The lioness you are looking for is probably a wild boar: The municipality of Kleinmachnow and the Brandenburg police no longer assume that a lioness or any other predatory animal is on the move in Berlin or Brandenburg. There is no longer any danger, said the mayor of the Brandenburg municipality, Michael Grubert (SPD), at a press conference on Friday. The police confirmed this assessment. All searches yielded no clues. An analysis of the well-known video also showed that there was probably no lioness to be seen on it – but probably a wild boar. “By all human judgment, we’re assuming it’s not a lioness,” Grubert said.
Doubts about the lion theory had already increased. Several experts had expressed their skepticism, such as the Berlin wildlife expert Derk Ehlert. He told RBB Inforadio that he only saw two wild boars running from left to right on the video.
The search for the possible predator near the southwestern city limits of Berlin began on Thursday night. It was triggered by a video on which a lioness was suspected. The video snippet made the rounds on social networks on Thursday. The investigating authorities assessed the video as genuine. According to a spokeswoman for the authorities, police officers said they had also seen a wild animal “secured”.
In addition to dozens of police officers, veterinarians and the Berlin city hunter were also involved in the search. However, renewed supposed sightings of the sought-after predator and information from the population turned out to be wrong. “There isn’t a single clue that has led to any suggestion that it might be a lioness or a wildcat, a big one,” Grubert said.
At the beginning of the search, it was said that the lioness had been seen killing a wild boar. However, the remains of this animal could not be found either. “I happen to hunt in the region myself and I know that the hunters have very good dogs there. It is completely unthinkable that the dogs would not have found anything if a wild boar was actually dissected there,” said Achim Gruber, Managing Director of the Institute for Animal Pathology in Berlin, on Friday of the German Press Agency. “If a lioness had chewed up a wild boar there, the dogs would have found something.”
Despite the many unanswered questions about the story, Gruber considered the search effort justified. “The measures are justified in view of the justified initial suspicion. You have to make the effort,” said the FU expert.
The chairman of the Berlin Nature Conservation Union (Nabu), Rainer Altenkamp, is also convinced that the predator they are looking for is a wild boar. “Even the short, hanging tail with a loosely hairy tassel about ten centimeters long rules out a lioness,” said the wildlife expert on Friday, looking at the video recordings viewed. The other recognizable features, for example the round back and the elongated head, fit very well with a wild boar and speak against a predator, said Altenkamp. “The entire behavior is completely typical for wild boars in urban areas.”
The Berlin Nabu chairman also criticized the extensive search operations. It would be helpful for the future to set up a small team of experts for the police and authorities who have experience in identifying wild animals using photos or videos. That should be done before, as is now the case, one goes to great lengths to search for an animal that, with a probability bordering on certainty, never existed. A warning to the population should only be given when a dangerous wild animal has been proven beyond a doubt, as Altenkamp said.
