Essex Lion 4

Science explains people's misplaced certainty that they saw a lion in Essex.

Now the Essex lion has been safely locked back in the furtive imaginations whence it roamed, we are left wondering what exactly happened in the tiny village of St Osyth. Did the nation bear witness to a mass hallucination? If there isn’t a lion, what is the explanation for so many people saying they saw it? Or heard it?

How can a cat be mistaken for a lion? Thankfully, science can provide an answer to these baffling questions.

In all the reports and accounts, there were two quotes I found most enlightening. The first was from a witness who, when asked how certain he was, replied, “It was one million per cent a lion.” Putting aside the man’s shaky grasp of mathematics, a million per cent certainty means he must have been very sure. This man was utterly convinced he saw a lion, just as people are utterly convinced they see ghosts or UFOs.

It’s a good example of how someone’s assertion that they are correct does not necessarily mean they are. People hate the idea that they are mistaken, especially about something that they believe they have witnessed. They’d rather the laws of science and of likelihood were turned on their heads than believe they were wrong.

The second quote that piqued my interest was that a man reported hearing a lion’s roar. This is interesting as it moves the evidence from one sensory modality – seeing the lion – into another – hearing the lion. Given that there was no lion, this means the man was entirely wrong. But if there wasn’t a lion, how could he hear one roar?

What this demonstrates is the absolute fallibility of our senses. While we like to think that what we see or hear is real, it often isn’t. This is simply neurology – our brains are designed to jump to conclusions, to fill in gaps in perception, and are very prone to suggestibility. These two witness accounts display a well-established neurological phenomenon called “pareidolia”, which is an illusion or misperception involving a vague, incomplete or obscured object or stimulus being perceived as clear and distinct.

This is the phenomenon behind seeing a face on the surface of the moon, or animals in clouds, or Jesus’s visage on burnt toast. The brain is hard-wired to try to make sense of what we perceive, and if we don’t perceive something fully – if we don’t see all of it or hear something clearly – then our brain tries to fill in the gaps. It’s very open to suggestions when it does this, and will often provide the individual with what they are expecting.

Another remarkable thing about the lion story is that a whole cohort of people claimed to have seen it. This is a perfect example of the suggestibility of humans and group behaviour. There are, of course, numerous examples of groups of people witnessing things far more incredible than a lion in Essex. In the 1830s there was a spate of people reporting seeing a grotesque, devil-like man with amazing jumping abilities leaping over the rooftops first in London and then all over England. The creature was called “Spring-heeled Jack”. People were convinced they had seen him, yet it is now roundly considered to have been the result of mass hysteria, pareidolia, sensationalist media reporting and hoaxes.

Similarly, in 1966 in West Virginia, people reported sightings of a “Mothman” – a flying man with 10ft wings and glowing eyes – which are now attributed to a combination of pranks, misidentified planes and large birds. The same is true for reports of an “Owlman” in Cornwall in the spring of 1976.

But in all of these cases it’s the contagious nature of the story that’s interesting; the way things are picked up on and spread by the media or gossip, generating more stories as people’s minds become sensitised to misperceive what they see or hear as further evidence.

If we look back at the Essex lion story, a combination of things helped make it a mass event. It’s the end of the summer, and there are limited stories to run in the newspapers, so a couple’s worry that a cat is in fact a lion is front-page news, feeding into the collective consciousness. People were on holiday, in an area they didn’t know. Some were in caravans, so exposed to nature in a way they were not used to.

But why a lion? Here, I think we have all overlooked a very simple contributing factor. About two weeks ago, Channel 4 aired a documentary called Animal Hoarder: Horror at the Zoo, about a man in Zanesville, Ohio, who kept dozens of large cats – including lions – and who set them free before killing himself.

The hour-long programme included witnesses’ accounts explaining how they had been going about their daily business and suddenly came face to face with the escaped lions and tigers. It was all very dramatic, horrifying and vivid. Therefore, a cohort of the TV viewing public was already, unconsciously, primed to be watching out for lions lurking in a field. And then along comes a tabby cat…

Personally, I find the phenomenon of pareidolia and the complex neurobiology and psychology behind this far more incredible than a lion in Essex.

The "Essex Lion"

On August 26, 2012, four people (not anonymous - all named and photographed) in Essex (UK) watched what they thought to be a lion with binoculars from across a field for 30 minutes. When they phoned the police, they were asked to get confirmation from so they knocked on another caravan and two independent people (again not anonymous – named and photographed) agreed that it looked like a large cat “two sheep” in length (7-8ft). It sparked a major search involving helicopters with heat-seeking equipment while armed police officers and zoo staff with tranquilliser guns searched the area.

The "lion" turned out to be a domestic house cat...

The Essex Lion is a very good example of how easily people's perceptions - individually and in groups - can be so..., well, wrong. Moreover, this case provides a challenge for cryptozoologists whose personal files overflow with reports, stories, and anecdotes about various legendary creatures: If a distant house cat could be honestly mistaken for a lion by these people over a 30 minute period then how many other reports/stories/anecdotes of other alleged big cats or legendary creatures - often fleeting glimpses from witnesses in a highly emotional state and with little or no supporting evidence - could be similarly mistaken? If you remove the obvious fakes and examples of fantasy from the equation then perhaps ALL such remaining reports/stories/anecdotes could be examples of mistaken identity and the often conspicuous complete lack-of-supporting-evidence would seem to support this position.

The challenge for cryptozoology, then, is more than the quest to prove that out-of-place and/or legendary creatures exist but to understand why ordinary people can misperceive mundane events to such a degree or even sometimes see things that are not there.

Perhaps the Truth is not really "out there" secretly stalking the landscape but is, instead, "in here" inside our own minds and collective dreamscapes...

ES(NW) 22.9.2012