YORK, Pa. — The Pennsylvania Game Commission says there is no need to worry about the "large cats" that were spotted running through Mount Rose Cemetery in York earlier this week, as they have been identified as just house cats.
Officials from the Game Commission were able to identify the animals and even went out to the spot in the cemetery to show what it would look like if a larger cat were to be spotted in the area.
Below, you can check out some of the comparison photos released by the Game Commission:
Pa. Game Commission debunks 'large cats' seen at Mount Rose Cemetery
The Game Commission made the identification Friday after investigating the area where the cats were seen.
Because the video did not include many objects to show the scale of the cats, officials needed to be able to compare the size of the cats against a known object.
“We actually made cutouts of a life-size house cat, a life-size bobcat and a life-size mountain lion and were able to place those where the animal was seen in the photo and recreate the photo,” said Game Commission furbearer biologist Thomas Keller.
In a side-by-side comparison of the original image with the new images, the cats in the video were not nearly as large as a bobcat or mountain lion would be.
The news was a letdown for some, but not a surprise for Keller.
“I would never say it’s impossible, but it’s very, very unlikely because we don’t have a breeding population of mountain lions in Pennsylvania,” he said.
Though hundreds of Pennsylvanians report seeing a mountain lion to the Game Commission each year, there has not been a confirmed sighting of a native, free-roaming mountain lion in Pennsylvania since 1874.