The 'lioness' of Kleinmachnow

The night of 19 into 20 July 2023. Around midnight, two passers-by on Richard-Strauss-Weg in Kleinmachnow filmed an animal at the edge of the woods. It was large. It was pale. They said it was a big cat, chasing a wild boar and killing it in the bushes.

"Around midnight, we received a message hard to imagine," said police spokesperson Daniel Keip. "Two passersby who saw one animal chasing another… apparently a wild animal, a lioness." A police officer also reported seeing the animal after midnight. At 02:12 the video appeared on Twitter. Based on two recordings, Brandenburg police judged the animal "highly probably" a lioness.

Warnings went out through the NINA alert app to Kleinmachnow, Stahnsdorf and Teltow. Later they reached into southern Berlin, as far as Tempelhofer Feld. "The wild animal that escaped has not yet been found!" police posted. "We ask you not to leave your houses." Nurseries kept children indoors. Market traders were asked not to set up.

Helicopters, drones and thermal cameras swept the woods. More than 30 patrol cars joined, with vets, hunters and tracking dogs. By the evening of 20 July, about 220 officers were deployed. "We will stay deployed until the animal is found," said spokesperson Beate Ostertag. Sightings came in through the day. None was confirmed. Hunter Peter Hemmen reported claw-like marks on tree bark. A roar in the streets turned out to be a prank. No zoo, circus or private owner had lost a lioness.

Online, doubt grew fast. On 20 July zoologist Darren Naish wrote that "the 'lion' definitely isn't a lion." He saw a pale young wild boar, its back arched from foraging. Tobias Möser of the Netzwerk für Kryptozoologie reached the same view. The tail ended at about knee height in a dark tuft. A lion's reaches almost to the ground. The long, curving neck of a big cat was missing.

On 21 July two independent experts reviewed the footage. The animal "tends toward a wild boar". Mayor Michael Grubert pointed to the rounded back and thick legs. "According to all human judgment, we assume that it is not a lioness." A last tip led police into the woods. "We only found a family of wild boar." The alert was lifted that afternoon.

Faeces and hair from the scene went to the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research. The faeces were mostly plant material. The hair was "fundamentally different" from cat hair. Then came the DNA tests. Both samples were 100% wild boar. No remains of a killed boar were ever found. Derk Ehlert, a Berlin wildlife expert, believed the video showed two wild boars. Naish suggested the kill could be a confused observation of the animal interacting with other boars.

The cost became its own story. Heiko Teggatz of the German Police Union called it "undoubtedly the most expensive safari ever in Germany's forests". Grubert and interior minister Michael Stübgen defended the operation as justified.

Kleinmachnow kept its lion after all. In November 2023 the municipality sponsored the lions at Eberswalde Zoo, and a granite plaque by the enclosure reads "Gemeinde Kleinmachnow". The case stands as Germany's counterpart to the Essex Lion of 2012. A pale boar. A six-second clip. And a search that, by press estimates, ran to several hundred thousand euros.