The lion pig: Big cat on the loose in Berlin may be a wild boar

From airports to public administration, Berlin’s list of heroic failures is long – but on Friday it got even longer.

After making world headlines on Thursday morning with news of a lioness prowling the capital’s southwestern suburbs, red-faced police told a different tale on Friday.

Two experts asked by police to examine the blurry video footage that sparked a 30-hour search were of the opinion that the animal in the video was a wild boar.

“Everything indicates it is not a lioness,” said Michael Grubert, the mayor of Kleinmachnow, a town adjacent to Berlin where the animal was spotted late on Wednesday.

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Hours later the security camera images of a large animal began circulating online. When people in Kleinmachnow and southwestern Berlin suburbs woke on Thursday, they were told to stay indoors and not take their dogs for their regular morning walks.

By midmorning a massive police operation had kicked off, including 220 police officers, helicopters, drones and thermal-imaging cameras. By late Thursday evening, police officers, hunters and veterinarians – ready with knockout darts – were unable to find any traces of the suspected big cat.

At Friday’s press conference local police chief Peter Foitzik agreed that the “clues have not been confirmed so we have ended our operation”.

There was “relative certainty” that the lioness was, in fact, a wild boar, he confirmed.

Though the massive operation had stretched police resources, Mr Grubert insisted he had not over-reacted.

“The degree of danger was such that the police operation was justified,” he said.

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There are two dozen registered lions in the state of Brandenburg, surrounding Berlin, but all were accounted for – as were those in the capital’s two zoos. That triggered speculation that the lioness had escaped from illegal private ownership.

Boars are far more common than lions, particularly in the news media. Three years ago a Berlin boar achieved 15 minutes of fame when it stole a laptop bag from a nude swimmer – who chased him and retrieved his valuables.

Not everyone was laughing in Berlin on Friday, with Germany’s police union critical of what it called a waste of resources. Union deputy head Heiko Teggatz said: “This was without doubt the most expensive safari of all time in German forests.”