California residents are mystified, and a little concerned by a mysterious, unidentified creature roaming the streets. Animal experts give INSIDE EDITION their opinions.
Is there a lion on the loose in Los Angeles? A surveillance video from a home in Norwalk, a suburb of Los Angeles, had folks really spooked! It looked like a lioness on the prowl!
The townspeople INSIDE EDITION spoke to were fearful.
"I'm a little concerned," said one resident. "I have a little one, so it's kind of like, 'Ok I'm going to go outside and I'm going to see a lion or whatever it is.'"
Marcel Rodarte, the town mayor, told INSIDE EDITION, "It could be an escaped animal from the circus. It could be someone's illegal pet. We just don't know what the origin of the animal is at this point."
Watch More of Our Interview with Rodarte
So could it really be a lioness in Los Angeles?
A lioness in the wild sure looks like the animal in the video! Others say it was a mountain lion or maybe just a big dog.
David Mizejewski, a naturalist at the National Wildlife Federation, told INSIDE EDITION, "What I saw does kind of look like an African Lion."
"What makes you think it could be an African Lion?" asked INSIDE EDITION's April Woodard.
Mizejewski said, "It's got a long tail. So that kind of rules out bobcat. I couldn't really see any spots or stripes or anything like that, so that rules out other big cats like leopards, jaguars, tigers. So what I'm left with is that, you know, it looks like an African Lion."
The video comes just days after a pack of wild coyotes were caught on a security camera in nearby Burbank California, stalking a man and his dog. He chased them away with a shovel.
It's sure getting wild on the streets of Los Angeles!
