, did my Masters in Arizona,” wrote Margaret Mercer in a comment. “I’ve worked in zoos with servals, ocelots, lynx, and mountain lions. It’s a bobcat. They look skinnier in hotter climates which is why its tail looks longer than you might expect. Could be young and possibly underfed. But that’s just what bobcats look like in Arizona.”
See the weird-looking wild cat in Arizona here:
Header stock image by Matt Mawson/Getty Images